David Lennon: MLB, players union are rolling the dice on baseball's future at the GM meetings in Las Vegas
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred speaks with the media prior to Game 1 of the 2026 World Series in Milwaukee. Credit: Getty Images/John Fisher
LAS VEGAS — This is the second consecutive year MLB has used a casino hotel on the Strip to stage the annual GM meetings, but it’s never felt more appropriate, as the entire industry is about to roll the dice on the sport’s future.
When it comes down to the nasty labor fight between the owners and players, ultimately someone is going to lose. What’s going on now, as team officials and agents congregate this week at the Aria Resort and Casino here in Vegas, is figuring out how to hedge those bets while faced with baseball’s great unknown.
That’s not a simple calculation, and no one seems to know just yet the true impact this impending lockout is going to have on the market. We’re now looking at a three-week offseason for transactions, as all business on the major-league end will screech to a halt with the CBA’s expiration on Dec. 1 at 11:59 p.m., and there’s no guarantee this November is going to provide the same signing frenzy everyone experienced the last time in 2021.
Also, it’s difficult to determine who has the leverage in these free-agent negotiations. In this game of multi-million-dollar musical chairs, the majority of players want to secure their seat before the sport goes dark indefinitely. No one wants to still be looking for a job in April or June or whenever the lockout gets lifted. The flip side, however, is that owners and GMs really have no idea how the next CBA — and potentially a salary cap — is going to jibe with these upcoming deals.
Take Tarik Skubal, for instance. His agent Scott Boras — who plans to hold his own annual media session Wednesday — is trying to get a record-setting contract for the back-to-back Cy Young winner. That means not only going beyond Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s $325 million deal signed in 2023, but also beating the AAV mark of $43.3 million, shared by Max Scherzer — another Boras client — and recent retiree Justin Verlander.
Fortunately for Skubal, his primary suitor happens to be Mets’ owner Steve Cohen, an owner more focused on securing his team’s biggest need than worrying about the penalties for doing so. Cohen didn’t blink at Boras’ demands before signing Juan Soto to his 15-year, $765 million contract two years ago, and you get the sense these Skubal negotiations could play out in similar fashion — only without the Yankees involved on this occasion.
But Cohen is not like most owners. While he’ll presumably want Skubal on board before the Dec. 2 shutdown, the next tiers of free agents aren’t anywhere near the must-have pedestal that the lefty ace occupies, so it will be interesting to see how many other teams choose to check boxes on their own lists over these next three weeks. After Skubal, the price tags drop to the $100-million range or significantly lower, with Freddy Peralta, Michael King and Trevor Rogers below him on the starting-pitcher rungs. As far as position players go, it’s Randy Arozarena, Seiya Suzuki and recently posted Japanese star Teruaki Sato at the top.
“Any signings that are done before a new deal, my guess is they’d be partly motivated by trying to get them grandfathered in, so they don’t count against a new cap or something like that,” one industry source said. “If you signed them in June or so after a work stoppage, you’re at risk for a change of circumstances that you really can’t predict.”
As it stands now, any new restrictions — and particularly some semblance of a cap — would have to be gradually phased in as top spenders like the Dodgers, Mets and Yankees can’t suddenly slash $100 million or more from their payrolls overnight. Even MLB’s most recent pitch, which raised the earlier proposed salary cap from $245.3 million to $258.2 million and the floor from $171.2 million to $180.2 million, would not be scheduled to take effect until the 2028 season.
Still, it’s understandable that many teams will proceed with caution, as the owners are the ones pushing for this change. If Cohen decides to go all-out for Skubal, where does that leave the Mets as far as spending to improve other areas of the team, such as the bullpen and first base, before the Dec. 1 deadline? As for the Yankees, you can envision Hal Steinbrenner green-lighting a new market-rate deal for closer David Bednar, but then putting on the brakes until after the next CBA is finalized.
But this is speculation at this point. Typically, the most coveted free agents tend to beat the salary projections, and the money eventually gets spent by the usual teams, one way or the other. If we go back to the pre-lockout period of 2021, teams forked over $2 billion on new contracts during that abbreviated frame, including a single-day record of $1.4 billion on Dec. 1. While this free-agent class doesn’t measure up to that one in terms of top-level talent, a Skubal deal alone would be historic, and the teams that miss out could pivot quickly to gobble up the next level of starting pitchers in rapid succession.
That chain reaction seems unlikely to occur at these GM meetings, however. What happens in Vegas won’t stay in Vegas as discussions continue on new deals, but how many and for how much remains tough to predict in a sport placing risky bets on its future.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
