Rockies Tie Up Nationals 8-7

Game two of the Nationals – Rockies series.

Starting pitcher for the Nats is Carson Palmquist. Season stats 0-1, 6.52 ERA.

Starting pitcher for the Rockies is Michael Lorenzen. Season stats 3-9, 6.22 ERA.

Could be quite a few runs in this one.

Washington started off well as Jose Tena singled to center and scored when CJ Abrams smacked his 22nd home run over the center field fence. 2-0 Nationals.

The Rockies got on the board and then some in the bottom of the 2nd. TJ Rumfield walked, Kyle Karros was hit by a pitch, sending Rumfield to 2nd base. Mickey Moniak singled to right, scoring Karros. Karros then scored on a sac fly from Jacob Young. Later in the inning, Jake McCarthy doubled, scoring Moniak. Then Cole Carrigg singled to center, scoring McCarthy. 4-2 Colorado.

The Nationals came right back in the top of the 3rd. Luis Garcia tripled to deep right but was thrown out at the plate when Jose Tena hit a ground ball to the infield. CJ Abrams hit his 2nd home run of the evening, his 23rd, and 3rd of the series, tying the game; Tena scoring ahead of him. 4-4.

Bottom of the 3rd, Willi Castro doubled to center and advanced to 3rd on a ground out off the bat of Luis Garcia. Kyle Karros also grounded out, scoring Castro. 5-4 Rockies.

And here we go again…in the top of the 4th Keibert Ruiz walked and advanced to 2nd on Nasim Nunez’ single to right. James Wood doubled, scoring Nunez and Ruiz. 6-5 Nationals.

In the bottom of the 5th, Hunter Goodman doubled to right and later scored off a single by TJ Rumfield. Game tied 6-6.

The Rockies went back on top in the bottom of the 6th off a home run to right courtesy of Mickey Moniak, his 16th. 7-6 Colorado.

Washington comes right back in the top of the 7th. James Wood doubled to right center. Luis Garcia singled to center, sending Wood to 3rd base. Wood then scored off a sac fly to left from Jorbit Vivas. Back to even…7-7.

Bottom of the 8th, 2 outs, no one on base, and wham, a home run off the bat of the Rockies’ All-Star Hunter Goodman, his 31st. 8-7 Colorado.

And the Nationals go down 1-2-3 in the top of the 9th, game over. Back to .500 at 51 wins and 51 loses. Game 3 tomorrow at 11:10 ET.

Dave’s Dime…Salary Cap, anyone?

Major League owners recently proposed a salary cap for the 2027 season. The MLB Players Association is strongly opposed to this proposition. I sense trouble ahead.

Major League Baseball is the only major sports organization that doesn’t currently have a salary cap. The NFL, NBA, and NHL all have a salary cap that is basically in place in an effort to maintain a competitive balance. Teams have the same amount of funds available for salaries and benefits, staff and coaching operations, and stadium maintenance. The NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement guarantees 48% of total league revenues to be used for players’ salaries. Total NFL gross revenue for the 2025 season was $14.5 billion. That left approximately $7 billion for those huge salaries. Not too shabby.

As an example, each NFL team had a gross revenue of more than $450 million for the 2025 season. Most of this was due to the lucrative media deals that are shared among the franchises. That same model of shared media revenue is used in the NBA and NHL. That’s part of what makes a salary cap possible. Teams in these leagues have close to the same amount of money with which to operate.

This shared revenue process is not in operation as far as Major League Baseball is concerned. Each team makes its own deals with their local city media entities. This varies greatly from team to team. Revenue is also earned through streaming and radio, gate receipts, concessions and parking, National TV media, sponsorships, and licensing,

However, there actually is a little bit of revenue sharing in MLB due to high-revenue teams contributing a percentage of their earnings into a central pool that is evenly distributed to lower revenue earning franchises. This is known as “the luxury tax.”

So, because Major League Baseball does not share its revenue from media rights, there is a large discrepancy between how much the top teams earn per year and those from the bottom. For example:

Top Five Revenue Earners in 2025 in millions of dollars:

New York Yankees 705M

Los Angeles Dodgers 701M

San Francisco Giants 533M

Chicago Cubs 528M

Philadelphia Phillies 528M

Bottom Five Revenue Earners in 2025

Oakland A’s 275M

Miami Marlins 296M

Tampa Bay Rays 304M

Chicago White Sox 315M

Washington Nationals 316M

This is why some teams are able to spend large amounts of money on signing the top free agents every off-season while other teams are unable to do so.

Players see a salary cap as limiting their options as far as teams that will sign them because of this discrepancy in team revenue. The only way to make a salary cap work in the MLB is if it; as well as the NFL, NBA, and NHL, have sufficient revenue sharing.

This issue is way more complicated than the little bit of info I’ve shared with you today. Do some research and see what you think. What we fans don’t want to happen is a lockout before the 2027 season begins due to this possible conflict. We need to start working on this now.

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