How Latest MLB Labor Proposal Impacts Toronto Blue Jays

On Tuesday, Major League Baseball put out its latest proposal for a salary cap and floor system, and if accepted, this would have a major impact on the Toronto Blue Jays.

Here's what you need to know.

1) The league wants a salary cap and floor to begin in 2028, which allows free agency to proceed as normal this offseason and gives teams a year to get into compliance.

2) The proposal includes a salary floor of $180.2 million and a hard salary cap of $258.2 million.

3) Other parts of the proposal would happen in 2027, with players over 30 reaching free agency in five years instead of six, a raising of the leagues minimum wage and the elimination of draft pick compensation with regards to the qualifying offer.

I don't claim to be a labor expert, but I do believe it's fair to ask the following questions and get clarification on the following points:

1) As has been reported already, this salary floor is a soft floor like you see in the NFL. You can spend below the floor for three years in a row and then overspend in one offseason to get into compliance.

2) Do the salary cap and floor include solely player salaries or does it also include other things, like player benefits?

3) And what about the actual revenue? What is the total revenue that the money is coming from? Are players getting full access to the owners' books in order to get a full picture of the revenue the league is creating?

Well, the Blue Jays would have to cut salary in order to get into salary compliance, so this isn't necessarily great news for them in the short term. The Blue Jays actually don't have any current players scheduled to be free agents after 2027, so they can't just count on money falling off the books in order to do that.

They'd have to make difficult roster decisions after 2027, and they'd be impacted this year and next in free agency, as they would have to be less apt to spend big money, at least at multi-year levels, which would make the salary shedding that much harder.

The Blue Jays have been one of the biggest spending teams in the league over the last several years, signing the likes of George Springer, Kevin Gausman, Jeff Hoffman, Dylan Cease, Anthony Santander and Kazuma Okamoto to big deals.

Well really, nothing matters until one side budges on its proposals, and so far, neither side is. The players say they will never accept a cap and floor system.

Free agency officially began on Monday and the Blue Jays are at work, just like everybody else. The GM meetings are Nov. 9-12 in Las Vegas.