Earlier this week Rob Manfred floated the idea that players might strike before the season even ends, with a World Series on the chopping block. He keeps bring up 1994 when a players’ strike wiped out 948 games and the entire postseason, including the World Series because that scar is real, and it still colors how a lot of fans think about labor fights in baseball. But as someone who actually watches games nearly every night and also follows the business side, I just don’t buy the idea that today’s players are going to walk away from October money before the last out of the World Series is recorded.
Think about what the postseason has turned into financially. The players’ pool is literally carved out of playoff gate receipts. A big chunk of ticket revenue from the Wild Card round, Division Series, LCS, and World Series flows directly into a bonus pool for the guys on the field. The World Series champion gets the biggest slice, followed by the runner‑up, then the LCS losers, and so on. We’re not talking about a few per diems and some souvenir rings.
In 2019, the total players’ pool was more than 80 million dollars, with the champion Washington Nationals voting full shares worth roughly 380 thousand dollars each. In recent seasons, full shares for champions have pushed into the mid‑400‑thousand range per player, with total postseason pools north of 120 million dollars. You’re going to tell me players are walking away from that?
For a lot of guys, that check is life‑changing. Stars get paid no matter what, sure, but the middle reliever who bounced between Triple‑A and the big club, or the utility infielder on a one‑year deal, is not leaving a potential extra three to five hundred grand sitting on the table. And that’s before you factor in what a postseason run does for a player’s next contract, the exposure, the October hero narrative, the arbitration comps. Striking in July, August, or early September means giving up not only that guaranteed cash, but also the chance to build the kind of résumé the arbitrator or GM remembers.
Manfred leans on the 1994 comparison because it’s the boogeyman that works. He lived that fight from the owners’ side and has openly admitted he’s worried about a repeat of a work stoppage that knocks games off the calendar. But 1994 was a different sport economically. TV money, revenue sharing, luxury tax rules, and free agency dynamics have all evolved. Players today are far more conscious of their brand and off‑field opportunities, and a cancelled World Series is a PR disaster for them, not just the league.
If anything, the modern pattern tells you owners are the ones more likely to pull the trigger first via lockout, the way they did following the 2021 season when they shut players out before a new CBA and wound up delaying Opening Day without cancelling regular‑season games. That’s a preemptive move to control timing and leverage. Players, on the other hand, gain leverage by being willing to take it to the brink but not over the cliff during the season. They keep playing, collect their paychecks, bank their postseason shot, and dare the league to be the ones who pull the plug.
And that’s really the point for me, players want their money. All of it. Regular‑season checks, playoff shares, endorsement bumps that come from big October moments – they’re not volunteering to nuke the most lucrative part of the calendar. They’re perfectly capable of playing the good soldier through the World Series, then turning off the lights in November and saying, See you when there’s a deal. If you want to predict a strike, circle winter meetings, not the All‑Star break.
There’s also the competitive piece. For all the cynicism about it’s just a business, players are ultra‑competitive. They grind through 162, deal with travel, injuries, and media, and then what – they walk away the moment the games actually matter the most? For every player who might say shut it down for the cause, there are ten who have dreamed their entire lives about being on the mound or in the box in the World Series. That dream, plus a six‑figure postseason bonus, is a powerful force.
Here’s the thing, folks: Could the relationship between MLB and the union get bad enough that a strike happens? Absolutely. The history is right there, multiple strikes and lockouts, with the 1994–95 stoppage looming as the worst‑case scenario in everyone’s mind. The league keeps pushing cost controls; the players keep fighting to keep free agency and earning power from being squeezed. But if it comes to another showdown, it a safe bet that the players’ strategy is simple. They will play this season out, pocket the October bag, and then, only then go on strike.
With that . . . When Manfred says this years World Series is in imminent danger because the players are going to storm off midseason, we should be hearing that as more of a spin than a prediction. He needs fans nervous about greedy players to tilt public pressure his way as he rides off in to the sunset. Look at the financial incentives, the history, and the modern landscape, and you’ll see something else entirely, a group of players who will fight hard on economics, but not at the expense of the one thing they love and profit from the most – the World Series itself.
If you cannot play with them, them root for them to get what they want