Baltimore Orioles New Owner Wants Salary Cap in Major League Baseball

It's a new era for the Baltimore Orioles.

Not only do they have the best nucleus of young players in the sport that should have them in contention for the foreseeable future, but their new ownership group, led by local billionaire David Rubenstein, gives this savvy front office a chance to land marquee free agents for the first time in years.

While the Orioles weren't able to re-sign Corbin Burnes this offseason, it wasn't for a lack of trying since they extended him a competitive offer before he ultimately decided he wanted to stay home in the state of Arizona.

Previously, the notion of retaining the ace on the open market wouldn't have even been a thought, but even after Baltimore handed out some high-priced commitments to Tyler O'Neill and Gary Sanchez, they were still looking to extend Burnes a megadeal.

Finances have long been a topic in Major League Baseball, with many of the detractors opining that it's a game of the haves and the have nots, something that doesn't allow the small market teams to compete.

That was amplified further this winter when the Los Angles Dodgers, coming off their World Series title after signing Shohei Ohtani to a then-record-setting deal, continued to add to their roster by bringing in star player after star player.

Many of the contracts have deferred money, another point of contention for many.

Even though the defenders of said approach rightly state that every team can operate in that fashion, the reality also exists that the multimillion dollar television contract the Dodgers have allows them to stay flush with cash no matter what the circumstances are, something other franchises around the league can't say for themselves.

So, how might everything be fixed to even the playing field?

A salary cap has started to be thrown around as something the league should look into.

While that certainly will draw heated debate from both sides of the aisle, count Rubenstein in as one of the owners who would be in favor of capping spending.

"I wish it would be the case that we would have a salary cap in baseball the way other sports do, and maybe eventually we will, but we don't have that now," he said according to Brian Sozzi of Yahoo Finance.

Despite his net worth giving the Orioles a better chance of competing in the free agency market, the fact still remains they are still considered a small-market team.

And when competing against the likes of the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays on an annual basis, that presents major challenges.

Will something get done on the salary cap front?

Rubenstein thinks it will eventually.

"I suspect we'll probably have something closer to what the NFL and the NBA have, but there's no guarantee of that," he added.

When looking at those two sports, they operate in a different manner.

The NFL has a "hard" salary cap, meaning no team can have a payroll that is over a set number. Meanwhile, the NBA has a "soft" salary cap, meaning there are ways teams can exceed that set number using "exceptions" that get extremely complicated.

Which direction Major League Baseball might choose to take, if any, will be seen.