When it comes to negotiations for the MLB’s next collective bargaining agreement, there are some misconceptions that Paul Skenes would like to clear up.
First and foremost, where do his fellow players stand?
“We are very united. I don’t think people understand how united we are and how on the same page we are,” said the Pirates’ superstar pitcher, who is also an MLB Players Association executive subcommittee member. “But if we give in to certain things, it would be a disservice to the players who came before us.”
The current CBA is scheduled to expire Dec. 1, and the expectation is that MLB owners will lock out the players until a new CBA is negotiated. While many issues will be bargained upon, chief among them is the salary cap.
Owners have officially proposed and are planning to push for a cap. It is the first significant effort they have made on that front since 1994, when a players’ strike that year led to the cancellation of the World Series. The players were out for 232 days, the longest stoppage in MLB history.
A 99-day lockout in 2022, after the expiration of the previous CBA, led to missed spring training games but a full 162-game season was still played. It’s widely expected that upcoming negotiations will at the very least affect the spring schedule in 2027.
Skenes told the Post-Gazette that he’s hoping games aren’t missed. However …
“There’s a line that we’re not going to cross, and if we have to miss games, we’ll miss games,” Skenes said. “I’m sure the owners feel the same way, so we’ll see. It’ll be interesting. There’s probably not a whole lot that’s going to happen until the time comes where we have to miss games.
“Yeah, we’ll do it if we need to.”
Is that line a salary cap?
“It’s whatever we decide that the line is,” Skenes said, leaving it at that.
Initial offers exchanged
In December 2024, Skenes was elected to the MLBPA’s eight-player executive subcommittee after less than five months in the majors.
Skenes, then 22, was the youngest in a group that included fellow subcommittee newcomers Tarik Skubal, Jake Cronenworth, Chris Bassitt, Pete Fairbanks and Cedric Mullins, plus incumbents Marcus Semien and Brent Suter.
Each was elected to two-year terms, helping lead the MLBPA alongside 30 player representatives — Henry Davis represents the Pirates — into the highly anticipated 2027 CBA negotiations.
Those officially began at the end of May, when both MLB and MLBPA made their first proposals.
The gap is wide.
MLB proposed a salary cap system with a hard cap — not just a luxury tax — of $245.3 million and a hard floor of $171.2 million. Additionally, it proposed 50/50 revenue sharing between the owners and players, plus fully sharing local television revenue (instead of the current 48% split).
“We have tried mightily over several rounds of bargaining to use a competitive balance tax to address competitive concerns,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters at the owners’ meetings in New York earlier this month. “And sometimes you’ve got to admit you failed.”
The MLBPA blasted the proposal and offered up one of its own.
One key facet was a “competitive integrity tax” — essentially a soft floor in which teams that do not spend a certain amount would forfeit some revenue sharing dollars.
The MLBPA proposal also included a shift in local television revenue sharing, a $1.5 million minimum salary for players with annual raises and growing the current $50 million pre-arbitration bonus pool to $180 million.
“We feel very strongly about our offer from the MLBPA side,” Skenes said, though he added the gap between owners and players was expected and there are compromises to be made.
“We think it’s very good for players, and it will truly address the competitive disparity thing that MLB says that they want to address,” Skenes said.
As for the league’s initial proposal, MLBPA interim head Bruce Meyer told reporters, “I thought they would try harder to make it look good,” and claimed the MLB proposal would have cost players more than $500 million if it had been in place in 2026.
Skenes paraphrased Meyer’s words, saying that MLB’s proposal “managed to cobble together the worst system for players in all of sports.”
“And I think it’s true,” Skenes said. “I think their offer was very, very bad.”
MLB said its plan would increase the players’ share of revenue. Skenes called that aspect false.
He said he was still trying to understand how revenues would really be split, adding, “I’m not an economist.”
“What if every team wants to spend 245 [million dollars]?” Skenes asked. “You would think that that would increase player share.
“But if it’s going to be a 50% split — which wouldn’t actually be a 50% split — that kind of implies to me a Big Brother-type thing, that you can’t sign this guy or you can’t pay this guy because they’re already at a 50% split. That’s something I’m still trying to understand.”
Skenes at the center
Skenes has a unique view on the issue. Not only is he one of eight players on the subcommittee, he’s only 23 years old and stands to benefit, perhaps more than anyone, if the league continues on without a salary cap.
