Why MLB is The Last League That Needs a Salary Cap
· Yahoo Sports
Former New York Mets general manager Zack Scott penned a short but compelling treatise on his X account this week, arguing that capping player payroll — the hill MLB owners and the Players Association are apparently willing to die on in labor negotiations — can only affect one-third of a team’s success.
Visit h-doctor.club for more information.
The data: every MLB team's tax payroll vs winning percentage, 5 seasons (2022-26). The correlation lands at 0.57, R-squared 0.32.
— Zack Scott (@ZackScottSports) May 28, 2026
Plain English: about a third of winning correlates with spend. The other two thirds doesn't.
Scott identified four factors that combine to affect wins and losses more than player payroll: player acquisition (scouting, drafting, trading, signing), player development (“turning B prospects into major leaguers”), governance (“owner alignment, who’s in the room, how much runway” baseball operations personnel have) and luck.
More news: A Former General Manager Just Destroyed MLB’s Pro-Salary Cap Argument
Of these, luck would seem to be the most difficult to define. It’s squishier, more nebulous, and less concrete than the other factors. But there’s a simple bit of math that backs up Scott’s assertion about the role of luck in baseball — and why MLB is less in need of a salary cap than any of the other major professional sports in North America.
Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred (R) talks with General manager James Click (L) of the Houston Astros prior to Game One of the World Series between the Atlanta Braves and the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park on October 26, 2021 in Houston, Texas. The collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the players union is set to expire at 11:59 p.m. EST Wednesday, which would initiate the sport’s first lockout since 1995.The average MLB team used 29 pitchers and 49 position players last season. Baseball’s regular season is the longest in professional sports at 162 games. Each player and each game represents a chance for good or bad fortune to strike — 12,636 in all (78 players per team times 162 games).
Using the same simple math, we can calculate the number of player-games in each sport. The second-most luck-dependent league is not particularly close:
It’s a crude formula, one that ignores some facets of luck. A season-ending injury to the first-string quarterback on an NFL team, for example, is far more damaging than a season-ending injury to a baseball team’s backup catcher.
Scheduling luck matters more in the NFL, where the regular season consists of 17 games, and two teams in the same division can play dramatically weaker or stronger schedules. In MLB, every team plays each other multiple times in each season.
In the NBA, the potential for one injury to damage a team’s chances is higher than in any other sport. That’s a function of the league’s relatively small (11-12) active roster size. It also helps explain why “load management” is a more popular tactic in the NBA than in other leagues.
It’s fair to quibble with the specifics, but the directionality of these numbers is clear. The MLB season invites far more luck than the NHL, NBA and especially NFL. So what does this have to do with a salary cap?
Commissioner Rob Manfred claims a salary cap will affect more competitive balance in a league that did not crown the same champion in consecutive years this century until last November. Capping the amount each team can spend on player salaries, the thinking goes, will allow more teams to spend more money on the best players.
Scott’s math rebukes this theory, suggesting player payroll accounts for only one-third of a team’s regular season success. It’s hard to specifically parse where the other two-thirds of a team’s success comes from. The simple math of rosters and schedule length suggests luck plays an outsized role in MLB compared to the other major professional sports.
Suffice it to say that an incomparably long season and a fluid 26-man active roster can mitigate the limits of even the most miserly player payroll. Three of the six division leaders through May 30 had the lowest payroll of any team in their division.
It’s something to keep in mind when attempting to gauge how a salary cap would affect MLB, if Manfred’s first labor proposal goes through.
For more MLB news, visit Newsweek Sports.
Related Articles
- White Sox Announce Unfortunate Munetaka Murakami Injury News
- Munetaka Murakami Injury Exit Could be Bad News for White Sox
- Former Phillies, D-Backs, Mariners Infielder Retires Immediately at 30