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posted: November 2, 2025
tl;dr: A pragmatic approach for avoiding the 2027 MLB lockout...
I was present at the moment that Los Angeles Dodgers ownership and general manager Andrew Friedman embarked on their plan to fix the Dodgers’ postseason woes, a plan which has now yielded two consecutive World Series titles. It was October 11, 2023 at Chase Field in Phoenix, Arizona, during game three of a 2023 National League division series between the Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks (D-backs). The D-backs had already won game one handily by shelling Dodgers star starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw, who gave up six runs while recording just one out before being removed. The D-backs also won game two, and came to Phoenix with a chance to eliminate the Dodgers.
The Dodgers were thin on starting pitching, and put an end-of-career Lance Lynn on the mound to start game three. In the third inning, four D-backs homered off Lynn Geraldo Perdomo, Ketel Marté, Christian Walker, and Gabi Moreno. Moreno actually hit a long fly ball that was initially thought to be a home run but was corrected by instant replay, so he then hit one fair. It was the loudest cheering I have ever heard at any sporting event. Lynn got pulled after Moreno’s home run and would never throw another pitch for the Dodgers. The big-market Dodgers, with their much larger payroll, were thoroughly embarrassed and their season ended, while the D-backs went on to the World Series.
The Dodgers’ plan was simple: spend as much money as it took to add as much starting pitching as possible. When the offseason began, the Dodgers signed Shohei Ohtani for $700 million, much of it deferred, and then gave a $325 million contract to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a star pitcher in Japan who had never thrown a pitch in Major League Baseball. The Dodgers also added Tyler Glasnow ($137 million) and later Blake Snell ($182 million) to create a $1.3 billion four man playoff rotation. These four would start every Dodgers game of the 2025 postseason, and all four also pitched in the decisive game seven of the World Series against the Blue Jays. Clayton Kershaw would never start another Dodgers playoff game after the 2023 NLDS game one shellacking from the D-backs.
Game 3 of the 2023 NLCS after the Dodgers had been eliminated and embarked on their plan to ruin baseball
Few MLB teams can afford to spend $1.3 billion on just four players. While the Dodgers were doing this in 2025, two of the other thirty MLB teams, the former-Oakland Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays, were playing in a minor league stadium and a rival’s spring training stadium, respectively. I wasn’t the only one who found this sad and disheartening. It was the most visible confirmation of the disparities in health and wealth of MLB’s franchises, but there are others when you examine payrolls, franchise values, television contracts, and market sizes. Sports needs a certain amount of parity to ensure competitiveness and so that fans of all teams feel there is a chance to win a championship. That’s not the case in MLB right now. If it persists there will be more failed franchises beyond Oakland.
MLB is the only major American sports league without a total player salary cap/floor system. There is a “competitive balance tax” (a.k.a. luxury tax), but clearly it is not deterring the Dodgers nor raising the competitiveness enough for the low-payroll teams. Looming after the 2026 season is the much-discussed threat of a lockout by MLB team owners, in an attempt to institute a cap. The players want no limits to be placed on how much money teams can pay them, so this issue seems unlikely to be solved without a prolonged stoppage in play. Baseball fans of many smaller market teams are actually rooting for a lockout, to get a new structure in place that can allow their teams to better compete with the Dodgers and other big-market teams. This is even more sad and disheartening than the current situation of the Athletics and Rays. The Dodgers have been accused of “ruining baseball”, and their manager Dave Roberts egged on his team to do so.
To solve this mess I humbly submit my solution. It sounds radical, yet it is actually pragmatic and based upon current realities, geography, and history.
MLB is already split into two nationwide leagues, the National and American Leagues. Decades ago there were historical reasons for this, although the distinction between the leagues is now all but gone, with common rules, interleague play, expansion, and movement of teams between the leagues. My idea: keep the two leagues, but change the payroll rules for each league, in recognition of the fact that it is unlikely for MLB to find one solution that works for all thirty teams.
The National League (NL) can be the No Limits league. There will be no limit on payroll size or what a team can pay any given player. The American League will be the Aspirational League, with a salary cap/floor system that ensures a reasonable level of competitive balance. Given the realities of what small market teams can afford, there will need to be some revenue sharing from the NL to the AL. Everything else remains the same: six years of team rights to drafted players, farm systems, interleague play, NL and AL playoff brackets, and the World Series between the NL champion and the AL champion.
The NL would contain teams like the Dodgers, New York Yankees, and New York Mets that want to spend whatever it takes to assemble the best team. The AL would contain teams like the Milwaukee Brewers, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Cincinnati Reds that feel disadvantaged by the current system. The NL would not necessarily dominate over the AL. There are examples of well-run small market teams that can occasionally put together a winner, as well as big market teams (like the 2025 Mets) that spend lots of money and don’t make the playoffs. The new format would give more opportunities to smaller market teams, as six of them would make the playoffs, and one would always be in the World Series. The competitiveness of the World Series might suffer, with the NL Championship Series often becoming the most important series to determine the overall winner. But that’s the price to be paid to give smaller market teams a better chance.
Here’s how I would reconfigure the leagues, with some comments about why teams are in each league:
National/No Limits (NL) league:
American/Aspirational League (AL):
There would need to be a way for teams to occasionally switch leagues. Perhaps this is as simple as getting the two team owners to agree to do so. Player contracts might have to be shed for an NL team moving to the AL.
The NL teams would mostly concentrate on signing established stars, many from the AL after they reach free agency. The AL teams would concentrate on amateur scouting and their farm systems, as well as giving second chances to struggling older players. When AL teams develop a star player, they still can retain that player for six seasons before the player signs with an NL team. Not every AL star would depart for the NL, AL teams would still be able to retain one or two.
There are already major disparities between big market and small market teams; this new structure merely reflects those realities. One of the nicknames of the NL is the “senior circuit” because it was established before the AL; the nickname would still apply, it would just have a new meaning. Fewer big market teams, and more small market teams, would make the playoffs, which restores competitive balance and gives hope to fans of small market teams.
The main challenge of this plan is getting fifteen owners to agree to compete with the Dodgers and Yankees in the No Limits league. If that can’t be done, then a 2027 lockout is all but guaranteed.