A $125M salary floor would have forced 11 MLB teams to pony up some moulah to fill out their payroll.
BFD - that's pocket change based on payroll vs. franchise values (from
Forbes):
Detroit, $122,235,500 (add $2,764,500, team valued at $1.45 Billion)
Milwaukee, $118,761,987 (add $6,238,013 team valued at $1.605 Billion)
Arizona, $116,471,292 (add $8,528,708 team valued at $1.38 Billion)
Washington, $ 101,190,153 (add $23,809,847 team valued at $2 Billion)
Kansas City, $92,468,100 (add $32,531,900 team valued at $1.2 Billion)
Miami, $91,700,000 (add $33,300,000 team valued at $1 Billion)
Cleveland, 89,424,629 (add $35,575,371 team valued at $1.3 Billion)
Cincinnati, $83,610,000 (add $41,390,000 team valued at $1.19 Billion)
Pittsburgh, $73,277,500 (add $51,722,500 team valued at $1.32 Billion)
Tampa Bay, $73,184,811 (add $51,815,189 team valued at $1.25 Billion)
Baltimore, $60,722,300 (add $64,277,700 team valued at $1.713 Billion)
Oakland, $56,895,000 (add $68,105,000 team valued at $1.18 Billion)
So this threshold for cheap teams has them adding $420,058,728 vs $16.588B in franchise values. That's these 11 teams adding ~ 2.35% of their franchise values. It's worth noting the following:
- No team saw their franchise value decline.
- Was, Az, Pitt, Clv, Cinci, and Oak were the only teams that didn't see their franchise values increase.
- Additionally only Mia saw an increase below that 2.35%
- From the 11 teams on the list the average franchise value increase was 7%
But yeah, player salaries are too expensive, how can these teams hope to compete (even though 5 of them made the expanded playoffs).