Welcome to the first installment of Bottom of the Ninth! With Spring Training in full force and opening day now less than a month away, baseball season is officially back, and fans are preparing for the six long months it takes to determine if 2026 will be their favorite team’s year. However, one important question looms over the upcoming season: What will baseball look like after it concludes?
With the collective bargaining agreement for the Major League Baseball Players Association set to expire on Dec. 1, the union will have to negotiate new terms that satisfy both owners and Commissioner Rob Manfred. This daunting and lengthy task will likely lead the league toward a lockout in 2027, making the future of the sport beyond this season uncertain. Since this reality is widely known around the league, it will likely have a noticeable impact on the 2026 season, the last that will be played under the current agreement.
Thus, I will be using this column to analyze the top stories around MLB as they arise throughout the season and discuss what they might mean for the future of baseball. No matter what your level of baseball knowledge may be, I invite you to follow along and hope you learn something interesting along the way. To begin, let’s explain how the league got in this precarious position in the first place.
MLB is certainly no stranger to lockouts or labor disputes. The most infamous example is the 1994–95 players’ strike, which forced the cancellation of the World Series for the first time since 1904. More recently, the league experienced a lockout during the 2021–22 offseason after the previous collective bargaining agreement expired. That dispute lasted 99 days and delayed the start of the 2022 season before the two sides finally struck a deal in March. While the league did manage to play a full schedule that year, the lengthy delay revealed how wide the gap has become between ownership and the players’ union.
Those same underlying tensions remain today, and they help explain why next year’s round of negotiations could take even longer. Overall, the current dispute centers on money and how it should be most fairly distributed. Players have grown increasingly frustrated with what they view as low salaries, particularly for younger players who make up the majority of MLB rosters but earn near the league minimum during their first several seasons. The current bargaining agreement introduced measures like a pre-arbitration player bonus pool and higher minimum salaries, but many players believe these steps did not go far enough.
Meanwhile, owners have their own concerns about the sport’s economic structure. Small-market teams argue that rising payroll expectations make it difficult for them to compete with wealthier franchises. Many are pushing for a salary cap system similar to what is used in the NFL and NBA, which the players association has historically rejected outright.
Another likely flashpoint is the competitive balance tax, often referred to as the luxury tax. This tax penalizes teams that exceed certain payroll thresholds by requiring them to pay an additional tax, which players argue discourages teams from signing free agents and suppresses the overall market for veteran talent. However, many owners and fans of lower-spending teams view the tax as a necessary mechanism to prevent runaway spending by the richest clubs.
The upcoming season will be about more than just wins and losses, as the direction of the sport itself may soon be on the negotiating table. Preseason projections indicate that the gap between large- and small-market teams will only continue to grow, but I will be keeping an eye on this narrative as the season unfolds. Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for future editions, which will be published biweekly on Tuesdays.
