Enjoy this season while you can. Because when December comes, the owners and players are going to fight the same ugly fight they’ve been fighting for 30 years, and America’s pastime is caught in the middle.
I can still remember listening to Gene Elston and Loel Passe on a transistor radio, catching every Astros game I could find on the dial, thinking that was just about as good as life got. Baseball was simple then, and it felt like it belonged to the fans.
We’re a long way from those days. You almost need a second mortgage to take your family to the ballpark now, and who’d have thought even a decade ago that you’d be paying a separate streaming subscription just to watch your own hometown team? The game has changed, and most of those changes have had one thing in common: they cost you more.
And the highest cost of all may be coming this December.
The Clock is Ticking
The current Collective Bargaining Agreement, the contract between MLB owners and the players’ union, expires December 1, 2026. The 2026 season will be played in full; nobody’s disputing that. But the day after the World Series ends, Commissioner Rob Manfred is widely expected to lock the players out, freeze all transactions, and settle in for a fight. He said last year that an offseason lockout was essentially part of the plan, calling it a useful tool for applying pressure. His words, not mine.
If you want to know how this tends to go, the history isn’t reassuring. Baseball has had seven work stoppages since 1972. Seven. The one in 1994 is the one that should keep you up at night: owners wanted a salary cap, players said no, the World Series was canceled, and a lot of fans simply walked away and never came back.
That same argument is the centerpiece of this negotiation.
The same fight that wiped out the 1994 World Series is back on the table. Same issue, same lines drawn, just a lot more zeroes on the contracts.
What They’re Actually Arguing About
MLB is the only major North American sport without a salary cap, and owners want to change that. They point to a spending gap that has genuinely gotten out of hand:
- Dodgers’ 2025 payroll: ~$515 million, more than the five lowest-spending teams combined.
- Marlins’ 2025 payroll: ~$85 million, in the same league, in the same season.
Players call a salary cap institutionalized collusion, and they’ve never agreed to one in 50-plus years of collective bargaining. They canceled a World Series over it, and there’s no sign they’ve softened.
Recently, though, owners got some bad news on the PR front. The San Diego Padres just agreed to sell for $3.9 billion, a new MLB record, and the Padres play in the 30th-largest media market in the country. You may have seen this too, but one anonymous executive said it best: “I’m just glad I don’t have to be the guy to explain to the players association why this sale won’t matter in negotiations.” Franchise values have never been higher. The owners’ claim that the current system is financially unsustainable got a lot harder to make this week.
In case you’re wondering, some estimates had the Astros valued at $3.2 billion… before the Padres’ sale price was announced. That $3.2 just went up!
What This Does to Your Team Right Now
A lot of fans aren’t thinking about this, but they should be. The labor fight doesn’t start in December; it’s already shaping decisions being made today.
Why would a front office commit to a big contract extension this summer when nobody knows what the economic rules look like in 2027? Why would a team take on a long-term deal at the trade deadline if there’s a real chance they’d be restructuring it, or eating it, once a new CBA finally gets done?
Smart front offices are already factoring in the uncertainty, which means the trade deadline could be quieter than usual, extensions for players in their prime years may stall, and free agency this winter may freeze entirely the moment the lockout starts.
The Astros are in last place right now, with a pitching staff running a 6+ ERA, the worst in the league. Yordan Alvarez has 10 home runs already and is single-handedly keeping this season from going sideways. At some point, this front office needs to make moves. The question worth asking is whether the coming labor fight is already making that harder.
Eyes Open the Rest of the Way
Enjoy this season. Root loud. Hope the rotation finds itself and that Yordan stays healthy enough to carry this lineup into October. Baseball in the summer is still one of the great joys.
But go in with your eyes open. Two sides are drawing lines right now, with December as the deadline and the 2027 season as the prize neither one wants to lose, but both are willing to risk. Owners have more money than they’re admitting. Players have a strike fund ready and a union that’s organized. Both sides said they didn’t want a work stoppage in 2021 either.
From where I sit, it looks like both ownership and the players are willing to gamble away the 2027 season altogether to preserve the long-term game the way each wants it to look. That’s a dangerous bet, and we’ll be the ones holding the bill.
So it’s quite possible we won’t play ball at all next summer.
For now, the music plays through the fall. After December 1, nobody’s required to play a thing.
ALL THINGS ASTROS 
13 responses to “Baseball is about to go to war: 2027 is the battlefield”
MLB is great to have around. But in past lockouts, I’ve never had any withdrawal pains. Life goes on.
Jose Altuve likely won’t sniff 3000 hits if much of 2027 is missed.
JIm Crane has always insisted the Astros will never be sellers. But could a looming lockout give him reason to adjust his thinking?
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Yea, Altuve’s pursuit would end and that’s an unfortunate by-product. Baseball is just a filler in my life, really, its takes the space from January to August where I have to live with no college football.
