The commissioner who called off the World Series as striking players fought off a salary cap still sees merit to a salary cap in Major League Baseball.

“Three of the other major sports all have salary caps, and they’re working,” former commissioner Bud Selig said on the MVP Podcast. “And they’re working well.”

Former Angels first baseman Mo Vaughn, the 1995 American League most valuable player for the Boston Red Sox, is the host of the MVP Podcast.

Selig’s tenure as commissioner ran from 1992 to 2015. The players went on strike in 1994 when owners insisted on a salary cap. Selig had to call off the World Series, and the players returned in 1995 without a salary cap.

Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement expires after the 2026 season, and several owners already have called for a salary cap, claiming competitive balance cannot truly be possible when teams like the Dodgers and New York Mets spend five times on payroll as teams such as the Athletics and Miami Marlins.

Read more:They said baseball was dying. How Rob Manfred and MLB officials revived it

The players’ union adamantly opposes a cap, arguing owners are more concerned about restricting spending and about how the sale prices of teams are not appreciating as greatly as those in other sports.

Selig did not directly advocate for a salary cap as much as he did for dialogue between owners and players. Rob Manfred, the current commissioner, has called an offseason lockout a negotiating tool that does not harm the sport so long as regular-season games are not lost.

“The last 22 years of my commissionership, we had no lockout, no strike, no nothing,” Selig said. “And that really helped us.

“I think, when you look back, some of the labor problems that we had really hurt us. So we have to be careful.”

Vaughn’s current business ventures include serving as an advisor at Perfect Game, which distributes the podcast. As he talked over old times with Selig, the former commissioner realized everything old is new again.

“We had a strike that cost the World Series,” Selig said, “and it was over things that they’re still fighting about.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Buster Posey remains committed to Giants' core despite down 2025 MLB season originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

The Giants, perhaps for the first time in a while, have a formidable core of star players.

Unfortunately for San Francisco, it has not resulted in as many wins as it initially hoped when it added slugger Rafael Devers to a nucleus of Willy Adames, Matt Chapman, Heliot Ramos, Jung Hoo Lee and starting pitchers Logan Webb and Robbie Ray earlier this season.

However, Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey remains committed to the team’s core moving forward.

“I believe in the nucleus,” Posey told KNBR 680’s “Murph & Markus” on Thursday. “What makes me feel good is the character of these players. Each year can be different. And again, we’ve got 30ish games left, and you never know what can happen, so we’re focused on this year, for sure. But yeah, we have total belief in this nucleus and understand this is the first year of them playing together, with Rafi not even having a full year.

“Excited about their leadership and the players around them on both sides of the ball that we’re going to get to watch going forward and continue to work and get better.”

The Giants (65-68) still have 29 games remaining this season, but likely are too far out of playoff contention, as they sit seven games back of the New York Mets (72-61) for the third and final National League wild card spot.

Despite the 2025 season likely ending without a playoff appearance for the fourth consecutive year, Posey does not foresee the Giants “blowing it up” this offseason and trading pieces of their core.

“As a front office we’ll look and see how we see best to put the best team on the field in [2026], but as far as ‘majorly blowing it up,’ whatever that means … I don’t see that happening,” Posey added.

It’s safe to say fans can expect to see, more or less, the same core players in 2026.

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In the waning days of the 1960s, when Don Sutton was starting his Hall of Fame career and Don Drysdale was finishing his, kids all over the Southland could turn on Channel 9 and catch a block of cartoons. Speed Racer came on first, followed by Ultraman.

In the lore: “A 130-foot tall red and silver giant of light, Ultraman came to Earth from another galaxy to protect humanity from invading aliens and giant monsters.”

Fortunately, the meet-and-greet version of Ultraman that showed up at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday was about 6 feet tall. I dropped by to say hello, although I had been warned he did not converse with humans.

