The official Hot Stove League Thread 2025-26 Offseason

[Sexymarinersfan]

What is going far enough to get it??? 2 seasons? 3? 5???

Maybe they can do a floor and just increase the lux tax?

But these high end salaries just took a huge bump up. For about 20 years it was basically the Arod deal was about the max. AAV Now 60M to Tucker, 42M for Bo, 765M for Soto, 700M for Ohtani. That is a crazy jump up in terms of how much the top guys make.

Agree with all of this. This is unsustainable.

Floor. Cap/ceiling. Stiff penalties for exceeding the cap and close loopholes like Ohtani’s deferred contract.

The popularity if the sport is waning and viewership has plummeted. These bloated contracts for the top 1% of pro ball guys is great for them, but this kind of spending is going to doom the sport. Why would you ever become a fan of a small market team like the Rockies or White Sox or Marlins? What’s the point? Unless you just like sitting in the sun and munching on peanuts, there is literally no reason to get excited about your team, and zero chance they will win a World Series. Fans will eventually figure out that you can sit in the sun and drink $14 pilsners without paying $75 just to get into the bar.

Baseball needs to save itself from itself.

No playoffs for teams that go over the cap. No draft picks for teams under the cap floor.

[GL_Storm]

Maybe they can do a floor and just increase the lux tax?

But these high end salaries just took a huge bump up. For about 20 years it was basically the Arod deal was about the max. AAV Now 60M to Tucker, 42M for Bo, 765M for Soto, 700M for Ohtani. That is a crazy jump up in terms of how much the top guys make.

Agree with all of this. This is unsustainable.

Floor. Cap/ceiling. Stiff penalties for exceeding the cap and close loopholes like Ohtani’s deferred contract.

The popularity if the sport is waning and viewership has plummeted. These bloated contracts for the top 1% of pro ball guys is great for them, but this kind of spending is going to doom the sport. Why would you ever become a fan of a small market team like the Rockies or White Sox or Marlins? What’s the point? Unless you just like sitting in the sun and munching on peanuts, there is literally no reason to get excited about your team, and zero chance they will win a World Series. Fans will eventually figure out that you can sit in the sun and drink $14 pilsners without paying $75 just to get into the bar.

Baseball needs to save itself from itself.

No playoffs for teams that go over the cap. No draft picks for teams under the cap floor.

That's effectively a hard cap with a hard floor, which is presumably what the owners want, as opposed to the current system, which is super squishy on the top end and doesn't have a floor.

[Big_Maple]

I hadn't heard this about the plummeting interest, and hearing so surprised me.

Hi bpj -

My claims about the waning popularity of baseball are based on long term trends, not on the last 5 years.Baseball has been tweaking rules the last 5 years (shift-banning, pitch clocks, bigger bases etc) specifically to address the concerns over declining interest in the sport, particularly among younger fans. It has had some positive effect, but in the big scheme of things, the renewed interest is nominal.

Claiming baseball is thriving based on a small post-rule-change bump is like saying a patient is cured because their heart rate spiked during a resuscitation attempt. The 2023-2025 rule changes - like the pitch clock - were not 'optional updates'; they were emergency measures specifically designed to reverse a decades-long 'slow death' caused by a product that had become too slow and too predictable. While these changes fixed the tempo, they didn't fix the math. Without a salary cap, the sport remains structurally broken; a faster game doesn't help fans in 'feeder' markets who know their team is mathematically eliminated by Opening Day. If MLB wants to move beyond a niche, aging audience, it must pair a faster pace with a level playing field where every fan’s investment is met with a fair chance to win.

Baseball has been in a structural freefall for decades. The recent, desperate rule changes to 'speed up' the game aren't proof of a cure; they are an admission that the product was dying. Here is some evidence for my claims:

• According to a 2024 Gallup poll, baseball has not been "America’s Pastime” for decades. In 1948, 39% of Americans named baseball their favorite sport (ranked #1) Today, only 9% of Americans name baseball as their favorite, falling behind both football (41%) and basketball. This isn't a "recent dip"; it is a steady, 75-year decline in cultural relevance.

• Baseball is less appealing to younger fans. In total, 36% of NBA fans were aged below 35. In contrast, 27% of MLB fans were aged 13 to 34, while 23% were over 65 years old. If baseball fails to capture Gen Z and Alpha, the fan base will literally age out.

• World Series Viewership Erosion: the "intensity" of interest is disappearing. In the 1980s, World Series games regularly averaged 35–40 million viewers. By the 2020s, viewership often struggles to break 10–12 million. Even with the recent "Shohei Ohtani effect," the national reach of the sport is a fraction of what it was before the payroll gap exploded in the 1990s.

