The owners have staked their argument for the salary cap on competitiveness. They have no choice. Back when Bud Selig's blue panel commission was recommending contracting teams that are now worth billions, the owners might have been able to convince the players and the public that the financial health of the game was at stake. But no one will believe that now. I and many others have offered solid rebuttals to the competitive balance argument, but let's grant the owners the following: 1) Big payroll disparities are bad. 2) Teams spending 50% of net revenue on payroll is fair to the players. Also, let's put aside nominal payroll figures and focus on payroll percentage (i.e., how much a team spends relative to the entire league). In 2025, under the current system, payroll percentage ranged from the Dodgers at 6.5% to the Marlins at 1.3%. That's a wide gap, but, those figures don't tell us what teams CAN spend currently...only what they are willing to. To address this disparity, the owners have proposed a cap/floor tied to modified revenue sharing, but what if every team simply spent 50% of net revenue (which would still leave some teams below the $174 million floor)? That shouldn't be any more of a burden than forcing teams to a salary floor. In 2025, only nine teams met this threshold, so if you simply had the 21 other teams spend to the 50% level, you'd reduce the gap to the Dodgers at 5.5% and the White Sox at 1.9%. It's amusing that LA and Chicago, two of the three biggest markets, are at both extremes, but putting that aside, without fundamentally changing the game, you have significantly narrowed the gap. But is it narrow enough? In the charts at the bottom of this post are every single team season since 2003 (advent of the current CBT) plotted by payroll% (red dots are WS winners and yellow are WS losers). The first displays every season. The second narrows the focus between the indicated bands of the adjusted range. The result? By getting underinvesting teams to spend more, you effectively eliminate the extreme outcomes, both good and bad. It's worth noting that if 21 teams collectively spent another $1 billion on payroll, it would likely either divert talent away from the bigger markets or drive up their costs on certain players. Either way, this trickle down effect would likely tighten the band even more. If the smaller market teams were already spending significant sums (i.e., the Pirates weren't one of the most profitable teams), the owners' salary cap idea might be sympathetic. If the financial health of the league was at stake, there'd be merit. If high payroll teams were always winning, there might be justification. But, the truth is, to the extent there is a competitive balance issue created by payroll disparity, much of it could easily be mitigated by smaller market teams investing reasonably in payroll. Or, put more bluntly, the @MLBPA's response to the salary cap should simply be "don't ask us to solve a problem that either doesn't exist or you haven't taken reasonable efforts to solve on your own".