“He’ll look at you quizzically, but also with endearment, knowing you are a little carbon-based unit that would like to become his friend,” said David Kornblum, president of Tsuburaya Fields Media and Pictures Entertainment.

Read more:Shaikin: The National League has one .300 hitter. What's up with that?

Ultraman turns 60 next year. Kornblum is based in Los Angeles, and his job is to take what his Tokyo-based company calls “Japan’s most beloved superhero” and revive his popularity in the United States. This fall, you’ll be able to stream new and classic episodes of Ultraman.

It’s not just that Shohei Ohtani is more popular than Ultraman in Japan these days. If you’re a Japanese company wanting to get the word out in America about your product, you’re in good company at Dodger Stadium.

“With the Dodgers, you’ve got a 50,000-seat stadium basically sold out for 80 games a year,” Kornblum said. “It’s a natural in terms of having exposure for this character in this market, the second-largest market in the country.

“You have the opportunity to showcase your character with the most popular team.”

The “Shohei economy,” as one team official dubbed it last year, has taken on a new dimension.

Japanese fans flock to Dodger Stadium, of course, taking stadium tours conducted in Japanese, enjoying a variety of national delicacies at concession stands and clutching shopping bags packed with hundreds — and sometimes thousands — of dollars' worth of Ohtani merchandise.

And, of the 24 corporations with advertising space between the foul poles at Dodger Stadium as of Tuesday, eight are based in Asia.

What’s new: With Ohtani as a global attraction, Japanese entertainment companies have used Dodger Stadium as a platform to popularize their star attractions.

“There is not a business sector that hasn’t weighed in with us,” Dodgers president Stan Kasten said, noting the Dodgers’ league-leading attendance and global viewership. “We are an entertainment venue. We’re a place to go to get attention.

“If you’re a brand looking for attention, where else would you go?”

With each deal, Ohtani’s contract becomes even more magical for the Dodgers. Never mind, for the moment, the sponsorships with Asian airlines, retailers, beverage companies, and so on.

With four Japanese character appearances at Dodger Stadium this season, the Dodgers have made more than the $2 million they pay Ohtani in salary this year. (The other $68 million is deferred.)

And, as the entertainment companies reach customers in the United States, the Dodgers reach fans in Japan, where they have leveraged Ohtani to become the dominant major league team.

The Dodgers launched a fan club there this year. Kasten said they hope to expand their marketing presence there as Major League Baseball considers relaxing rules under which the league itself — rather than individual teams — typically controls international business ventures.

“FC Barcelona told me they have 300 million fans around the world,” Kasten said. “That’s a good role model.”

When Tokyo’s Cover Corp. opened a Los Angeles office last year, they brought their star animated character — Gawr Gura — to Dodger Stadium.

Read more:Clayton Kershaw is masterful again in Dodgers' win over Reds

“The fact that we could say we had a collaboration with the Dodgers, that is helpful to show we are that level of a brand,” said Motoaki Tanigo, the chief executive of Cover. “That was helpful to us, to introduce ourselves.”

The Dodgers sold 8,000 tickets as part of the Cover promotion, the company said and the team confirmed, with 80% of those fans visiting Dodger Stadium for the first time, and with many showing up super early to snap up commemorative merchandise. Cover staged a larger ballpark promotion this year.

Ultraman brought no merchandise with him, but he did bring an evil nemesis, who tried to steal the show during the ceremonial first pitch. If the point was to identify the evil nemesis called a kaiju for an unfamiliar audience, I suggested the company dress him in a Padres uniform.

“Or in a Giants uniform,” Kornblum said. “I would love if they would allow us to have a full smackdown, with a kaiju in a Giants jersey vs. Ultraman in a Dodgers jersey.

“A beatdown at home plate would be fun. But the corporate guys won’t let me do that.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

How Bryce Eldridge has handled sky-high expectations as Giants' top prospect originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO — Buster Posey knows a thing or two about sky-high expectations. 

