Salary caps

[New York Mets GM]

As I'm doing my team planning and realizing in less than 5% away from hitting the salary cap this year and I know a few of my guys are getting raises, I was wondering if we could decide what the salary cap is going to be next season. I have to imagine it will become inflated as players make more and more money every year. I think for teams like mine, which can knock on the ceiling of the cap, knowing what we have to work with next season would be very helpful in planning.

[Arizona Diamondbacks]

I'm not really sure. We hadn't put any thought into it so I had always figured it would be kept at the same $150 million it's at right now. I real quick scanned the team pages to see the salary situations of all the teams and it looked roughly like this:

Braves - $131 M
Diamondbacks - $68 M
Red Sox - $59 M
Rockies - $102 M
Rays - $100 M
Rangers - $111 M
Mets - $146 M
Pirates - $127 M
Angels - $86 M
Cubs - $111 M
Orioles - $72 M
Yankees $115 M

I didn't double check anyones salaries, so I'm assuming all of those are at least close to accurate. When averaged out, the league salary is a little over $102 million per team. I'm not sure if that definitively decides anything, but the way I would tend to look at it would mean that since on average teams are using about 2/3 of their cap space, it should be safe to leave the cap as is.

This could be open for discussion of course, and we would probably be well served to set some type of threshold for the future. Meaning when the average league salary exceeds X amount of dollars it's time to knock the cap up or notch or two. This is all preliminary thinking, so ideas are welcome.

[New York Yankees]

It was always my understanding that they would remain at 150Mil as well...I think the main point of having a salary cap is that so teams will have to decide who they drop and who they pick up to stay within the cap.

I would say that if you are that close to the cap, it may be time to look at reworking your roster.

[New York Mets GM]

Real salary caps change annually, for example in 2007 the NFL salary cap was $109 and in 2008 it was $116.2. This reflects the fact that players make more and more every year. This increase is less than 10% so not like a huge increase (I'm not asking for $200 million next year). But either way I think we should decide what the cap will be next year or if it will remain at $150 million.

[Chicago Cubs GM]

I'd vote for keeping it at $150million. Personally, I think that's fine for many years. When you start getting too high, it takes the challenge out of a league like this. If we had started lower, then I could see a slight increase every couple years or so. But, $150m is quite a lot to work with and wouldn't need to be increased for a while. Just my two cents though.

[New York Yankees]

We can certainly vote on it.

I would vote with Chicago for keeping it at the $150MIL at least for the first few years. I remember us having a discussion last season that the 150 was way too much, now we want to extend it.

[Arizona Diamondbacks]

Nine out of twelve teams still have greater than $30 million in cap space (which means you could swap out their cheapest player for A-Rod and they'd still be okay), so I don't believe we're at the point yet where an increase is necessary.

Mets, you are right about the football cap, however I believe baseball has one key thing football lacks; that is a constant source of cheap labor. In football, many rookies recieve huge contracts that inflate team salaries for years to come. In baseball, teams own the rights to those young players for several years at about the league minimum before they finally are up for arbitration and a couple of years later free agency. I believe that should make things relatively easy to stay under the cap for the near future. A sacrifice or two may have to be made, but it's the same sacrifice Angels had to make earlier this offseason.

[New York Mets GM]

I'm clearly not going to win this one so forget it.