• The small market exodus: since the 1990s (the era of no-cap dominance), attendance in several mid-to-small markets has entered a cycle of "permanent rebuilding." When fans know their team is a "farm system" for the Dodgers or Yankees, they stop buying tickets.

So yeah, the game must "shake up the rules" or risk total irrelevance. And IMHO there is no rule more influential than the economic structure of the league.



https://news.gallup.com/poll/610046/foo ... sport.aspx
https://www.statista.com/statistics/146 ... YmnoKpUVZZ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Ser ... 019)%20%7C

[Captain 97]

I think the key to the whole thing is going to be revenue sharing of some sort that is more aggressive than the current luxury tax situation. The Globetrotters need the Generals to keep make their product viable. The owners are going to have to recognize that keeping the small market teams reasonably competitive in the long run is going to mean a stronger sport and more revenue for everyone. The NFL has a great model. Everyone is on equal footing financially and the only blame that can be placed on lack of success how those resources are allocated.

[Big_Maple]

Are you guys aware of Google and AI?

I am aware. I rarely post something without fact checking. I don't type something into Google and copy/paste the first thing that pops up.

Maybe my post was a little unclear, but it is no less factually based. See my post to bpj for clarification.

I agree with you, D-Train, that soccer is mind-numbingly boring. Of course I feel that way; I prefer baseball. I have followed a baseball team for decades that has yet to win a World Series, and I spend time on a baseball discussion board. I am also a nearly 60-year-old, middle-class white dude. I fit the demographic.

Soccer, by contrast, is still a relatively “new” sport in the U.S. It has fewer recognizable stars and far fewer institutional teams with the kind of deep history and tradition that baseball enjoys. Even so, its popularity is arguably growing - not yet in revenue terms, but in overall interest. Give it another 10 years and it could push MLB further into the background, much as football did in the 1950s and 1960s. By some measures, it is already more popular, and the World Cup will likely accelerate that trend in the U.S.

https://www.foxsports.com/articles/socc ... rite-sport

[D-train]

All owners care about is revenues and they have been growing at a rapid rate this entire century and are at an all time high as the graph below shows.

People thinking that a salary cap and floor is going to lead to some jump in attendance and viewership are a bit naive imo. You will still have the haves and have nots and the gap will only be slightly small because the players aren't going to agree to a low cap and the small market teams won't agree to a high floor and the big market teams won't agree to significant revenue sharing. So if games are lost to a lockout it will all be basically for nothing meaningful.

Screenshot 2026-01-20 123054.png (58.63 KiB) Viewed 18 times

[Big_Maple]

All owners care about is revenues and they have been growing at a rapid rate this entire century and are at an all time high as the graph below shows.

People thinking that a salary cap and floor is going to lead to some jump in attendance and viewership are a bit naive imo. You will still have the haves and have nots and the gap will only be slightly small because the players aren't going to agree to a low cap and the small market teams won't agree to a high floor and the big market teams won't agree to significant revenue sharing. So if games are lost to a lockout it will all be basically for nothing meaningful.

I'm pissing into the wind here - there is zero chance of a cap/floor, and we both know it. There will almost certainly be a lockout or a strike in a year, and it will slice the Achilles tendon of a sport that already feels hobbled, and it will be "for nothing meaningful". I am simply pointing out why both sides should want a salary cap (unless they are the 1% of players making stupid-assed amounts of money). I don't have a dog in the fight other than intellectual - caps/floors just make sense to me, and I think it would make the sport more fun and sustainable.

Now to the point: you pivoted from the argument that the popularity of the sport is waning - it most certainly is. But yet owners are making record profits.

IMHO, if owners ignore "waning popularity" (viewership/attendance) just because the bank account is full today, they are essentially "harvesting" the sport rather than growing it. It's basic economics. If 70% of your franchises are non-competitive 'have-nots,' your league is a house of cards. You can't sustain record revenues if your audience is losing interest. A salary cap/floor isn't just about saving money; it's about ensuring that every fan in every city has a reason to watch on Opening Day. Without that hope, the 'record revenues' are just a countdown to irrelevance. And all the robo-umps in the world won't make a lick of difference.

[D-train]

I just don't see the relevance of comparing MLB to NFL or MLS or the NBA. It is played in the spring and summer so it barely competes with the NBA and NFL and Soccer is just a blip and a totally different demographic for the most part.

Baseball attendance is up about 700% since the 1940s. I think MLB would rather have that than 90% of people saying it is the National past with flat attendance.

Screenshot 2026-01-20 131206.png (185.58 KiB) Viewed 8 times

[harmony]

The Mariners and right-hander Bryce Miller reportedly avoid arbitration:

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2026/01/ ... ation.html