The Lockout, Explained for Mets Fans
The CBA expires Dec. 1. Here's what a lockout actually is, what it freezes, why owners want a salary cap, and why Steve Cohen's checkbook is at the center of the fight.
Every contract has one clause that decides who eats the loss when things go sideways. Baseball’s labor deal is full of them, and it runs out on December 1 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern.
If you’re a Mets fan, this is the most important story of the winter. It matters more than Skubal and more than Bichette’s opt-out. It decides what Steve Cohen is allowed to do with his money, maybe for the next five years.
Here’s the plain-English version.
What’s actually expiring
The Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) is the contract between the 30 owners and the players’ union. It sets the minimum salary, how arbitration and free agency work, the luxury tax, the draft, and service time. It covers basically every rule about how players get paid.
The current deal was signed in March 2022 to end the last lockout. It expires at the end of the day on Dec. 1.
Lockout vs. strike
People mix these up. It matters who pulls the trigger.
- A strike is when the players stop working.
- A lockout is when the owners shut the doors.
Owners lock out in the offseason because it costs them almost nothing. There are no games and no ticket revenue to lose in December. Meanwhile the pressure builds on players who want to sign, get traded, or use team facilities. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has said out loud that there’s “leverage associated with an offseason lockout.” Forbes rates the odds of one as “exceptionally high.”
What a lockout freezes
The moment a lockout starts:
- No free-agent signings with MLB clubs
- No trades involving 40-man roster players
- No contact between teams and players on the 40-man roster
- No access to team facilities, trainers or rehab for those players
Minor league deals and front-office business keep going. The big-league transaction wire goes dark.
We’ve seen this movie before
The last lockout started Dec. 2, 2021 and lasted 99 days, ending March 10, 2022. Opening Day got pushed back a week.
Mets fans should remember the days before it started. Free agency turned into a sprint. Billy Eppler and Cohen signed Max Scherzer, Starling Marte, Mark Canha and Eduardo Escobar in the last week of November. Teams knew the window was closing, and they moved.
Expect the same thing this year, except the window is even tighter. The World Series can run as late as Oct. 31. Free agency opens five days after it ends, which leaves less than four weeks of shopping before Dec. 1.
The real fight: a salary cap
Baseball is the only major U.S. league with no salary cap at all. (The NBA has a “soft” cap with exceptions; the NFL and NHL have hard caps.) It uses a luxury tax instead, officially the Competitive Balance Tax (CBT). You can spend as much as you want; you just pay a penalty on the overage.
The owners want to change that. Their proposal from May 28:
| Owners’ proposal (2027) | |
|---|---|
| Salary cap (a ceiling) | $245.3M |
| Salary floor (a minimum) | $171.2M |
| Revenue split | Players get 50% |
Later proposals added free-agent contracts limited to 5 years and 15% of the cap (rising over time), with a 6-year “Cornerstone Player” exception for re-signing your own guy. They also added free-agency “quiet periods” and roster locks.
The union calls the cap “institutionalized collusion” and a non-starter. Their opening ask went the other direction: raise the tax threshold toward $300M and lift the minimum salary to $1.5M. They say the owners’ plan would cut player pay by more than half a billion dollars.
Those two positions aren’t close.
Why this is really about the Mets
This is the Front Office part.
The current tax has four tiers, and the top one was added in 2022, widely seen as aimed at how Cohen spends. Some started calling it the “Cohen tax.”
Here’s how it works for a team that has paid the tax three or more years in a row, like the Mets. The 2026 threshold is $244M:
- 50% tax on every dollar over $244M
- +12% on the band from $20M to $40M over
- +45% on the band from $40M to $60M over
- +60% on everything past $60M over
Spotrac estimates the Mets’ 2026 tax payroll at about $370 million. That’s roughly $126 million over the line, with a tax bill of around $114 million. At that level every extra dollar costs about $2.10: the dollar, plus $1.10 in tax. So at the 2026 rates, a $30 million free agent really costs about $63 million.
Cohen has paid that without blinking. A hard cap would take the option away. Against the owners’ $245.3 million cap, the Mets’ 2026 tax payroll would sit roughly $125 million over. Under that system, this roster couldn’t exist.
The owners’ argument goes like this. Pittsburgh, Miami and Oakland (sorry, Sacramento) can’t compete with a hedge-fund billionaire in the biggest market in the country. A cap and a floor make everyone play the same game. I understand the pitch, and it’s not crazy.
But look at who benefits. Under a cap, the Mets’ biggest structural edge goes away: an owner who will spend with anybody, including the Dodgers, and eat the tax. That edge hasn’t bought a title yet. It did make them a threat every winter.
What I’m watching
- Whether Cohen breaks ranks publicly. He can’t vote for a cap that neuters his own team and stay quiet about it forever.
- The pre-Dec. 1 sprint. If Stearns is going to make a big move, whether that’s Skubal, a first baseman or a Bichette decision, the smart money says it happens in November.
- A cap with a luxury-tax escape hatch. Watch for a “soft cap” compromise. That’s one place a fight like this can land.
- Spring Training. The Mets’ Opening Day is set for March 25, 2027, at Miami (MLB’s Netflix opener is the night before). Everything before that is posturing. Missed games are when it gets real.
I’ll keep the Offseason Tracker updated all winter with every proposal, deadline and headline. If there’s a lockout, this site doesn’t go quiet. That’s when the front-office stuff is the only story in town.