Steve Cohen has spent over $800 million this offseason and ballooned the New York Mets payroll to over $380 million, the highest in MLB history. Cohen has shown he wants to win now. His spending has shone a bright spotlight on the cheapest owners in the sport.
Flash forward to the new CBA at the end of 2026 and I’m confident the other MLB owners will have their revenge on New York Mets owner Steve Cohen.
The current CBA will be in effect until December 1, 2026. Unless MLB and the Players Association can unilaterally agree on changes, MLB will levy no ramifications for Cohen beyond the luxury tax. Through his spending this offseason, Cohen has clarified that he does not care about the tax, so all owners like Bob Nutting of the Pittsburgh Pirates can do is pout and continue to put together teams that are being paid barely above league minimum.
But once the CBA expires, what will the owners do to curb the likes of Cohen?
Cohen has exposed the corrupt collusion of the owners, intentionally keeping salaries low to keep profits for themselves. I expect MLB will bring the behind the scenes “understanding” of salary between teams to the front stage as a proper salary cap in the next CBA. The league will use small market teams like the Cincinnati Reds and Pirates as an excuse to bring down the empire that Cohen has built. They might not be as rich as Cohen, but they sure can afford to spend more than they do. I expect the other way they punish Cohen will be through the international market.
Being that it was close to happening in the last CBA, I expect an international draft to be implemented with the salary cap. I expect the draft will have several important quality of life improvements for international prospects, but that will not be the main intent. I believe the draft will try to stop large market teams from taking the lion’s share of prospects. Similar issues led to implementing the domestic MLB draft in the first place in the 1960s.
These changes will be better for the competitive balance of the sport. I don’t think anyone would deny that. Equally important, however, will be ways that MLB could implement to curb teams like the Pirates and the Oakland A’s from spending so little each year. I believe MLB has partially accomplished this by implementing the draft lottery. However, I believe that the primary way MLB will achieve higher team spending is with a salary floor. How much that floor is will be up to the players, as we can assume that MLB will implement it as an appeasement for adding a cap.
Cohen’s spending spree could go down as the breaking point for MLB owners, finally drastically changing the business of baseball. Cohen is encouraging teams to spend on their players, and I think he will ultimately change baseball for the better, come the 2027 season that is.
Information for this article was found via The Athletic, Wikipedia, and CBS Sports