MILWAUKEE — The chorus of MLB club owners openly advocating for a hard salary cap and floor is growing louder, seemingly by the day.
Close on the heels of public support of a proposed salary cap and floor system by Yankees managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner and White Sox minority owner Mat Ishbia, Brewers owner Mark Attanasio is making the same push to overhaul MLB’s economic system.
“This has been our goal for 22 years [since acquiring the club], to compete,” Attanasio said in response to a Front Office Sports question on the eve of World Series Game 1 featuring his Brewers and the similarly budget-minded Rays. “I think the system that’s being proposed in terms of a revenue-sharing system, not only will help us compete, but more importantly, all of the teams with lower payrolls, too, which is something also I think the fans want.
“I saw that Hal [Steinbrenner] said he supported the league [labor] proposals in their entirety. Ditto for me,” Attanasio said.
The run of owner remarks in support of a salary cap is happening as MLB owners and players remain locked in a bitter set of labor talks. As management has pushed for the cap, significant restrictions on free agency, a retooled draft, and a 154-game regular season, the MLB Players Association remains fervently opposed to much of this, particularly the cap.
“All my years of experience in this tells me that these systems are really, really bad for players—now and in the future,” MLBPA interim executive director Bruce Meyer said in July. “The history in those [cap] systems, every one, it’s gotten worse [for players]. Once they get into it, they never get out of it. And the history in every one of the other sports is that once the players get in, the owners will lock them out repeatedly until they get the player share further down.”
Because of that divide, management is expected to lock out the players once the current collective bargaining agreement expires in December.
Unique Situation
The Brewers, meanwhile, are far from an ordinary small-revenue team pushing for a more structured economic system.
Operating in MLB’s smallest media market, the Brewers have consistently outperformed their supposed limitations. The club has reached the postseason eight of the last nine seasons. It’s been a consistent mid-tier performer in attendance, reaching 2.3 million in its home draw in every non-pandemic season since 2006. The Brewers have also consistently spent around the league average annually on overall baseball operations, even with a major-league payroll that trends slightly lower.
Milwaukee, however, is now in the World Series for the first time in 44 years, defying MLB’s big-money trends with a $154.7 million luxury-tax payroll that ranks 19th in the league.
So Attanasio is now in a delicate position of praising his players, staff, and fans for what they’ve done, while also arguing that it likely cannot continue without large-scale change.
“The fan support, the sponsorship support, the support from our leaders in the community in the state has allowed us to punch above our weight, and the payroll and whatnot reflects that,” he said.
“The Brewers and the Rays, we hear all the time that we play baseball the right way, that it’s exciting to watch. I think they probably hear the same. I think that’s good for baseball,” Attanasio said. “So whatever that means relative to revenue systems or otherwise, I think if you have a more competitive set, you can have more exciting baseball.”
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