Powerful MLB owner pushes salary floor, igniting CBA talks

With nearly two full seasons left on the current collective bargaining agreement, Major League Baseball is already bracing for a labor war. 

That negotiations are making headlines in February — before spring training is in full swing — says plenty about the tensions simmering beneath the surface.

Some of it is circumstantial. Once the regular season begins, attention will shift to actual baseball rather than the looming labor fight. But Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner just said the quiet part out loud, making it clear that owners are pushing for a hard salary cap. 

The twist? He’d only support it with a caveat: a mandated salary floor.

While the baseball world fixated on the Yankees' latest tweak to their facial hair policy, Steinbrenner was making actual headlines. One of the game’s most powerful owners openly backed a salary floor — an admission that could reshape labor negotiations far more than any sideburn rule ever will.

"I have been on the record already saying that I would consider supporting a cap, depending on what the cap is and contingent on the fact that there’s also a floor so that clubs that I feel aren’t spending enough money on payroll to improve their team would have to spend more," Steinbrenner told NJ.com's Randy Miller.

The Yankees have been among the top three in payroll in 16 of the 17 seasons since Steinbrenner became the controlling owner in 2008. Last season, they were one of four teams hit with the stiffest Competitive Balance Tax penalties, paying $62.5M while also seeing their first-round draft pick drop 10 slots due to exceeding the highest tax threshold.

"The concern to me is — I’ve said this till I’m blue in the face, and I had to change my numbers because times have changed from 10 years ago — but we have great people here," Steinbrenner said, via Gary Phillips of the New York Daily News. "We have a good player development system, good young players that have come up. Should I really need a $300M-plus payroll to win a championship? Does having a huge payroll really increase my chances that much of winning a championship? I’m not sure there’s a strong correlation there. Having said that, we’re the New York Yankees. We know what our fans expect. We’re always going to be among the highest in payroll. That’s not going to change, and certainly didn’t change this year. We’re right there."

This is the paradox of Steinbrenner’s comments. He’s arguing that massive payrolls don’t necessarily equate to championships — and recent history backs him up. In the wild-card era (since 1995), 21 of 30 World Series winners ranked in the top 10 in Opening Day payroll, but since 2009, only three teams in the top three have won it all: the 2018 Red Sox and the 2020 and 2024 Dodgers.