After the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Toronto Blue Jays in the 2025 World Series, a debate has reopened across the MLB about team spending. Today, it remains the only major sports league in the US that does not have a salary cap. The NBA, NHL, and NFL all have some sort of system to prevent large market teams from dominating over smaller ones, while the MLB does not impose any hard restrictions on spending.
The current solution for the MLB is a “luxury tax” that discourages teams from spending over a threshold of $241 million by taxing them extra on top of players’ salaries if they exceed this number. This creates an environment where some wealthy owners and teams do not mind going above this number, even if it means paying the tax, while smaller market teams and owners with shallower pockets need to minimize costs and keep below the line.
The Dodgers won the World Series against the Blue Jays with the league’s second-highest payroll of $321 million. Toronto was fifth on the list with a 2025 payroll of $240 million. The fact that these two teams spend some of the most in the league shows that the most competitive teams are almost always the ones who can afford to pay their players the most.
Another part of the issue is that small market owners often do not feel that they can be competitive, so they choose to spend as little as possible to maximize profits. This problem could be solved by another necessary addition to the league: a salary floor. This would give the lowest spending teams a minimum threshold for their payroll, helping raise the quality of play across the league and make the average player salary remain the same, even if some large market teams had to cut down their payroll.
As of 2025, there are five teams with payrolls below $100 million annually. The Miami Marlins, the lowest spending team in the league, spend $67 million each year on their entire roster, which is less than the $70 million that just Shohei Ohtani’s 10-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers is worth on a yearly basis.
The salary floor would force teams like the Marlins, who have the lowest payroll in all of the MLB, to pay more than $70 million to their team. On the other hand, enforcing a salary cap, which is the exact opposite of a salary floor, would prevent teams like the Mets, Yankees, and Dodgers from spending $200 million+ on their rosters to rig their chances at winning a championship. A revenue-based system like we see in the three other major sports leagues would promote fairness and parity and give small-market teams a better chance at winning the World Series.