Anyone missing how healthy the money intake has been for Major League Baseball needs only look at the latest collective-bargaining agreement between players and owners.
Word broke late last week of a new five-year CBA as a deadline fast approached. The luxury-tax threshold _ officially called the Competitive Balance Tax _ and tougher rules surrounding it quickly emerged as a central theme.
Despite those enhanced rules, what's glaringly evident is that MLB no longer sees the need to curb overspending via a hard salary cap. That talking point had lingered since the New York Yankees began annihilating everybody with free-agent spending that led to four World Series titles and two other finals appearances from 1996 to 2003.
But since the CBA in 2002, baseball had experimented with a softer luxury tax in which, unlike a hard cap, teams exceeding set payroll limits were handed wrist-slap penalties.
The Los Angeles Dodgers have recently blasted through the current $189 million soft limit like drunken construction workers with a new jackhammer to play with _ spending $291 million in 2015. But with no resulting World Series titles yet, the rest of MLB doesn't seem as alarmed as it was with the Yankees of yesteryear.
Indeed, rather than lowering the tax threshold or implementing a hard cap, this CBA raises the spending bar. The luxury tax next year climbs to $195 million and steadily rises to $210 million by 2021. Rather than forcing big spenders to scale back toward a $150 million payroll, MLB seems to be encouraging more clubs to approach $200 million.
"I think that really speaks to ... that they see the league is in good health," says Forbes sports-business reporter Maury Brown. "If it's not, you're not going to add that thing in."
Brown hails from Portland, where he for years ran a website devoted to baseball business issues and even worked with a group looking to bring MLB to that city. He has followed the Mariners up close and has a particular passion for baseball business and the intricacies of its labor deals.
In this CBA, he sees owners and players unwilling to rock their financially flush boat. After all, MLB is an estimated $10 billion industry _ up from $1 billion in 1995 _ with money incoming both from lucrative cable-television deals and a thriving MLB Advanced Media digital business.
With the cable-TV model now vulnerable to "cord-cutting" younger generations, the strong digital side leaves MLB better positioned than other leagues overly reliant on broadcast revenues.
That said, Brown does feel the luxury-tax threshold has acted as a "de facto cap" until now for teams not named the Dodgers. And this CBA will carry harsher penalties for teams repeatedly blowing beyond limits.
Previously, first offenders paid a 17 percent tax on all spending beyond the set limit, 30 percent for a second offense, 40 percent for a third and 50 percent thereafter. With this CBA, there reportedly are penalties of 20, 30 and 50 percent for the first three offenses, with another 12 percent added if spending goes $20 million beyond limits.
Penalties will hit 62.5 percent for teams exceeding the threshold by $40 million, and up to 95 percent if they do it repeatedly.
"When you get into numbers that high, that's about as hard of a soft cap as you can get," Brown says.
In other words, MLB is OK with teams hovering around $200 million _ just not approaching $300 million like the Dodgers.
Where does this leave the Mariners, who have never exceeded a $150 million payroll? Increasingly middle-of-the-road if they stay put.
The Yankees, Boston Red Sox and Detroit Tigers have joined the Dodgers in exceeding or approaching $200 million payrolls.
Other teams with escalating long-term player contracts will also approach $200 million if wanting to improve. Especially as the new CBA eliminates teams giving up a first-round draft pick when signing free agents who turned down qualifying offers. That should encourage more spending.
The Mariners next season owe $55 million to Felix Hernandez, Robinson Cano and Nelson Cruz alone, approaching 40 percent of a theoretical $150 million payroll. Kyle Seager jumps from $11 million next season to $19 million in 2018.
So, maintaining that $150 million payroll range becomes tricky if the Mariners hope to win something before the talent window closes on their pricey veterans.
The Mariners this decade haven't developed young stars at the rate of recent contenders such as the Chicago Cubs, Texas, Houston and Kansas City. And when you don't develop cheap players, you'll usually pay far more to import talent from elsewhere.
"I think you're going to see a lot of clubs get very near to $200 million," Brown says. "There's so much money flowing in right now and it's centralized. You've got that whole MLB Advanced Media thing which just gives them this extra cost certainty in the background. If they take on (payroll) risk and it blows up in their face, they've got this other stuff in the background."
Brown won't predict the Mariners approaching $200 million. But he feels it's "go time" for the team.
"It would seem to me that with the economics around the club, around the league and the position the club is in," Brown says, "it leads me to believe they're going to push very hard to get into the playoffs this year."
We'll see.
One thing's for sure, the rest of baseball hasn't slowed down. And this new CBA, despite reining in the Dodgers, will likely prompt other teams to reach for the accelerator before the brake.
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