There is no formal salary cap in major league baseball. Teams can spend as much as they like on player salaries, in theory. However, there are penalties in place for doing so, and there hasn’t been a more divisive issue between owners and players than the salary cap since free agency became a permanent part of the landscape in professional sports. Now, MLB owners propose to make the competitive balance tax (CBT) even more punitive on big spending teams, and that remains a complete non-starter with the players.
Of all the issues remaining to be resolved in the current collective bargaining talks, and there are several, none is more upsetting to players than the draconian measures being proposed to penalize teams that dare to spend more than the CBT threshold on player salaries.