President Trump believes there should be a salary cap in baseball.
MLB wants to implement a hard salary cap and floor system as part of the next CBA. The union, however, has opposed a cap for decades, and vehemently rejected the league’s initial economic proposal.
MLB is the only major North American sport without a cap.
“If you don’t have a salary cap you don’t have a sport,” Trump told reporters Friday on Air Force One. “Because they can’t help themselves. You know, in sports they can’t help themselves. They should have done it a long time ago.”
A cap proposal by the league led to the 1994-95 strike.
Two days earlier, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said he worries that the upcoming labor battle could result in a repeat of that strike.
“Of course I do [worry about a repeat of 1994-95],” Manfred said Wednesday. “You want to make an agreement. We made a proposal on one set of topics. At the outset of the negotiations, I went and said myself, ‘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.’”
