Orioles billionaire owner weighs in on rising MLB salaries

Here's what Rubenstein told Yahoo Finance at the World Economic Forum:

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

It's interesting to hear Rubenstein's perspective on this issue. After all, he's one of the richest owners in MLB. His consortium purchased the Baltimore Orioles in 2024 for $1.725 billion, but Rubenstein's individual net worth is $4.1 billion, according to Forbes. As for his club's payroll, the Orioles have roughly $146.2 million committed to 2025, per Spotrac, which ranks 15th in MLB.

This attitude toward capping player spending is also why Rubenstein caught some flak across baseball for his decision to let former ace Corbin Burnes sign with the Arizona Diamondbacks in free agency when the Orioles could've easily afforded his services thanks to their new owner's deep pockets. Instead, Baltimore opted for cheaper alternatives in right-handers Charlie Morton and Tomoyuki Sugano, the latter of whom joins the Orioles from Japan. 

So why hasn't Baltimore punched at its new weight? Rubenstein, much like Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts, believes that big market teams have an outsized advantage when it comes to player spending.

"I think the big city teams have some advantages. Now, in Los Angeles, they have another advantage. They have Japanese players, [a] number of them that they got like Shohei [Ohtani], and people in Japan really love watching the Dodgers, and they sell a lot of merchandise in Japan for Dodgers players," Rubenstein said, per Yahoo Finance.

The Orioles may be a smaller-market team in comparison to New York or Los Angeles, but the reality is that Rubenstein has little margin to raise this concern since he has the capital to be able to afford the players he truly covets. And while this could also be true of the majority of MLB owners, it's especially the case for a billionaire like Rubenstein.

Let's hope that the dialogue around MLB player salaries continues ahead of what looks to be a contentious CBA discussion in December 2026, or else we could be in for some serious ramifications ahead of the 2027 season.