It’s an interesting question. This really looms on Hunter Brown and Yordan Alvarez. Those are years of team control you can’t get back for losing. Now, technically, Brown stops accruing service time during a lockout, but one of the first “gives” in the back and forth on these negotiations from owners over the years has been recognition of missed service time. It matters on contracts more.
Could this make the Astros look at a possible below .500 record in mid-July and dangle both Yordan and Hunter? Can you imagine what a healthy Hunter Brown is worth on a trade market? If Yordan is still leading the planet in every category? If I’m below .500, and I feel like there will be no 2027 season for me to rebound into, I’m pulling that trigger. The only thing that will happen in 2028 is Correa and Altuve will be 2 years older, Yainer won’t be any better at recognizing a strike, Meyers will have priced himself out of being a defense only CFer, Imai will be gone one way or another, no, the prospects you can get for those two, and maybe even Pena on that list, can reset you for years to come.
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Steven, yes, I’d have Pena on that list too.
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Watched the last couple of innings. DeLos Santos gives up 3 in the 9th. Thank goodness for a 6 run lead. Great performance by Arrighetti. King pitches a good 8th and top of order comes through.
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Baseball needs revenue sharing more than a cap. Harsh revenue sharing. Chiefs fans still have hope every year. So do Buccaneers fans. So do the Bills. It’s all over football. You can succeed from anywhere. Now, Bills, and Buccaneers, and Chiefs, they sale out every game, partly from the popularity of the sport, and partly from there being just 8 or 9 home games. But its the even split of TV money that really makes them able to compete.
The NBA is similar. They do a good job, not as good as the NFL, but a good job of revenue sharing. You can win championships in Oklahoma City. It’s just harder to keep it together once you’ve built it in places like that in the NBA, but it’s not impossible.
The only time you see the Royals or the Pirates or the Rays or the Marlins or whatever “upstart” team shows up its when a group of young players peak together. But it’s always fleeting.
I work with a Dodgers fan. Hardcore. Listens or watches every game even day games at work. His only answer to his teams 500M payroll is “well your team can do it too it just won’t.” But they can’t. Kansas City can’t put the average ticket price at $70 and still sale out. Heck, I lived outside of Kansas City for 5 years, they couldn’t put prices free and fill the stadium. They have no TV revenue to speak of. They work on a shoestring budget. Witt’s contract alone promises they will not be able to sign another one of those for a decade. LA has a conglomerate financial group behind it that is willing to work above thresholds to treat the team as in investment in long term valuation growth. That same investment group would never do this in KC or Tampa or even mid-tiers like Seattle or Baltimore or Pittsburgh.
The Dodgers will probably win half the world series over the next 10-15 years. Then they will sell, for a record 10B and make a 6B profit to answer for losing a 100M a year for 10 years. That’s why they are doing this.
No, it’s time for the owners to foot down, to bring baseball back to the rest of the country, and not tell the rest of America, sorry, baseball franchises can’t win unless they are in LA or NY or Chicago (or Houston, yes, we are a big boy).
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The owners have to come with the lockout/salary cap argument to set up the negotiations. But it seems they have enough other concerns and options that might lead to a settlement sooner rather than later.
1, The MLB TV contracts mostly run through the end of 2028 as I understand it. If they lose a significant part of the 2027 season it could definitely hamper the renegotiation of those contracts in 2028 at a time when the baseball fandom may still have a bad taste in its collective mouth due to significant cancellations during 2027. Additionally, a prolonged stoppage would likely put a big dent in the team valuation increases mentioned by Chip , at least in the short to medium term.
2. If the owners are really concerned about competitive balance (color me skeptical) they could put more teeth into the competitive balance tax.
3. A structural problem in baseball is the long term guaranteed contracts mostly divorced from performance measures. It might be palatable to reduce some of that risk to the owners without calling it a salary cap, such as placing a limit on the number of years guaranteed under a contract, or salary amounts in the out years of the contract determined by performance metrics during the term of the contract.
4. I don’t really know what the effect of increased ownership by private equity groups is having, but I suspect that type of money is very supportive of a salary cap, even if it means sharing some revenue with the players. Sharing revenue with the players is the issue that seems to really stick in the craw of the owners: perhaps the increased interest by the private equity groups will moderate the historical intransigence of MLB to consider revenue sharing models.
5. Unrelated to the CBA with the players, but something MLB can do that will be applauded by most fans: use the ABS to get rid of the crappy umpires!
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Hi roadthriller!! Great to see your name on a comment – it has been too long.
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Thanks, Dan. I’ve been gone from Houston almost 10 years now and rarely get to watch them, so Chipaltta is my best source for keeping up with our boys!
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But back to baseball – tough weekend. Our struggling pitching staff got handled by the Yankees. Spencer was the only pitcher that handled business. The bullpen got had the last two games but still managed to get the last out in the 9th yesterday.
