Baseball union head criticizes MLB
salary cap ad campaign, says claims of economic woe are perverse
[July 15, 2026]
By RONALD BLUM
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The head of baseball's players' union chastised
management on Tuesday for its advertising campaign in support of a
salary cap while Commissioner Rob Manfred maintained the proposal
was developed in response to fans.
Bruce Meyer, who took over when Tony Clark was forced out in
February, said the sport was thriving despite assertions by Major
League Baseball that massive change is needed.
“I have watched over the last few years the owners, the
commissioner’s office, try to convince fans, the consumers of their
product, that the product is broken,” Meyer said ahead of the
All-Star Game. "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.
I think it’s perverse.”
Attendance has averaged 29,230 this season, up 1.2% from 28,895
through similar dates last year. MLB is on pace for its highest
attendance since 2017.
Management in May proposed a salary cap system, which players say
they will never accept. MLB launched a “Level the Field” campaign
claiming fans support a cap that contains a floor.
“In order for this game to reach its full potential we need to
continue to address concerns that our fans have, particularly
concerns that go to the core of what we’re about, that is
competitive balance,” Manfred said in a separate question-and-answer
session.
“We need to make sure that fans in markets at the beginning of the
season have a realistic belief that their team has a chance to win,"
he added. "I think that we need a system where fans, particularly in
smaller markets, can have some hope that the players that are signed
and developed by their organizations can actually stay there through
free agency and honestly I think we need a system where there is a
more robust free agent market, so if you don’t want to go to New
York or Los Angeles, you have a realistic opportunity to get a
viable free agent contract.”
Fans have responded positively to MLB's changes in the 2020s, which
include expanded playoffs in 2022, a pitch clock in 2023 and an
appeals system to robot umpires for strike zone decisions this year.
“We got that momentum by listening to our fans and making changes
that, candidly, the MLBPA was not interested in,” Manfred said.
“Those changes have paid off in terms of creating that momentum, and
the best way to lose momentum is to stand still.”
No small-market team has won the World Series since the 2015 Kansas
City Royals. The Los Angeles Dodgers, coming off their second
straight title, had a $323.3 million opening-day payroll for their
40-man roster and a $163.7 million tax for a $487.1 million total.
Cleveland had the lowest payroll at $75.5 million.
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“It defies human experience to ask a fan to think
that the bottom end of that gap has the same opportunity to win as
the top,” Manfred said. “There is no question, OK, that everybody in
any sport is not going to win once every 30 or 32 years depending on
how many teams you have, but the data in our sport is stark. Your
opportunity to make the playoffs if you are a larger-market team is
dramatically higher and your opportunity to proceed to the
subsequent rounds, that advantage grows with each round.”
Meyer said unions for players in the NFL, NBA and
NHL agreed to caps under duress.
“In one way or the other they were broken or forced into it,” he
said. “I believe that this system is bad for players and would be
for generations to come."
Baseball’s five-year labor contract expires Dec. 1 and management is
expected to immediately start a lockout, the sport’s 10th work
stoppage since 1972. No games have been lost since a 7 1/2-month
strike in 1994-95 caused the World Series to be canceled for the
first in 90 years.
“Teams in every market across the league can afford to compete,"
Meyer said. “Many of them are choosing not to. From our standpoint,
that’s the biggest problem in the game right now."
Meyer said owners want a cap to guarantee profits and increase
franchise values, a system he called “subsidized mediocrity.”
“They don’t want it because they’re just so concerned about the
fans,” he said. “If they were so concerned about the fans, they
would listen to the fans all across baseball who are literally
chanting 'Sell the team.' They want their owners to sell the team
because they feel they're not competing."
Manfred did not want to comment on whether he thought President
Donald Trump, who said he supports a cap, would attempt to intervene
in bargaining.
“It would be wildly, wildly inappropriate for me to speculate about
what the president of the United States might do or not do in a
hypothetical situation,” he said.
Manfred defended MLB's advertising campaign supporting a cap.
“Sometimes the other side may not be completely accurate or fair in
terms of their recitation and what’s going on,” he said.
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