Randy Levine said he believes Major League Baseball will get a labor deal done before the current agreement expires on Dec. 1, even with owners expected to lock out the players if no accord is reached. The New York Yankees president said he is confident both sides want to avoid that outcome.
Speaking on The Craig Carton Show, Levine said the talks are still early and described the moment as part of a familiar labor pattern. “It’s very, very early... They want to reach an agreement,” he said, adding that in his experience negotiations often begin with posturing before the real work begins.
The urgency is not abstract. The current collective bargaining agreement runs out in just over a month, and if there is no new deal by then, the league is expected to shut the process down with a lockout. For readers following the labor fight, Levine’s remarks matter because they come with the deadline now in view, not somewhere down the road.
He also argued that the stakes go beyond the bargaining table. “The whole playoffs have been great, the whole season has been great,” Levine said. “Baseball is regaining popularity, it’s the national pastime, so we gotta work hard to just preserve it.” That optimism sits next to a harder reality: the sides remain far apart, and the owners’ proposals include a salary cap.
Levine did not say the gap is closed. Instead, he said, “We have until December. I think they’re really going to work hard, and I’m very hopeful they’ll reach an agreement. I’ve seen circumstances where it looked harder than even this, and this one looks hard, but at the end of the day, I’m confident everyone wants to get a deal.”
That confidence follows a separate show of support from Hal Steinbrenner, who said last week that he backs the owners’ proposals in their entirety. He said those proposals include a cap, putting the issue at the center of the coming fight. Rob Manfred has also framed the case for owners as “listening to our fans,” while saying it “defies human experience... to think that the bottom end of that [payroll] gap has the same opportunity to win the top end.”
The clash is easier to understand when set against the numbers already on the books. During the 2026 season, the Yankees carried a $336 million payroll, the third-largest in baseball. The Los Angeles Dodgers were at $422 million, and the New York Mets at $338 million, figures that show why the cap debate is not just theoretical.
Baseball has been through this before. Five years ago, owners locked out the players and the season was delayed by one week. This time, Levine is betting the sport avoids a repeat. If he is right, the next hard date is Dec. 1. If he is wrong, the labor fight that has been building around the cap will stop the game before it starts.
