Anyone missing how healthy the money intake has been for Major League Baseball needs only look at the latest collective-bargaining agreement between players and owners.
Word broke late last week of a new five-year CBA as a deadline fast approached. The luxury-tax threshold — officially called the Competitive Balance Tax — and tougher rules surrounding it quickly emerged as a central theme.
Despite those enhanced rules, what’s glaringly evident is that MLB no longer sees the need to curb overspending via a hard salary cap. That talking point had lingered since the New York Yankees began annihilating everybody with free-agent spending that led to four World Series titles and two other finals appearances from 1996 to 2003.