Shohei Ohtani Darryl Webb/Associated Press
A new baseball season is underway, and the sport is enjoying a sort of renaissance.
Baseball is making more money than it ever has. The addition of a pitch clock has made games quicker and created more action on the field. Attendance and ratings are on the rise.
But the sport also faces a possible long-term problem: the widening gap between its haves and have-nots.
Baseball’s future, both good and bad, is on display in California.
It’s a glorious moment for the Los Angeles Dodgers, who won the World Series last year and have baseball’s biggest star, Shohei Ohtani. After winning the title, the Dodgers added even more talent to their roster — the team will spend well over $300 million this year on player salaries.
A few hundred miles up Interstate 5, in Sacramento, that kind of money feels almost unfathomable. There the Athletics, who left Oakland after 57 years, are playing their home games at a minor-league ballpark as they prepare to move to Las Vegas in three years. The A’s entire payroll is only slightly more than what Ohtani alone is owed each year.
Money doesn’t win games. It’s baseball, after all. And the A’s are scrappy. Even if they aren’t as well compensated, they can beat anyone on any given day. But the imbalance of resources, over time, tends to offer richer teams an advantage.
For today’s newsletter, The Times spoke with the commissioner of Major League Baseball, Rob Manfred, about the state of the game.
Payroll disparity
Unlike other major American sports, baseball does not have a salary cap, which is used to narrow the gap between the richest and poorest teams. Some M.L.B. owners are pushing the league to adopt a salary cap as part of their next contract with the players’ union.
Manfred told us in an interview at his office in New York that he believes the financial imbalance is an existential problem for the sport. “We sell entertainment that’s based on competition,” he said. “If people don’t believe there’s competition, you’ve got a product problem.”
The problem: Players vehemently oppose a salary cap and many insist that they would never agree to play under one. Their union argues that players deserve to be compensated, without restriction, for the work they do.
Last time the owners made a real push for a cap, in 1994, it resulted in a 232-day strike, a canceled World Series and years of fan frustration. The current contract is set to expire after next season. If the owners make another push for a cap, another painful work stoppage could follow.
Baseball’s future
In his interview with The Times, Manfred also spoke about a range of other topics concerning the present and future of the sport, including:
Torpedo bats: The new, oddly shaped bats that caused a frenzy when the Yankees used them to hit several home runs are legal and “absolutely good for baseball,” Manfred said.
Robot umpires: “The experiment was really successful,” Manfred said about the computerized challenge system for balls and strikes that the league tested during spring training. He hopes to use it in the regular season as soon as next year.
Pitching injuries: Manfred warned that pitching “is getting taught in a way that emphasizes velocity and spin rate,” which puts additional strain on pitchers’ elbows. “By the time we get guys,” he said, “they’re already damaged goods.”
What would make the game better: Recent rule changes have led to more action on the field, which Manfred thinks is key to the sport’s future. “Action, movement, the ability to show how athletic you are,” he said. “Any changes that allow the showcasing of the athleticism of your players is huge.”
Read the full interview with Manfred here.