The Los Angeles Dodgers’ World Series 2025 win will likely lead to a Major League Baseball (MLB) lockout next year due to disputes over the MLB’s lack of a salary cap or salary floor, potentially even forcing the season to be shortened or completely canceled. 

A salary cap is when the Major League Baseball (MLB) sets a cap on the amount of money the team can spend on players each season. A salary floor is where the MLB sets a minimum amount of money a team can spend in a season.

On November 1, the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 in an 11th-inning comeback win in game seven of the series, which was a winner-takes-all game. The Dodgers also won the World Series the year prior against another big-market team in the New York Yankees.

The 2025 Dodgers won the World Series with the second-highest payroll in baseball, tallying a total of $321,287,291, according to USA TODAY. A payroll is the total amount of money a team pays all its players that year.

The Dodgers beat the Blue Jays in the World Series, who had the fifth-highest payroll in baseball, which was still nearly 100 million dollars less than the Dodgers. 

Essentially, the Dodgers bought their way to a World Series by just throwing a ton of money at whatever players they wanted and signing them. Other owners, most notably the Las Vegas Athletics and Miami Marlins, are known to purposely not spend a lot of money on players so they can turn a higher profit, according to Forbes and The Athletic. This leads to an imbalance of teams, as teams like the Dodgers, Blue Jays, Phillies, and Mets, who have a lot of money and owners willing to spend that money, can often sign the star and superstar players.

A salary floor, in particular, will prevent owners from spending too little on their team, forcing these owners to spend money they might not have spent before. 

In the winter of 2023, the Dodgers spent over a billion dollars on just four players by signing  Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Teoscar Hernández, as well as trading for Tyler Glasnow and signing him to an extension. All four of these players played major roles in their World Series victories in 2024 and 2025, with Yamamoto taking the World Series MVP in the 2025 World Series. 

While the Dodgers spent all this money on four players, the Marlins spent just $25 million on free agents (players whose contract expires with the current team and are eligible to sign with any team that offers them a contract) in the same offseason, according to Fish On First. 

This spending differential has led to disagreement over whether there should be a salary cap, a salary floor, both, or none. 

In 2027, the CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) will expire. According to the MLBPA, the CBA is an agreement between the baseball clubs and the MLBPA (Major League Baseball Players Association), which “The intent and purpose of the Clubs and the Association (hereinafter “the Parties”) in entering into this Agreement is to set forth their agreement on certain terms and conditions of employment of all Major League Baseball Players for the duration of this Agreement.”

If the MLBPA and the Clubs do not come to an agreement by the start of the 2027 baseball season (there is no set date for opening day yet), then baseball will not be played until they come to an agreement according to CNN. This is also known as a lockout, with the most recent one happening in 2022, where the lockout lasted 99 days and teams missed their first two series of games for the start of the season.

Given this, there should be a salary floor and a salary cap. A salary floor encourages spending and helps even out the playing field for owners who are less likely to spend money. 

A salary cap limits the bigger market teams from throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at players. It also adds more of a financial strategy into the front office, in what is already such a strategic game on the field. It also eliminates repetitive winners and makes room for teams to win who usually don’t have the same opportunities to form a championship-winning team.

The MLB is the only league within the big four (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL) that doesn’t have a salary cap or floor. The salary floor and cap work quite well in the NBA, making the teams seem to be more balanced and the draft more important, as teams can’t just sign a bunch of people to fill in their holes. In the NBA, there have been 7 different NBA Finals winners since the 2018-2019 season, according to NBA.com. 

Something similar could happen in the MLB if there is a salary cap and floor. We could see fewer dynasties (a team that has much success, wins multiple championships over a certain, not too short, not too long period of time), and more small-market teams win. 

The MLB has never had a salary cap or floor, and I believe it is time to make that change. This could elevate the MLB experience and make watching baseball more exciting by spreading the talent all across the league and seeing superstar players on teams that usually don’t have them.

In turn, the MLB draft will be even more thrilling because of the diversity of players and potential underdogs. The MLB draft was the third most-watched draft out of the four major sports leagues, just in front of the NHL. Adding a salary cap and salary floor will make the draft more impactful as teams will start to rely on the draft to find more talent rather than signing a bunch of guys in free agency, and we could see more players start in AA,  AAA, and possibly the MLB.