They are still outpacing the 2024 Astros which won the division. But I don’t think this pitching staff can get it back together. Brown will continue to blame injuries, and I get it, Hunter Brown is a big loss, but man your choices are getting manhandled. Burrows was your decision. Putting Javier and McCullers in the rotation was your decision. Not bringing back Framber, probably Crane’s decision but you probably didn’t protest. I don’t see a world where this pitching rebounds, at least enough to do what the 2024 team did. Maybe they can. But they need both Hunter and Imai to get back on the mound soon, and McCullers off of it.
Look, I’m a Lance fan. I will never forget 2017. Without him we don’t get there.
Offense is a funny thing. They clearly had the worst OF of supposed contenders coming into the season by far, before the injuries. Now, its just the worst OF. And it doesn’t matter. They still lead the league in runs scored. Until Pena is back I would rather not have Yordan in LF at all. He turned a ball a better LFer would have caught into a double and continued an inning that went south. Once Pena is back, and you need Yordan in LF to get Isaac some AB’s, do it. Until then, just stick a defender out there. But they aren’t asking me.
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You’re all making fantastic comments so far. Chip’s highlighting of the absurd price for the Padres changed a little of my thinking this morning. Yesterday I was watching the Red Sox and Orioles because I’m not paying $150 for the MLB streaming plan on top of my cable plan and all the streaming services my family has already. It was a bargain from 2017 to 2019, but those days are gone. Regarding the team values, however, during the broadcast yesterday they were saying all sorts of fantastic things about Alex Cora and described him as the leader of an unstoppable juggernaut in 2018 that won the World Series. They did not mention anything else that was happening. I’m sure Steven’s friend who is passionate about the Dodgers doesn’t mention that during the 2017 WS Carlos Correa was joking at 2B with one of their hitters about how well LA was stealing signs. Those things have been swept under the rug, but if you go to any sort MLB adjacent site where comments are allowed you find people/trolls/bots immediately making derogatory comments about the Astros when something comes up. Kyle Tucker? He played 40 games in Houston before 2020 but obviously a cheater. How much does this perception impact the value of a club that the league and national fans had never before respected across their franchise history? How much does that impact Crane’s thinking? Sorry to be depressing.
I’m on board with aggressively selling as we near July, but how much do you think Crane will trust Brown to evaluate those players right now? I heard that Brown gave Espada a vote of confidence saying it’s injuries and walks that are the problem…not the manager. Well, what does the owner think of all this?
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For me the vote of confidence is eh. We’ve seen fielding errors from players out of a primary position in extra innings cost us a game. We’ve seen multiple pickoffs. We’ve seen guys getting railed a 2nd or 3rd inning out that probably shouldn’t have been out there. We talk about Cam’s glove but we’ve seen some head scratchers on his decision making – diving at times he probably should have let up and kept them to one base and cutting in front of guys and losing concentration and having them ball come off his glove – its all over the place. And these are fundamental issues that yes, the players mostly own, but in abundance can hint at coaching behind the scenes.
I don’t see Crane doing what the Red Sox did. He certainly is watching the dollars more closely and doesn’t want to pay an interim manager while he is paying Espada to sit home. But I’m guessing the at times bad play will cost Espada his job at some point, and the lack of young talent to keep this team affordable will cost Brown his job soon after, though they both may last the season given the uncertainty of 2027.
I would agree with what seems to be an echo chamber that I also don’t want Brown being the one responsible for the talent that would come back in a Brown, Alvarez or Pena deal, or even Paredes deal. Heck I imagine if Imai can get right he is also a trade deadline candidate, though he may have more value in declining his option and bringing back a draft pick if he were to suddenly start pitching the way his talent suggest. Brown is just proving that scouting departments have more than one person working in them and the Braves were a congolmerate organization. Maybe Arenado is available, if we make that deal, it will turn us around.
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Speaking of Cam, he’s had the misfortune of being on the Astro roster for past year plus now. We’ve been so weak in the outfield, Cam has been victimized. He should have been learning across town last year. That one’s on Dana too. Dana is the also the guy that insisted during ST that Cam could go down rather than starting 2026 with the big club. We pretty much knew that was not going to happen.
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Great post Chip on a depressing subject. Nothing will happen on this until the lockout happens then it will be everyone contemplating their navel until someone blinks.
The players have no motivation to allow a salary cap. Now whether they can survive with no salaries for a season I don’t know. Obviously, they have more money than they did for any other lockout – but a lot of them live paycheck to paycheck no matter how big the paycheck. Will the richer players share with the “minimum” wage guys?
I really don’t know how all the clubs can survive a long lockout. Sure the Dodgers can and other teams can – but for many of them their money is tied up in the value of the club, which will not have value when they are closed down. Will the rich owners share with the less rich ones?
When the 1994 end of season and World Series were wiped out – attendance was bad afterward and only bounced back after they juiced the balls (and players) and lifted the offense.
I don’t enjoy trying to fill in posts during the off-season. I surely will be struggling if we are losing chunks of the season to stubbornness to write about something of interest.
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