Skenes will enter his first arbitration year after this season. He’ll be a free agent after the 2029 season, when he’ll be 27. If he stays healthy and continues to pitch at an elite level, he could sign a contract larger than the 12-year, $325 million deal that Yoshinobu Yamamoto inked with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2023.
However, Skenes pushed back when asked about how this all affects him.
“It should not be lost on anybody that everybody’s livelihoods are going to be affected by whatever we agree on for the next CBA,” Skenes said. “There are trainers, coaches, players that have come in the past and players that aren’t even in pro ball yet who are going to be affected by it.”
He added: “It’s very easy to be in a position like this and think about yourself, and I think that is completely the wrong way to think about it. I think we need to think about every player in every demographic other than yourself.”
So why does Skenes have that perspective? He cited history, namely the strike in 1994, as something the players are motivated by.
“They lost the World Series in ’94. Players went on strike for that, because they said, ‘This isn’t good enough,’ ” Skenes said. “And there are players who have made sacrifices, lost careers because they want to make it better for everybody else, for everybody who’s coming after them, not necessarily themselves.
“And it would be a complete disservice, and it would be wrong, to cave on that. I think players as a whole understand that.”
How the Pirates fit in
A Pirates spokesman told the Post-Gazette that neither owner Bob Nutting nor team president Travis Williams would be made available to discuss the labor dispute and instead deferred comment to the MLB Commissioner’s Office.
Without comment from Nutting or Williams, there’s no way to know for certain exactly how it would affect the Pirates. MLB’s proposal was intentionally minimal in scope and vague on details.
However, given that the owners agreed to that proposal, it suggests that Nutting would be willing to spend at least $171.2 million — under the system that includes fully shared local television revenues and other financial changes.
Per MLB figures, 12 teams, including the Pirates, would need to raise their payrolls by a combined $617 million if MLB’s proposal were enacted. Eight teams, including the Dodgers, would need to decrease their payrolls by a combined $578 million to meet the new salary cap. The initial proposal did not say how long teams would have to meet that criteria.
The MLBPA proposal specified that teams must spend at least half of the competitive balance tax threshold — proposed at $300 million, so the soft floor would be $150 million — to avoid forfeiting revenue to the soft floor it proposed.
The Pirates’ current competitive balance tax number is estimated at roughly $140 million, per Ethan Hullihen’s MLB Spreadsheets. That is roughly $35 million higher than their team-record $106 million payroll.
The number factors in an estimated $18 million in player benefits and the average annual value of contracts, so Konnor Griffin counts for $15.5 million instead of the $1 million he’ll make this year.
A salary cap system could allow the Pirates to afford a long-term contract for Skenes. The Pirates would have to spend to get over either figure, while big-market suitors will need to cut payroll to get under either number. Of course, Skenes would still have suitors on the open market.
However, critics of the cap would argue that it would limit players’ potential earnings — that includes Skenes.
Meyer pointed at the small-market San Diego Padres’ high spending, plus the Padres’ recent sale price of $3.9 billion, as something the MLBPA wants to encourage.
Others can reference signings like the Kansas City Royals’ $288.7 extension for Bobby Witt Jr. as proof that small-market teams can keep their stars and stay competitive in the current system.
The Pirates’ increased spending last offseason has resulted in a competitive team, albeit one with flaws. Those flaws were apparent when they were swept by the Atlanta Braves last weekend and then lost two of three this week to another National League powerhouse in the Dodgers.
Momentum to be halted?
Competitive balance is a real issue, but baseball is also more popular than ever.
Game 7 of the 2025 World Series averaged 51 million viewers across the U.S., Canada and Japan, making it the most-watched game since Game 7 of the 1991 World Series.
Recent rule changes, namely the universal designated hitter and pitch clock, have been successful. The World Baseball Classic keeps getting bigger and better.
Baseball’s media rights deal expires after the 2028 season, too, so momentum is important. Missed games could minimize the next deal’s value, which would hurt both the league and the players.
There’s still time before the CBA expires, though Skenes isn’t the only one who expects minimal movement before the threat of missed games becomes more real. Skenes will have a big role, both as a subcommittee member and one of the faces of baseball.
It’s not clear where negotiations will lead. But for Skenes, the league and the MLBPA, the process of shaping baseball’s future has only just begun.
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