New Orioles pitcher Chris Bassitt just officially weighed in on looming salary cap mess

Chris Bassitt has been an Oriole for about five minutes, and he’s already doing the most useful veteran thing imaginable. He’s getting ahead of the next CBA blowup and saying what everyone’s tiptoeing around.

As soon as the salary cap topic enters an MLB conversation, you can practically hear a certain class of owners warming up the world’s tiniest violin. The sales pitch is always the same: a cap would “fix parity,” protect small markets, and keep the sport competitive. Bassitt’s response? Nah. It’s not a fix. It’s a detour.

Chris Bassitt’s sharp salary cap take puts MLB’s real problem back in the spotlight

“The salary cap doesn’t fix anything,” Bassitt said, according to the Baltimore Banner, arguing MLB already has the best parity compared to other capped leagues and that suppressing salaries so owners can make more money isn’t some noble reform. 

And here’s why Orioles fans should care: Baltimore is the exact kind of franchise that gets used as a prop in these debates.

When payrolls are low, “small market” becomes a shield. When payrolls rise, it becomes a cautionary tale. Either way, the players are the ones being asked to take the haircut so billionaires can claim they’re doing everyone a favor. Bassitt basically just pointed at that magic trick and asked everyone to see the trap door.

The Orioles already have the blueprint for competitive parity without a cap. It’s called: draft well and develop monsters. A cap doesn’t guarantee that any ownership group suddenly spends smarter. It guarantees a limit — and then the same teams that already pinch pennies get to brag about being “efficient” while banking the savings.

Bassitt also isn’t some random guy tossing a take into the wind. He’s on the MLBPA’s executive subcommittee, which means he’s speaking from the part of the room that’s preparing for the next CBA knife fight. 

And yes, it’s a little rich (and very baseball) that this message is arriving in Baltimore via a guy who just signed a one-year, $18.5 million deal with a start-based incentive kicker. That’s kind of the point, though. The Orioles didn’t add Bassitt because a capless system forced them to. They did it because they decided they needed an adult in the rotation and wrote the check.

So if the league’s heading toward a “salary cap mess,” the Orioles shouldn’t be lobbying for the escape hatch. They should be doing the obvious, uncomfortable thing: acting like a serious franchise in a wide-open window — and not needing a new economic excuse to justify it.