Game 5 of the World Series could very well be the last baseball game for the foreseeable future.
The league’s current collective bargaining agreement with the players expires on Dec. 1, and the players and owners appear as far apart as they ever have been.
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Assuming there is no deal, the owners are expected to lock out the players, as was the case five years ago which led to the season being delayed by one week.
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The New York Yankees warm up during a workout ahead of the American League Wild Card Series against the Boston Red Sox on Sept. 28, 2026, at Yankee Stadium in New York, N.Y. (Getty Images)
Despite the apparently harsh circumstances at the moment, New York Yankees president Randy Levine is actually “confident” things will all work out.
“It’s very, very early… They want to reach an agreement. It’s always this way in every labor negotiation I’ve done. It’s always posturing at this point in time, getting your position out,” Levine said on “The Craig Carton Show.”
“We have until December. I think they’re really going to work hard, and I’m very hopeful they’ll reach an agreement. I’ve seen circumstances where it looked harder than even this, and this one looks hard, but at the end of the day, I’m confident everyone wants to get a deal.”
“The whole playoffs have been great, the whole season has been great. Baseball is regaining popularity, it’s the national pastime, so we gotta work hard to just preserve it,” Levine added.
Levine’s boss, Hal Steinbrenner, said last week he “support[s]” the owners’ proposals — all of which include a cap.
“I’ve said before — let me put it this way, as a member of the labor policy committee — I helped craft, one of many, the proposals that we have given at the bargaining table. And I support those proposals in their entirety. That’s absolutely the case, so that should answer your question,” Steinbrenner told reporters.
The Yankees’ $336 million payroll was the third-largest in baseball during the 2026 season, behind the Los Angeles Dodgers ($422 million) and New York Mets ($338 million).
Randy Levine, president of the New York Yankees, attends the Bloomberg Power Players New York event in New York on Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. (Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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Arguments skew both ways, but a constant has remained in that the highest payrolls continue to go up, while the lowest payrolls remain at a stall. The Marlins’ payroll is actually roughly half of what it used to be in 2017, despite a sale of the team and everyone in the league making more money than ever. Meanwhile, the Dodgers have already committed more money in 2030 than 12 teams have this season.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has said that owners are simply “listening to our fans” regarding a salary cap and said it “defies human experience… to think that the bottom end of that [payroll] gap has the same opportunity to win the top end.” It should be noted, though, that the National League-winning Milwaukee Brewers swept the Dodgers with the 11th-smallest payroll, and they are facing the Tampa Bay Rays, who have the league’s third-smallest payroll. They defeated the Cleveland Guardians, who rank 29th in payroll, in the American League Division Series.
Major League Baseball has never had a salary cap.
“Salary cap is the ultimate excuse not to compete. It’s the ultimate excuse for an owner to say, ‘Gee, I would like to make the team better, but you know I can’t,'” interim MLBPA executive director Bruce Meyer said during the All-Star break. “Salary caps are bad for fans. Salary caps prevent teams from doing the things that they believe are in their interest to make the team better.”
Major League Baseball Commissioner Robert D. Manfred speaks during the 2026 All-Star Legacy renovation event at the Veterans Multi-Service Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2026. (Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
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“Every team in baseball can afford to compete, many are choosing not to,” Meyer added. “To me, that’s the biggest problem right now.”