David Lennon: MLB's position on salary cap took a big hit when Brewers swept Dodgers

It wasn’t just the Dodgers’ dynasty that fell apart Thursday night at Chavez Ravine.

So did Major League Baseball’s primary talking point involving competitive balance and the need for a salary cap.

Obviously, this October doesn’t erase the Dodgers’ back-to-back titles, won by the sport’s biggest spender. The first came at the expense of the Yankees, who had baseball’s third-highest payroll in 2024, and the second came against the Blue Jays, who ranked fifth.

The correlation between money and success on MLB’s brightest stage is undeniable, but timing is everything. And with the collective bargaining agreement set to expire at 11:59 p.m. ET on Dec. 1, the fact that the $433 million Dodgers — along with the other top 15 teams in terms of payroll — will be watching the World Series on TV this year is not the best message for owners trying to win the PR battle in the coming months.

Instead, it was the anti-cap Players Association that was gifted the right October. The No. 17 Brewers — with a $154 million payroll, less than half that of the Dodgers — advanced to the World Series with a sweep of Los Angeles and await either the Rays (No. 21) or Guardians (No. 24).

So how much is the money on everyone’s mind this time around? Minutes after the Dodgers were eliminated on Thursday night, the third question asked of manager Dave Roberts had to do with his team’s loss being good for baseball as a whole.

“All I will say is the Brewers had the best record in all of baseball,” Roberts said. “Those guys, they earned it.”

As for all those dollars spent by the Dodgers in the failed bid for a three-peat?

“I’m not going to get into the money factor,” Roberts said.

That’s understandable, but he’s probably the only one. We’re going to be hearing plenty more on this subject from both sides, with the data weaponized to suit their purposes.

For the past three seasons, the Dodgers were accused of ruining baseball, running up the tab by gobbling up the most expensive talent, from Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto to Kyle Tucker and Tarik Skubal.

It helped buy them a pair of championships, and most people banked on them winning a third . . . until the Brewers, a team of small-market heroes, proved that the (mega) bucks stopped with them. At least this year.

“That’s what’s beautiful about our game is that you can’t guarantee anything,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “You shouldn’t bet on games if you’re in this business because it’s too risky to think who’s going to win a baseball game.

“I don’t know what the odds were. I don’t follow it. I like horse racing. I don’t think many people had us coming in here sweeping the Dodgers.”

Don’t be fooled, however. Just because the Brewers, along with the Rays or Guardians, got the Hollywood ending this October doesn’t mean MLB is going to backpedal from its salary-cap demands.

This CBA isn’t about competitive balance. Not really. At the core, a salary cap is about limiting labor costs, which in turn boosts profits for the ownership side. That principle is true for any business, and when it comes to professional sports leagues, baseball is decades behind the rest of the four majors, as the NFL, NBA and NHL implemented some form of a cap years ago.

Maybe the Dodgers, Yankees and Mets didn’t toe the company line this season, but finding a way to curb spending is hardly a new concept for MLB, considering the first year of the Competitive Balance Tax (CBT) — more commonly known as the luxury tax — was in 1997. The Steve Cohen Tax, the nickname of the most punitive CBT threshold, was installed in 2022, when the tiers were re-stacked as part of that CBA, which required a 99-day lockout to produce an agreement.

To date, MLB has publicly unveiled a handful of interesting proposals designed to not only alleviate what they view as existing problems but to sway the masses to their line of thinking as the negotiations become more heated.

Among the first was a salary-cap pitch that included both a hard ceiling ($245.3 million) and floor ($171.2 million). That was quickly dismissed by the union.

It’s important to keep in mind that whatever MLB does propose going forward — such as the recently announced reduced schedule of 154 games, expanding to a seven-game Division Series and letting higher seeds pick their opponent — is going to be irrevocably tagged to a salary cap, which the union vehemently maintains is a non-starter for the players’ side.

Reverting to 154 games — the American League went to 162 in 1961 and the National League did it in 1962 — should appeal to players for more built-in days off, helping with rest and recovery, and MLB insists it would not negatively impact salaries. It’s a proposal that makes sense for both sides, as well as the Division Series expansion. The drama of a pick-your-own playoff opponent is a bit too Bravo network for us, though.

Either way, the union isn’t biting on any pitch with a salary cap attached.

“Unfortunately, the league once again made clear that all of its proposals are contingent on players’ agreement to a salary cap, a system that guts player rights and compensation, as well as its other anti-player proposals,” the union said last week in a statement.

For now, the Brewers’ sweep of the Dodgers has handed MLB its first significant L.

By David Lennon

dave.lennon@newsday.comDPLennon

David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.