The Giants’ president of baseball operations was the fifth overall pick in the 2008 MLB Draft and made his debut a year later. When he was called up for good in 2010, the Giants traded their starting catcher to clear the decks. All Posey did that year was lead them to their first championship in San Francisco.

Posey never, however, dealt with the kind of online noise that has followed Bryce Eldridge during his own journey as a top prospect. 

Twitter was in its infancy when Posey was coming through the minors, and he never had to worry about seeing his face on Instagram graphics or in TikTok videos speculating about his short-term and long-term future. That has been Eldridge’s reality since being taken in the first round two years ago, and the drumbeat seemingly gets louder every day.

Eldridge, who doesn’t turn 21 until October, has grown up with all of this, but still, at times it can be a lot. Far lesser Giants prospects have seen their Triple-A seasons derailed by rumors that a call-up is imminent.

On Thursday’s “Giants Talk” podcast, Eldridge said he’s doing the best to ignore the hype, even if those around him might get caught up at times. 

“Being a 20-year-old kid who uses social media, things kind of pop up on your feed,” he said. “It’s not like I’m missing all of it, but I’m not going into the comments reading stuff. I’m kind of just getting a little look at it, scrolling by or whatever, but yeah, people are sending me stuff. My loved ones are excited about what’s to come and that’s understandable. 

“I think I just tell them every time, ‘I’m in Triple-A right now. We’re going to focus in on this. Whenever [the call-up] happens, I better see all those people out there [at the ballpark].”

Eldridge has been a top 100 prospect throughout his time in the minors, and he currently is MLB Pipeline’s top-ranked minor league first baseman. He is 13th overall on Pipeline’s top 100 list and No. 20 on Baseball America’s version.

Eldridge needs only to look behind him in the Triple-A lineup to get a reminder that prospect lists guarantee nothing. Marco Luciano was a top 20 prospect for multiple seasons earlier in his career, but he now finds himself at a crossroads, and seemingly out of the Giants’ long-term plans.

The cautionary tales are one reason the Giants have been so patient with Eldridge, even with their second-half struggles at the big league level. The first baseman has a .837 OPS this season and 22 homers, but the Giants want to see him continue to play every day and work on his command of the strike zone and defense. 

Team officials have no doubts he’ll be the centerpiece of the lineup at Oracle Park one day, but they’re in no rush. At the moment, Eldridge is not expected to be called up in September. 

Posey will get asked about Eldridge every time he meets with the media for the rest of the year and next spring, but thus far he has resisted the temptation to stoke the flames. On the other end, Eldridge said he has leaned on his faith in an effort to manage expectations. He said that belief has given him peace of mind.

“Focusing on controlling what I can control is important,” Eldridge said.  

If the Giants do delay the debut until 2026, it will do nothing to calm the hype. Eldridge will push for an Opening Day job next spring, and if that ends up being the case, he would debut against the New York Yankees in the first game of the MLB season. 

It would be a lot, but it’s also what Eldridge wants.

Eldridge was nine when he homered for the first time, hitting one out to center at his Little League field in Vienna, Va., and he has seemed destined for this point ever since. A lot will be placed on his shoulders whenever he arrives, but it might be nothing compared to the bar Eldridge has set for himself. He said he thinks every day about how he wants to “be the man” in San Francisco and leave the kind of mark on the organization that Posey, Barry Bonds and Willie Mays did. 

“That’s just something that means a lot to me, and staying with the team who drafted me is something that means a lot, too,” he said on “Giants Talk.” “I hope I’m in their plans for the foreseeable future and I think just putting my name up in the talks with those guys as the greats of San Francisco would be a dream come true. That’s just something that is in my head and something that I want to do.”

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There's a youth movement currently going on in the Mets' rotation. 

After Nolan McLean, who burst onto the scene two weeks ago and continued his dominance of MLB hitters with eight shutout innings against the Phillies on Wednesday, the Mets are calling up and starting Jonah Tong on Friday against the Marlins.

