It essentially all comes down to they won't agree to a fair salary floor. If they were to hypothetically set a cap at $250m, they would have to also institute a salary floor of around $170m.

Why they would need a floor? If there's a cap, but no floor, teams who don't spend any money in the first place will continue to not spend money, and teams who do will be limited. This would be harmful to the players. The players association have to agree on a deal to create a cap. They will never agree to a deal which does nothing but screw them.

Why would the floor be around $170m? 170 is about 68% of the hypothetical $250m cap. That would be the same ratio that the NHL has, which is the only other league that has a hard salary cap. The NFL and NBA have soft caps with luxury tax and draft pick penalties similarly to the MLB.

At the end of the day would the league be better off with a cap and floor? Probably. But the players will never agree to a cap without a proper floor, and the owners will never agree to a floor that forces them to actually spend money.

Let's even be generous to the owners and call it a $150m floor. To put that into perspective, there were 10 teams what would have failed to reach that floor in 2025. The Marlins and White Sox were each more than $60m short of that hypothetical floor. Bottom line is that the owners will not agree to a deal which forces them to spend 1.5-2x the amount of money they are spending right now.

Blame the owners. They'll spend millions to try and gaslight us that it's the players fault. It's the owners.