A (likely long) lockout looms again for MLB. Why a salary cap is at the center of it all. Again.

One month before the expiration of baseball’s collective bargaining agreement, how are the negotiations going between the owners and players?

“They’re worthless,” Garrett Stubbs said.

OK, some context: First, despite learning Thursday that the Phillies are designating him for assignment, a move that will likely make him a free agent, Stubbs expects to remain the team’s representative in the MLB Players’ Association through the offseason, which puts the backup catcher on the front lines of the labor conflict that is about to ensue.

And let’s be clear: It’s shaping up as a knock-down, drag-out fight that will plunge the sport into a deep freeze in the winter and impact when next season begins.

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Because in one corner, the owners are making their most forceful push for a salary cap since 1994, when a 232-day strike wiped out the playoffs and World Series. It was baseball’s longest, most damaging labor dispute, and it took years — and steroids — for MLB to recover.

In the other corner, the players have opposed a salary cap for, oh, a half-century. At the World Series last week, interim union chief Bruce Meyer likened a cap to “a nuclear bomb,” a stance that has been passed down through the generations like it’s part of players’ DNA.

“No matter when we had these talks, they always wanted a cap,” said Larry Bowa, the Phillies’ World Series-winning shortstop in 1980. “That was the one thing that was embedded in our brain and our minds: ‘Don’t go for the cap. It’s not going to work. It’s going to hurt you guys.’

“I know there’s a lot of [former] players that tell these guys, ‘Hey man, whatever you do, don’t give up that.’”

There are other issues at the bargaining table, including divisional realignment and the postseason format, and negotiations are taking place almost weekly. But until the core economics are settled, not much else matters.

And a salary cap is at the center of it all.

“Watching [MLB deputy commissioner] Dan Halem sit on the other side of the table and go over the proposals that he goes over with the salary cap attached to every single proposal — and obviously they know our stance on the salary cap — it is the biggest waste of time. It’s a charade,” Stubbs told The Inquirer’s Phillies Extra podcast. “And it’s exhausting sitting there watching him. I’m like, does he even believe some of the things that are coming out of his mouth?

“[T]he players want to play. We want to grow with the game. We want to sit at the table and actually have a conversation. But right now it’s, ‘Hey, you’re either going to suppress your salaries with the salary cap or we’re not discussing anything.’ … There’s no back and forth.”

And no chance of reaching a deal by 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 1, when the collective bargaining agreement runs out.

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The expectation, based on everything commissioner Rob Manfred has said, is that owners will authorize MLB to lock out the players and shut down a nearly $13 billion industry.

It happened five years ago. For 99 days, until a new CBA was finalized, free agency, trades, and other offseason transactions were halted; team officials weren’t permitted to communicate with players; even players’ likenesses were scrubbed from team websites.

Stubbs said it’s “a huge bummer” and “not negotiating in good faith” for the league to lock out the players. Manfred has maintained that it’s a way of spurring negotiations.

But if past is prologue, talks won’t really get serious until there’s a threat of regular-season games being missed. And that won’t happen until late February or early March. The 2021-22 lockout ended on March 10, and after a truncated spring training, a 162-game season was shoehorned into the calendar.

Maybe the sides will figure things out by then. But a salary cap wasn’t on the table five years ago. And unless one side acquiesces, this fight could be more protracted.

Thirty-two years after the fight over a salary cap led to a painful strike, MLB is taking another swing at it.

Why now?

Manfred maintains the league suffers from competitive imbalance caused by a payroll disparity between the bigger and smaller markets. In July, he cited a $441 million gap between the highest (Dodgers) and lowest (Marlins) payrolls.

“It defies human experience,” Manfred said at the All-Star Game, “to ask a fan to think that the bottom end of that gap has the same opportunity to win as the top end.”

And in case anyone won’t take his word for it, Manfred said MLB has conducted fan polling that backs up his assertion.

» READ MORE: Dave Dombrowski didn’t have an ‘elite’ season. And turning it around in 2027 won’t be easy.

(It does seem strange, however, to officials from the players’ union that MLB launched a “Level the Field” advertising campaign for a salary cap, even though the league insists fans are already in favor of it.)

But baseball’s second-lowest payroll ($92.58 million calculated for the luxury tax, according to Spotrac) didn’t hold back the Guardians from getting to Game 6 of the American League Championship Series, while the Mets missed the playoffs with the second-highest payroll ($359.48 million).

The World Series pitted the Brewers and the Rays, who finished with the best regular-season records in each league. Milwaukee is MLB’s smallest market and ranked 19th in payroll ($154.71 million); Tampa Bay was 27th in payroll ($113.23 million).

“If you look at our results, not one year, but over the last two decades,” Manfred told reporters at the World Series, “there is a very strong relationship between market size, payroll, and your chances to get in the playoffs, and particularly your chances to go deeper.”