Tong, who is Joe DeMayo's No. 2 prospect in the Mets system, has quickly risen through the ranks of the minors, dominating Double-A and Triple-A, forcing the team's hand. 

In 22 minor league starts, Tong has pitched to a 1.43 ERA and 0.92 WHIP, allowing just 20 runs (18 earned) on 58 hits and 47 walks over 113.2 innings while striking out 179 batters. He was promoted to Triple-A Syracuse less than a month ago and in two starts with Syracuse struck out 17 batters in 11.2 shutout innings.

So, what can we expect from Tong on Friday? McLean was asked his thoughts on Tong after his win over the Phillies.

"That kid’s special," he said. "I remember when I first got drafted, I stood in one of those bullpens just to watch. Haven’t seen a fastball like that before. And I know he’s developed three more pitches since then and they are all plus. It’s going to be fun to watch him Friday. Can’t wait to see him."

McLean and Tong were teammates at various levels of the Mets' minor league system and will be again once Tong arrives in Flushing -- so McLean has come to know the 22-year-old flamethrower and what he can do.

When asked to elaborate about Tong's fastball, McLean, who was a two-way player in college for Oklahoma State, gave his perspective as a hitter and why major league batters may have a hard time figuring the youngster out.

"It just gets on you and it was only in the bullpen," McLean explained. "Can’t imagine being a hitter having to face him with the unique delivery he has as well as mid-upper 90s [fastball]."

Major League Baseball will get its first look at Tong's unique delivery and fastball very soon.

"That kid's special."

Nolan McLean talks about Jonah Tong's upcoming MLB debut and how good Tong's fastball is from a hitter's point of view: pic.twitter.com/YjCZmRW8eQ

— SNY (@SNYtv) August 28, 2025

The Phillies entered play Monday with a sizeable seven-game lead in the NL East over the Mets. But after Wednesday's 6-0 win by New York, completing the three-game sweep, the division is now in play.

New York now sits just four games behind the Phillies for first place in the division with four more games against Philadelphia still to be played. But Wednesday's win was also significant in that it improved the Mets' record against the Phillies to 7-2, securing the season series and the tiebreaker in the event of a tie.

But while the Mets are playing the best they've played in some time, winning five of their last six and eight of their last 11, they are keeping the series sweep in perspective. 

"We’re going to continue to take it one day at a time," Carlos Mendoza said after Wednesday's win. "Baseball‘s crazy, everything happens fast here. We have to continue to control the things we can control, and that’s coming in day in and day out with a mission and a purpose. That’s winning ball games. We know we’re good; that’s a good team there. Every game counts. That’s our mentality right now."

The Mets (72-61) still have 29 games to go this season, so there's a lot that can happen between now and the end of the regular season.

But it's hard not to feel something about sweeping the team that you're chasing for the division.

"It gives us some confidence, for sure. But I think that's just what we expect out of ourselves," Mark Vientos said of the sweep. "Feel like we know how great of a team we are and this is just what we do. It’s exciting. Just gotta keep taking it one game at a time."

The young slugger went 2-for-4, extending his hitting streak to 10 games. His two-run shot in the seventh gave the Mets the cushion they needed, and it is the sixth longball he's hit during his current streak. But Vientos is just part of a Mets offense that has been on a hot stretch of late and has helped them close the gap with the Phillies. 

Wednesday was the 12th time Mets hitters recorded double-digit hits over their last 16 games. In 23 games this month, the Mets are batting .281/.358/.491 and are ranked first in the majors over the month in slugging and OPS (.849), are second in batting average, OBP, home runs and runs scored.

They hope to continue that hot hitting and their winning ways when they host the Miami Marlins for a four-game series starting Thursday. The Phillies return home to host the Braves for four games of their own. It's plausible that the Mets could be tied or close to the Phillies in the division by the end of the weekend.

That seemed almost impossible just two weeks ago.