One of Major League Baseball's owners just destroyed the league's entire argument for a lockout
The 2026 World Series starts later this week, and with it, potentially the last Major League Baseball games we'll see for quite some time.
On Dec. 1, the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the league's owners and the MLB Players Association expires. Barring some extremely unforeseen circumstances, the owners will immediately proceed to a lockout. Players will be barred from contact with team personnel, unable to use team facilities, along with many other noticeable changes designed to pretend as though the stars who sustain the sport don't exist.
Nobody knows how long negotiations to determine the next Collective Bargaining Agreement will take to resolve. Nobody knows how long the lockout will continue, or if spring training or the 2027 regular season will start on time. If the league will miss games and potentially jeopardize the sustained growth baseball has enjoyed. For example, the 2026 NLCS between the Dodgers and Brewers was the highest rated LCS from either league since 2015, despite lasting just four games.
Attendance has increased. National ratings have increased. And the owners are reportedly committed to blowing it all up in order to fight for a salary cap. Except one of their newest members just accidentally blew up their entire case and rationalization for it.
The salary cap fight stems from anger and outrage over the Los Angeles Dodgers' offseason spending. After winning the 2024 and 2025 World Series, the Dodgers added Kyle Tucker on a $240 million, 4-year deal. Then signed closer Edwin Diaz to a 3-year, $69 million contract. Opposing fans were furious, some suggested canceling the season because a third straight title was a foregone conclusion, and prominent writers egged them on with misleading comments.
Fast forward to late October and it's almost impossible to age worse than these predictions of baseball doom. Kyle Tucker was a below average hitter in Los Angeles, one of the worst values of any player in the sport. Edwin Diaz had an ERA near nine in the regular season, battled several injuries, and turned in one of the worst reliever seasons in baseball. The Dodgers won the division series, then got swept by the small market Brewers. The American League will send either the Cleveland Guardians, with the lowest payroll in the league, or the endlessly cheap Tampa Bay Rays to the World Series.
But that's not even the worst part for the league office. Fans are quick to dismiss these (quite common) results as "outliers." Even though the Rays are one win from their second World Series appearance in the past seven seasons, more than the Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Giants, Cubs, or Angels. Even though a Guardians appearance would be their second appearance since 2016, again, more than any of those organizations. And even though the Brewers have the best record in baseball for two straight seasons.
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They might be able to (inaccurately) dismiss the results. But they can't dismiss a small market owner proudly bragging about how much money he and his team are making.
That's exactly what Baltimore Orioles owner David Rubenstein last week. Local outlet Baltimore Baseball reported that Rubenstein, speaking at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., told a group of other sports team owners that he bought the organization in part because of how much money they were making.
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"A lot of my friends were buying teams, and I realized they're making money. They're making more money than I'm making in private equity," Rubenstein explained, per Baltimore Baseball. "I thought I should look at it as a financial thing, but ultimately I bought the Orioles for a philanthropic purpose. I grew up in Baltimore, as people know. I didn't think I'd done enough for Baltimore, so I bought the team to help revive the team a bit and ultimately revive Baltimore because Baltimore had some challenges."
He did claim that "owners care more about winning than making money (but they're) not against making money." Hilarious.
Rubenstein's laudable "charity" aside, the admission that baseball teams are making more money than private equity is about as damning as it gets for the league's salary cap arguments. Baseball is a highly profitable industry, small market teams are bringing in enormous sums of money, and many owners are choosing to pocket it instead of reinvesting in their rosters. Because they're not "against making money."
One X user showed how prolific small market owners are at pocketing money. While the highest payrolls have increased substantially over the last decade, the lowest payrolls have remained nearly flat. Yet the league is making substantially more money than it was in the 2010s, and cumulative inflation since 2015 has been over 42%.
Not to mention that MLB's form of socialism, revenue sharing, means the Dodgers' success benefits teams like the Pirates, Orioles, and Marlins, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars per year...each. Some estimates put the Pirates' revenue sharing payout at anywhere from $60-100 million. Just for existing. Before any income they get from tickets, television, advertising, parking, concessions, merchandise, or non-baseball events.
It's ironic though, that the season in which the league angrily posted that too many fans have no hope of their team winning a World Series has been a complete dismantling of that argument. In every conceivable way.
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One of the Brewers, Rays, or Guardians are going to win the World Series, demonstrating that fans can indeed have "hope" if their front offices are competent. The Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Giants, Angels, Cubs, Astros, Rangers and Red Sox combined to win five postseason games. And one of the league's small market owners accidentally admitted that baseball is more profitable than one of the most famously lucrative industries on planet earth.
Rubenstein is, of course, fully entitled to make as much money as he can or wants to with the Orioles. He's also already proven to be one of the better small market owners when it comes to investing money, signing Pete Alonso and Kyle Bradish this past offseason, extending Samuel Basallo, and locking up Shane Baz. But it's ludicrous to act as though there isn't an enormous amount of money coming into MLB. And that plenty of it flows to the "poorer" teams.
Will this matter to the owners' fanbase calling for players to take less money so Rubenstein can make more money? Of course not, they're happily set to continue demanding a salary cap to be more like the NFL, the sport with the worst competitive balance in the country and the most predictable outcomes. Why would they let a little thing like reality interfere with that?