OK, but the Brewers have made the playoffs in nine of 10 years, the Rays in six of the last eight, and the Guardians in eight of the last 11. Fans of those teams surely expect to contend.

And although Manfred often notes that a small-market club hadn’t won the World Series since the Royals in 2015 (until the Brewers), the Yankees haven’t won since 2009 and the Mets since … checking notes … 1986. The Phillies have spent $1.4 billion on player salaries since 2022, and owner John Middleton didn’t get his trophy back.

Manfred claims the owners are “more united than any group in my entire time in baseball” in pursuing a cap. Even as the Brewers were on the cusp of winning the first title in their 57-year history, owner Mark Attansio said “the system that’s being proposed, which is similar to other leagues in terms of revenue-sharing system, not only will help us compete but more importantly all of the teams with lower payrolls too, which is something also I think the fans want.”

To the players, the league is using competitive balance as a proxy for the real reason the owners want a salary cap: to boost the value of their franchises by fixing costs.

“The owners want a system that not only guarantees their profits, not only increases their franchise values, but essentially is a form of subsidized mediocrity,” Meyer said at the All-Star Game. “A salary cap is the ultimate excuse not to compete.”

Without naming names, Stubbs referenced Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto, who said in 2023 that the club’s strategy was to win 54% of its games over a 10-year stretch, which averages out to 87-88 wins in a 162-game season.

“Fans are smart,” Stubbs said. “I think the majority of fans realize [a salary cap]’s not going to solve the overarching issue of certain owners not caring about winning. We have GMs or president of baseball ops literally coming out saying, ‘We want to win about 80-some games,’ and that’s their formula. That’s embarrassing.

“Whether there’s a salary cap or not, the owners that don’t care about winning, they’re not going to care about winning. And that’s not fair to fans.”

In the 2022 negotiations, the eight players elected to the MLBPA’s executive subcommittee unanimously opposed the owners’ last offer.

The players took the deal anyway.

If it didn’t signal a fissure in the union, it reflected the varied demographics and interests of a 1,200-player membership. An All-Star with a multiyear, nine-figure guaranteed contract may be more resolved to oppose a salary cap than a rookie making the league minimum or an arbitration-eligible player who hopes to someday reach free agency.

Based on the earliest proposals, the league seems to be targeting rank-and-file players, perhaps in an attempt to weaken or break the union. MLB proposed increasing the minimum salary and the pre-arbitration bonus pool, which would be viewed as gains for younger players, and eliminating the qualifying offer for free agents.

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Of course, each incentive is tied to a salary cap.

Meyer predictably labeled the proposals “unserious.” But the league feels similarly about the union’s solutions, which include increasing the luxury-tax thresholds.

Stubbs insists the players will stick together, even as their individual circumstances differ. He bases that on what he hears from his now-former Phillies teammates (Stubbs and deputy player rep Orion Kerkering keep them abreast of updates through a message thread on WhatsApp) and other players around the league.

“It can’t be about one individual or anything else,” Bryce Harper said a few months ago in a conversation at his locker. “There’s a fine line of wanting that over what Curt Flood did for us and what the guys did all through the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s. All the guys that sat out, went through strikes, went through situations that I couldn’t fathom — missed checks, missed meals, all that kind of stuff — way back when.

“I don’t want our decisions to be a negative for what those guys did for us. I couldn’t fathom being part of the group that took [a salary cap] and was like, ‘OK, yeah, we’re good.’”

Stubbs also wondered if the owners are as unified as Manfred says. In particular, he guessed that new Angels owner Stan Kroenke and Padres owners José E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones don’t want to miss games after buying their teams for $4 billion and $3.9 billion, respectively.

It’s all part of the rhetoric from both sides — and it will only get hotter with one month before a lockout and a bone-chilling winter without the hot stove.

“It’s super unfortunate to be going into these meetings every single time and hearing from the other side that [a cap] is their solution,” Stubbs said. “I see some games getting missed because of where they stand on this salary cap idea. I think it would be moronic to not have a season or miss a substantial amount of games because of the [health] of where we’re at as a league. I don’t think that baseball has been in a better position than it is right now.

“We’ll see where Manfred and his team decide to land come Dec. 2.”

Watch the latest episode

As the Phillies’ representative in the players’ union, Garrett Stubbs is on the front lines of baseball’s upcoming labor dispute. The backup catcher, who was designated for assignment on Thursday, joined Phillies Extra to discuss why the players won’t go for a salary cap, sitting in on early negotiations, when baseball might be played in 2027, and (spoiler!) his plans to create content during the looming lockout. Watch here. Watch here.

You can also subscribe to the podcast version of Phillies Extra on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

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