RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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As the 2026 Major League Baseball season continues to unfold, something vitally important to the future of the sport quietly hums in the background: the ongoing negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement.
The collective bargaining agreement, or CBA (or Basic Agreement, as it's known in a formal sense), is the negotiated accord between players and clubs -- i.e., the team owners and commissioner Rob Manfred, who represents their interests -- that governs the working relationship between the two parties, typically for a period of five years. It covers things as mundane as players' meal allowances and travel protocols and as vital as minimum salaries, the structure of free agency, revenue-sharing specifics, and roster sizes. Every CBA can be distilled down to a fight over money, or, more specifically, how the league's revenues will be divided between players and team owners.
The first CBA covered the 1968 and 1969 seasons and was the first in professional sports history. That was the handiwork of Marvin Miller, the pioneering head of the Players Association (i.e., the players union) and belated Hall of Famer. It was Miller's organizing skills, foresight, and training as a union economist that allowed him to make the Players Association a viable and effective labor organization. Every CBA negotiation from 1972 through 1994-95 resulted in some form and scale of labor stoppage, whether a players' strike or an owner-implemented lockout. After the cancellation of the 1994 World Series because of the worst labor stoppage in the sport's history, a long run of peace followed. That peace lasted until the prior CBA negotiations, which resulted in a 99-day lockout forced by team owners and delayed the start of the 2022 season.
The current CBA negotiations have been underway for some time, and not surprisingly, the two sides remain far apart on several key issues. The biggest fight will be over the owners' renewed desire to implement a salary cap , which the union continues to view as a non-starter. The push for a cap has less to do with the notions of competitive balance and more to do with the ownership's internal belief that being the only non-salary-capped league among the major North American sports is harming franchise values. The cap, though, is but one of many pressing issues on which players and owners must find congruity.
Moving forward, the process will be uncertain and rife with posturing and pointed public comments from both sides. The hope, though, is that a new CBA will be agreed to before the middle of March 2027, at which point there's a high risk of having the 2027 season delayed or even abbreviated.
To keep you informed of the twists and turns along the way to a new CBA, we've provided a detailed timeline of negotiations. That timeline will illuminate the important and finer points of the talks and, along the way, explain the implications of the various proposals coming from each side. The hope, of course, is that all of it culminates in a timely agreement that permits a fully intact and on-time 2027 season.
MLB proposed a series of changes to current roster rules that, in a statement , the league says are aimed at "creating more stability in rosters, getting the best players to the Major Leagues more quickly, and accelerating the pace of the offseason." Among the rule changes included in MLB's proposal are:
All the proposed roster rule changes are contingent on the MLB Players Association agreeing to a salary cap-and-floor system.
During a negotiating session with the league, the players' union puts forth its own proposed changes to the MLB Draft -- changes that are, in essence, a rejoinder to the drastic overhaul earlier put forward by MLB . Among the changes the MLBPA proposes are:
Additionally, the union proposes increasing the money payable to draftees under the incentive bonus plan and eliminating, according to the MLBPA, "the current practice of clubs deducting certain bonuses from players' continuing education benefits."
The timing of the draft has actually been a concern for front offices for years , since it was shifted later in the calendar to coincide with the All-Star break in 2021. Holding the draft in July crams both that and the trade deadline into just a few weeks and making it more difficult to allocate resources.
Commissioner Rob Manfred and interim union head Bruce Meyer each hold press conferences on the day of the All-Star Game in Philadelphia. "I think that I have an ownership group that is more united than any group in my entire time of baseball," Manfred says, referring at least obliquely to the league's push for a salary cap. "They are a group that believes in what I am arguing for."
"The supposed stewards of the game have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to convince those same fans that they don't have hope or they shouldn't have hope or that the product that they're paying to consume in record numbers is somehow broken," Meyer says of MLB's efforts to highlight perceived competitive-balance issues in the face of increasing attendance and television ratings. "I think it's perverse."
The MLBPA puts forth multiple proposals, many of them dealing with procedural matters for purposes of player health, safety, and wellness. They include:
The union's latest proposal is a reminder of the breadth of CBA discussions. Most issues are not the big-ticket items like a salary cap or lack thereof or revenue sharing structure but instead are somewhat esoteric matters that strike most fans as mundane. To players and teams, though, they're important considerations and in some instances may even provide a foundation of common ground moving forward.
More face-to-face negotiations take place, and MLB proposes more changes to the free-agency system , among other asks. MLB's latest proposal includes the following, all of which depend upon the union's acceptance of a payroll cap:
MLB in a prior proposal called for a cap on team payrolls of $...
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