Watching the Pittsburgh Pirates get swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers this weekend was frustrating for plenty of reasons. The Pirates had opportunities. They lost the opener 5-4 in 10 innings, blew a 3-0 lead in Saturday's 4-3 loss, then were shut down 4-0 by Blake Snell on Sunday. Pittsburgh was competitive for stretches, but by the end of the weekend the difference between the two organizations was impossible to ignore. Los Angeles simply has more stars, more depth, more pitching and more ways to recover when something goes wrong. The Dodgers have now won six straight, while the Pirates fell to 63-69.
That is where Major League Baseball has a problem. This is not about blaming the Dodgers. If the rules allow an organization to spend aggressively, collect superstars and build the deepest roster in baseball, why wouldn't they? Los Angeles is doing exactly what its ownership should be doing. The problem is that the rules allow the financial gap between teams to become enormous. One estimate placed the Dodgers' 2026 Opening Day payroll at more than $415 million, compared with approximately $134.5 million for Pittsburgh. That is more than three dollars spent by Los Angeles for every one spent by the Pirates.
Look at what Pittsburgh had to deal with this weekend. Yoshinobu Yamamoto started Friday. Tarik Skubal, one of baseball's premier pitchers, started Saturday. Blake Snell, a two-time Cy Young Award winner, started Sunday. Then look around the Dodgers lineup and you see Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, Kyle Tucker, Max Muncy and others. When Los Angeles loses somebody to injury, it has the financial strength and organizational depth to keep moving. When a smaller-market club loses an important player or makes one bad free-agent decision, it can change an entire season. That is not a level playing field.
Now, Pirates ownership cannot be allowed to hide behind baseball's economic system either. Pittsburgh has made bad decisions over the years, failed to develop enough hitters, watched too many prospects fail and spent far too many seasons near the bottom of the payroll rankings. A salary cap should never become an excuse for cheap owners to become even cheaper. That is why baseball needs both a salary cap and a salary floor. Force the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets and other huge spenders to operate within a reasonable limit, but also force teams like Pittsburgh to invest a legitimate amount of baseball revenue back into their rosters. Competitive balance has to work in both directions.
The other major professional sports have figured this out. The NFL has teams in markets such as Green Bay competing with franchises from New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The NHL has watched small-market organizations build championship teams. A salary cap doesn't guarantee that every team will be good, nor should it. Smart front offices should still win. Great scouting should matter. Player development should matter. Drafting should matter. Coaching should matter. What should not determine your chances of winning is whether your local television market allows you to spend hundreds of millions more than another franchise.
Major League Baseball itself has now acknowledged the issue. With the current Collective Bargaining Agreement expiring on December 1, MLB has proposed a cap-and-floor system as part of negotiations for the next agreement. The league has pointed directly to the massive payroll disparities that exist between franchises and argues that too many fan bases enter seasons believing they do not have the same opportunity to compete. The players will understandably fight to protect salaries and earning power, and any system must make sure the owners aren't simply pocketing additional money. Revenue sharing, a legitimate payroll floor and mechanisms that keep player salaries growing all have to be part of the discussion.
As a baseball fan, I would hate to lose part of a season, or even an entire season, because owners and players cannot reach an agreement. Nobody wants another work stoppage. Baseball has already experienced what that can do to its fans. But after watching Pittsburgh walk into Dodger Stadium and face a roster constructed with financial resources the Pirates simply cannot match, it becomes harder to pretend everything is fine. If fixing baseball's economic system requires an uncomfortable fight now to make the sport healthier for the next 20 or 30 years, then maybe that fight has to happen. Baseball should be about who builds the best team, not who has the biggest wallet. Give Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Kansas City and every other smaller-market franchise the same legitimate opportunity to build something and keep it together. Major League Baseball needs a salary cap, it needs a salary floor, and it needs a playing field where every fan can believe Opening Day actually means they have a chance.
If not for sports, how would we survive.