Where will the salary cap be?

Not everyone is always happy when there’s a big jump in salary cap.  The Commissioner doesn’t like it because he’s worried that EFL teams will dominate their MLB opponents.  We aren’t SUPPOSED to be able to afford Mike Trout.

But that’s just the Commissioner being the Commissioner.  Most of the league ignores him when he’s being grumpy like that.  Still, I can remember hearing certain EFL owners grousing about a big increase in the salary cap. “I saved up a lot of money from the spring drafts so I could dominate the debutant market”, they said. “But now everyone has lots of money. So my advantage isn’t as big as I was planning.”

Well, this might be the year the Commissioner and His Curmudgeons will finally be able to sing a happy tune.  According to projections from the folks at Spotrac, the median MLB team as of right now appears to fall midway between the Royals ($134,975,000) and the World-Series Runnerup Indians (120,867,365).  That would put the MLB median at $127,921,183.

We set our salaries at 75% of the MLB median.  That would come to $95,940,887, which the Commissioner would round up to $96,000,000.(He would feel all warm and generous on leaving that $59,113 tip. That’s a whopping 0.062%.)  That would be $3,750,000 more than 2016, a 4.06% increase.  We would sit right where we belong — halfway between the Twins ($100,057,500) and the Pirates ($90,621,446).

The Commissioner should just relax and quit grousing already. Obviously, no team as poor as the Twins or Pirates could possibly afford Mike Trout.

But remember: this is not yet the official 2017 Opening Day salary cap. The only thing we know for sure is this: the salary cap cannot, by league rule, drop more than 6%. So it has to be at least $86,750,000. So if you have at least $5,500,000 left, you can go ahead and sleep at night between now and Opening Day.