Blazing Fastball
A Blazing Fastball argument · October 2026
Twenty seasons of year-end actual payroll and wins show a stronger relationship than the Opening Day proxy did: higher spending is associated with winning more. The question is not whether a low-payroll club can win. It is why that club must be nearly perfect while the richest teams can afford to be wrong.
Market size drives local revenue; weak guardrails then let owners choose between reinvestment and restraint.
MLB is not “rigged” in the sense of fixed results. Baseball is too volatile for that. But the league is structured so that the cost of a mistake is different in Los Angeles than in Pittsburgh.
The Dodgers’ reported 25-year, $8.35 billion local-rights deal runs into the late 2030s. Because of a bankruptcy-era court agreement, the club’s revenue-sharing levy is calculated against a rejected $3 billion Fox offer rather than the richer deal; Sportico estimated a $50–55 million annual benefit through 2039.
Sports Media Watch / Sportico ↗Opening Day 2025 payrolls ranged from $323.1 million for the Mets to $67.4 million for the Marlins. Five clubs opened below $100 million. Revenue sharing can support competition, but MLB does not require a recipient to turn the money into major-league payroll.
Associated Press ↗The Dodgers paid a record $103 million competitive-balance tax in 2024, then $169.4 million in 2025. Cash penalties bite hardest where ownership treats the threshold as a budget ceiling; they are a line item for clubs willing to spend through them.
AP via Reuters ↗Bad records preserve premium draft odds while low payrolls cut costs. The 2024 White Sox lost a modern-record 121 games, then reduced payroll by another $60.8 million the next winter.
Associated Press ↗A prospect needs 172 active-roster days for a full service year. Kris Bryant’s 2015 call-up left him at 171 days—one day short—and delayed free agency by a season. The 2022 promotion incentives help only at the margins.
ESPN ↗A deep-pocketed club can absorb a bad contract, pay the tax, replace a failed prospect and bid again next winter. A low-revenue club can build a winner—but a single miss can consume a season’s flexibility. Competitive balance is the distribution of that margin for error.
Every dot is one franchise’s cumulative Year End 40-man payroll and regular-season wins across 2006–2025. This commissioner's-office/AP final series captures the season’s real roster expenditure, including in-season changes.
Select a team to inspect it. The dashed line is the least-squares fit; labels use club abbreviations.
How to read it: Pearson r = 0.69; actual payroll explains 47.3% of the variance in 20-year win totals. The slope is 0.0922 wins per $1M—about $10.8M per marginal win over the full period. The Yankees lead spending at $4,481.5M and remain the most expensive winner at $2.492M per win.
The outliers survive better measurement: the Rays lead at +183 wins above the model, followed by the Guardians (+139), Brewers (+125), Dodgers (+106) and Cardinals (+95). The Rockies (−125), White Sox (−109), Royals (−99), Orioles (−70) and Nationals (−66) trail it. The Mets are merely below average at −63—not a bottom-five return.
Recent extremes clarify what the 20-year plot measures: the top can pay historic penalties without surrendering roster strength.
Los Angeles spent a reported $514.6 million on payroll plus tax—$345.3 million in payroll and $169.4 million in tax—against Miami’s $68.7 million payroll. The Dodgers’ tax bill alone exceeded the payroll of 12 clubs.
AP via Reuters ↗A record pool, roughly half of which went to clubs and half to player retirement funds; MLB does not publicly disclose the club distribution formula.
MLB Trade Rumors ↗The Dodgers and Blue Jays were first and fifth in payroll. Los Angeles repeated as champion, the first repeat winner since the 1998–2000 Yankees.
Sporting News ↗In 2025, every top-five spender except the Mets reached the postseason.
Associated Press ↗A cap alone risks moving money from players to owners. A floor alone risks rewarding mediocrity. Durable reform links money, competition and player access.
The moveRequire recipients to spend shared revenue on major-league payroll, player development or documented baseball operations, with independent audits and escalating penalties.
The tradeoffDefinitions can be gamed, and MLB’s private books make oversight difficult. But this directly targets the “pocket the check” failure without suppressing salaries.
The moveUse a multi-year floor so a rebuilding club can sequence spending, while still forcing every owner to reinvest over the cycle. MLB’s May 2026 proposal set $171.2 million, with a temporary dip to $154.1 million.
The tradeoffA floor can inflate the market for mediocre veterans and, if paired with a hard cap, become the union’s price for limiting aggregate pay.
The moveKeep the soft-cap structure, but steepen repeat-offender rates and attach draft or international-bonus consequences at extreme tiers. Money is not a deterrent to the teams with the most money.
The tradeoffDraft penalties can harm future competitive balance, while lower thresholds may function as a de facto hard cap for mid-market clubs.
The moveExpand pre-arbitration bonuses, reach arbitration earlier and shorten some paths to free agency. This reduces the value of manipulating service time and pays production when it occurs.
The tradeoffEarlier free agency can also favor rich bidders. It improves labor fairness more clearly than competitive balance unless paired with revenue reform.
The moveMake sustained sub-threshold losing reduce draft position or revenue-sharing receipts; retain exceptions for extraordinary injury burdens and leadership changes.
The tradeoffA blunt rule can trap genuinely bad clubs in a loop. “Tanking” must be measured over multiple years and separated from ordinary rebuilding.
Start with audited revenue-sharing reinvestment, a rolling salary floor, and sharper repeat-offender tax penalties. Add earlier player compensation and a multi-year anti-tanking test. That package narrows both owner under-spending and mega-payroll overreach without making a hard cap—the MLBPA’s categorical red line—the only route to reform.
The bargaining reality matters. MLB’s May 2026 owner proposal reportedly combined a $245.3 million ceiling, $171.2 million floor, 50/50 revenue split and pooled local-media revenue. Players oppose a cap, and a work stoppage is possible when the current CBA expires December 1, 2026. Associated Press ↗
The 20-year payroll series comes from Cot’s Year End 40-man tables; reported facts are linked to their source sites, and limitations stay labeled.
Year End 40-man actual payrolls for 2006–2025. The linked Yankees table shows the series structure and figures behind the top-spender total.
View source table ↗Dodgers’ 2025 payroll, tax bill, total outlay and repeat championship.
Read source ↗2024 tax bills, record number of taxpayers and missed-postseason taxpayers.
Read source ↗Dodgers’ local-media deal and the bankruptcy-era revenue-sharing treatment; savings are an estimate.
Read source ↗2025 competitive-balance tax pool, approximate distribution and revenue-sharing context.
Read source ↗Draft-lottery odds, repeat restrictions and the system’s complexity.
Read source ↗Kris Bryant grievance and service-time manipulation precedent.
Read source ↗What remains unknowable from public records: true internal club cash books and exact current per-team revenue-sharing receipts and payments are not public. This analysis therefore uses the closest complete, consistently defined public expenditure series: Cot’s Year End 40-man figures, sourced from the Associated Press/commissioner's-office finals and presented in nominal dollars.