The possibility of a Major League Baseball season in 2027 could be dwindling.
MLB proposed a five-year maximum contract length for players signing with new teams via free agency during a Thursday negotiation with the MLB Players Association on the league’s next collective bargaining agreement, the league confirmed via X on Thursday afternoon.
Beginning in 2027, teams would also be able to re-sign their own players to deals of up to six years under the league’s proposed “Cornerstone Player” provision, which MLB likened to the NBA’s “Bird Rights” clause that gives teams an advantage in retaining their own free agents by allowing them to exceed the salary cap and offer larger contracts.
Free agents joining a new team would be allowed to sign a maximum deal of five years, $202 million, while the “Cornerstone Player” clause would top out at six years, $265 million.
The proposal would also eliminate deferred contracts, much like the ones utilized by the Dodgers, including for stars Shohei Ohtani and Kyle Tucker.
Thursday’s meeting also saw the league accept MLBPA’s proposal to grant free agency to players who are 30 years old with five years of MLB service — marking a potential shift from the longstanding post-1976 standard that has generally granted free agency after six years — and eliminate the qualifying offer system, which effectively penalizes teams for signing certain free agents by attaching draft-pick compensation.
MLB also proposed what it called a “historic” increase to the league minimum salary, raising it from $780,000 to $1 million for players with at least two years of service and guaranteeing players with less than two years of service $1 million in total compensation if they accrue a full year of service.
“Every other major U.S. sport has tackled this problem, and every year more small-market teams in those leagues have a chance to win. The salary cap and floor proposal levels the playing field, allowing us greater flexibility to address longstanding player priorities while sharing baseball revenue with the players 50/50,” MLB spokesperson Glen Caplin said.
“Today, in addition to proposing the largest ever increase in the minimum salary, earned by over half of MLB players, we accepted two landmark changes to free agency that have been in place for 50 years. We agreed to both the MLBPA’s proposal to provide earlier access to free agency, and their proposal to eliminate the qualifying offer system, a provision players view as a drag on free agency.”
MLBPA blasted Thursday’s negotiations and proposals as “misleading” and part of an agenda that would lead to “suppressing player salaries and maximizing club profits.”
“These misleading offers are designed to look like ‘improvements’ but are of little or no value, given they are expressly conditioned on agreement to the league’s cap system which eliminates the free market, and ensures gains for one player only come at the expense of another,” the union said in a statement.
The latest round of negotiations comes a week after MLBPA ripped the league over a proposed overhaul of the draft, which would remove high school players from draft eligibility until after their sophomore year of college and cut the draft from 20 rounds to 12 while reducing the bonus pool from $358.7 million to $200 million.
Late last month, MLB formally proposed a hard salary cap that would require every MLB team to maintain a payroll between $171.2 million and $245.3 million. It would force several big market teams, including the Mets, Dodgers and Yankees, to significantly cut their spending.
The league’s push for a salary cap has been met with fierce resistance, and MLBPA interim executive director Bruce Meyer put the onus on MLB to avoid a lockout in 2027.
“As I said in the past, it’s highly, highly likely that they’re going to lock us out again,” Meyer said Thursday, noting that another meeting is expected ahead of the July All-Star break, per The Athletic.
“Ultimately, that’s up to them.”
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