As the Major League Baseball Players Association attempts to fix the competition problem in baseball, the league owners are quarreling over an owner using his financial resources to make his team better.
According to Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, the billionaires that run MLB franchises proposed adding a new surcharge level to the luxury tax. Currently, there are three levels – base, first surcharge, and second surcharge. Now they want to put in the third surcharge to deter owners “who have a mind to spend well above the pack.”
You might as well call it the Steve Cohen rule.
MLB’s proposal for 2020 would look like this:
Base: $230 million
1st: $250 million
2nd: $270 million
New 3rd: $290 million
The Mets have already committed $235 million to their roster for 2022.
Says Forbes, Cohen is the wealthiest owner among all the major league teams. He’s the fourth-wealthiest owner in American sports with an estimated net worth of $16 billion as of September 2021.
Cohen nearly triples the wealth of the next highest MLB owner, Charles B. Johnson of the San Francisco Giants.
The Mets owner completed his team purchase in 2020 for $2.4 billion. Over the last year, the combined fortune of the members who own controlling stakes in major sports teams is up 42% to $392.4 billion. The Yankees were named the most valuable franchise at $5.25 billion, with the Mets at sixth at $2.45 billion.
Cohen has repeatedly flexed his want to create a competitive Mets team and has done so by flexing his wallet. His first significant move as owner was to sign Francisco Lindor to a 10-year, $341 million deal. Then, before the lockout, he showed that financial might again by signing Eduardo Escobar, Mark Canha, Starling Marte, and Max Scherzer.
MMO’s Nate Mendleson recapped a report in December that Cohen’s willingness to surpass the luxury-tax threshold affected how other teams operated. For example, the Philadelphia Phillies wanted to sign Marte, but they could not commit to the $78 million contract the Mets offered. Philadelphia claims they might have pushed to top the deal but decided they weren’t in a position to do so with how many other holes they have on the roster.
Other owners like John Middleton (net worth $3.4 billion) shop in the bargain bin for free agents. Cohen is taking the approach shunned by other owners: spending.
The owners and players are still apart on the competitive balance tax. In MLB’s latest proposal, the CBT would be raised to $230 million in 2020 and increase to $242 million. The players want the CBT to start at $238 million and grow to $263 million. Based on his spending habits, Cohen would appear that he sides more with the players than with the other owners.
