Emotional labor
What attention do fans owe to baseball's early salary cap campaigning?
The cap is out of the bag.
Major League Baseball (representing the owners) and the MLBPA (representing the players) rolled out their initial proposals for the sport’s next collective bargaining agreement in recent weeks, with the owners making literal what has long been telegraphed. For the first time since the 1994 negotiation that led to a strike and the cancellation of the World Series, owners are asking for a salary cap.
MLB’s proposal calls for a $245.3 million cap and a $171.2 million floor, with what they would call a 50-50 revenue split in the first year of the deal. The union, meanwhile, touted their idea for a “competitive integrity tax”, which would operate as a soft salary floor to bracket the bottom tier of spenders like the Competitive Balance Tax penalizes the top spenders.
Battle lines are drawn, but there are a bevy of crucial details unaddressed, because this negotiation is six months (at least) from getting serious.
Even what we do know about the proposals requires serious comparative expertise to grasp the finer points and potential effects. Neither proposal will bear much resemblance to whatever both sides eventually agree on.
Nonetheless, the sides are sniping back and forth. MLB especially has launched a concerted campaign to tug fans toward the idea of a cap as a salve for competitive balance, to emotionally engage a huge swath of fans in the fight with a broad strokes argument that not-so-subtly positions the Dodgers' spending and success as a common enemy. Fan sentiment is referenced, spun and manipulated, even monitored by media outlets.
Pressed last week on the prospect of losing games to labor unrest, as MLB did in 1994 and 1995, commissioner Rob Manfred said, “We’re open to whatever ideas people have, but we need a realistic framework that addresses the fans’ concerns about competitive balance and you just can’t ignore that financial penalties have not gotten it done for us."
The implication is that the tides of public opinion are either important or interesting.
