MLBPA's Tony Clark vows to fight efforts to implement salary cap

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona — Saying Major League Baseball's new Economic Reform Committee is «focused in on how best to depress player salaries,» MLB Players Association executive director Tony Clark on Saturday vowed to fight any efforts by the league to implement a salary cap after the current labor deal expires in 2026.

Clark, speaking from the union's new Arizona satellite office, said that despite concerns from owners about the estimated $300 million payroll chasm between the top- and bottom-spending teams this year, the answer is not to implement a ceiling.

«We're never going to agree to a cap,» Clark said. «Let me start there. We don't have a cap. We're not going to agree to a cap.

»A salary cap is the ultimate restriction on player value and player salary," Clark added later. «We believe in a market system.»

The expected bankruptcy of Diamond Sports Group, which controls local broadcast rights for nearly half the teams in baseball, has deepened concerns around the sport about the potential loss of revenue as MLB tries to navigate a media landscape outside the regional-sports-network model.

The Economic Reform Committee ostensibly will convene to discuss that issue, but Clark pointed toward past efforts by the league — including the late-'90s Blue Ribbon Panel — in which consortiums of owners focused on finances always landed on the same solution: a capped system.

The spending of the New York Mets, who are projected to have a payroll of nearly $370 million, and the San Diego Padres, a small-market team committed to upward of $250 million this year, has prompted multiple owners to bemoan the system to which the sides agreed less than a year ago.

«We've got to see fundamental change in the economic structure of the game,»