MLB's salary floor proposal isn't the game-changer Mariners fans want it to be

Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association have begun trading collective bargaining proposals, and the latest got the attention of Seattle Mariners fans for reasons that, we're sorry to say, don't hold up under scrutiny.

As reported by ESPN's Jesse Rogers, the proposal that MLB made to the union on Thursday would set a cap and floor for payroll starting in 2027:

• Floor: $171.2 million
• Cap: $245.3 million

The reaction was as expected, with people rushing to display which teams would be above the cap and below the floor based on 2026 spending. That's how we got posts like this one, showing the Mariners roughly $9 million below the floor, thus implying that owner John Stanton would have to spend more on player salaries if the floor was in effect:

But this is where the scrutiny comes to rain on whatever parade Mariners fans may want to throw for the possibility of a payroll floor. For one thing, an extra $9 million doesn't buy much — that's basically the market value for a single win above replacement — even the floor did apply. For another, the fine print seems to nix the idea entirely.

Because those cap and floor figures include roughly $18 million worth of player benefits, the real floor for player salaries would be closer to $150 million. The Mariners' 2026 payroll is already roughly in the $160 million range.

There is also the possibility that the figures Rogers cited would be based not on cash payrolls but on luxury tax payrolls, which are calculated according to players' average salaries rather than their annual salaries. Even then, the Mariners would be in compliance. Their luxury tax payroll is a little over $198 million, comfortably between the proposed floor and cap.

Mariners fans need to keep perspective as MLB and the MLBPA wage their labor war

For what it's worth, the MLBPA's proposal on Wednesday also technically included a payroll floor of $150 million. So when it comes to policing the bottom-feeders in MLB's spending ecosystem, the league and the union appear to be on the same page.

However, there's still a long way to go in these negotiations. As bad as the league wants a salary cap, the union figures to be at least as firm about not agreeing to one. These initial proposals are merely the first steps in a dance between a rock and a hard place, and it's still very possible that the finale of it all is a work stoppage.

While Mariners fans' attention is rightfully less on a prospective cap than it is on a prospective floor, there should be widespread skepticism as to whether payroll restraints of any kind will change much.

Zack Scott, formerly the acting GM of the New York Mets, has a fascinating thread on X in which he cites research that spending only explains one-third of why teams win. The other two-thirds cover such things as player acquisition and development. If rich teams are restricted from spending on players, they would presumably see these other areas as new battlefields to conquer.

That, in turn, could actually be bad for the Mariners.

As frustrating as it is that payroll has remained so rigid under Stanton, the team has a wide-open contention window and real World Series aspirations precisely because Jerry Dipoto's front office has turned the organization into a player development machine. The last thing he needs is the league's heavyweights throwing their weight around in his domain.

None of the above should be mistaken as a permission structure for Stanton not to spend more on the Mariners. By all means, he should do so. It's just important to keep things in perspective. If there is a magic bullet to fix what woes baseball does have, it sure as heck wasn't fired this week.

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