Philadelphia Phillies star Bryce Harper stood nose to nose with Rob Manfred during a meeting between the Major League Baseball commissioner and the team last week, telling him to “get the f— out of our clubhouse” if Manfred wanted to talk about the potential implementation of a salary cap, sources told ESPN on Monday.
The confrontation came in a meeting — one of the 30 that Manfred conducts annually in an effort to improve his relations with every team’s players — that lasted more than an hour. While Manfred never explicitly said the words “salary cap,” sources said, the discussion about the game’s economics raised the ire of Harper, one of MLB’s most influential players and a two-time National League MVP.
Ahead of the expiration of the collective-bargaining agreement between MLB and the MLB Players Association on Dec. 1, 2026, multiple owners have stumped for a salary cap in MLB, the only major men’s North American sport without one. The MLBPA vehemently opposes a cap, which it argues serves more as a tool to increase franchise values than to lessen the game’s large disparity between high- and low-spending teams.
Quiet for the majority of the meeting, Harper, sitting in a chair and holding a bat, eventually grew frustrated and said if MLB were to propose a cap and hold firm to it, players “are not scared to lose 162 games,” sources in the meeting told ESPN. Harper stood up, walked toward the middle of the room, faced up to Manfred and said: “If you want to speak about that, you can get the f— out of our clubhouse.”
Manfred, sources said, responded that he was “not going to get the f— out of here,” saying it was important to talk about threats to MLB’s business and ways to grow the game.
Before the situation further intensified, veteran outfielder Nick Castellanos tried to defuse the tension, saying: “I have more questions.” The meeting continued, and Harper and Manfred eventually shook hands, sources said, though Harper declined to answer phone calls from Manfred the next day.
“It was pretty intense, definitely passionate,” Castellanos told ESPN. “Both of ’em. The commissioner giving it back to Bryce and Bryce giving it back to the commissioner. That’s Harp. He’s been doing this since he was 15 years old. It’s just another day. I wasn’t surprised.”
When reached by ESPN, Harper declined comment. Manfred declined comment through a league spokesman.
Though he has not been outspoken on labor issues in previous years, the 32-year-old Harper, who is represented by agent Scott Boras, personified the union’s perspective on the prospect of a capped system. At the All-Star Game in Atlanta earlier this month, MLBPA executive director Tony Clark called salary caps “institutionalized collusion” and in a February interview with ESPN said: “We always have been and continue to be ready to talk about ways to improve the industry, and we do a lot of things with the league to do exactly that. You don’t need a salary cap to grow the industry.”
The meeting with the Phillies — some previous details of which had been reported by The Bandwagon — covered a wide variety of topics, sources said, but CBA negotiations, and the potential consequences of them, loomed large. The specter of a potential work stoppage going into the 2027 season has hovered over the game since 2022, when the parties agreed to a five-year labor deal that ended a 99-day lockout by the owners.
“Rob seems to be in a pretty desperate place on how important it is to get this salary cap because he’s floating the word lockout two years in advance of our collective bargaining agreement [expiration],” Castellanos said. “That’s nothing to throw around. That’s the same thing as me saying in a marriage, ‘I think divorce is a possibility. It’s probably going to happen.’ You don’t just say those things.”
Though Manfred has not committed to pursuing a salary cap, multiple owners have criticized MLB’s current economic system and alluded to a cap as a panacea directly (Baltimore‘s David Rubenstein) and indirectly (Boston‘s John Henry, Pittsburgh‘s Bob Nutting and the New York Yankees‘ Hal Steinbrenner). Manfred’s regard of lockouts as a tool in negotiations further agitates players.
Manfred began holding regular meetings with teams in the aftermath of the 2022 negotiations, having said in their aftermath that “one of the things I’m supposed to do is promote a good relationship with our players. I’ve tried to do that. I have not been successful in that.”
Despite the efforts, distrust in Manfred among players remains — particularly when discussing economic issues.
MLB’s desire for a salary cap dates back decades. The players’ strike in 1994 that canceled the World Series was in direct response to the league’s efforts to move to a capped system. Some of the same talking points used by MLB in the 1990s — particularly about the lack of profitability of teams amid an environment that has seen immense growth in franchise value and revenue — have re-emerged in recent years.
“In the back of our heads, we’re like, why are you talking to us like owning a baseball team is like owning a nail salon?” Castellanos said. “That you’re only going to be a functional business if you can make up the money that you put in this year?”
Players on multiple teams told ESPN they have used meetings with Manfred to press him on the lack of payroll spending by certain teams. Going into this season, the gap between luxury-tax payrolls of the highest-spending team (the Los Angeles Dodgers at more than $400 million) and lowest spending (the Miami Marlins at just under $86 million) raised ire among fans and made salary caps a far bigger part of the rhetoric surrounding the game than in previous years.
Public discussion has done little to alter the opinions of players on a cap. The benefit of meeting with Manfred, Castellanos said, is to better understand the league’s perspective on a business that made more than $12 billion in revenue last year. With the league aiming to nationalize local television rights by 2028 and the growth of gambling and other ancillary businesses, Castellanos believes education is vital to ensuring a well-informed player population.
“We don’t really know that much about it,” Castellanos said. “It’s not like somebody is teaching us about this conglomerate of Major League Baseball that we, the players, make up, make possible. There’s no players, there’s no Major League Baseball. I don’t believe Rob Manfred is evil. I don’t believe the owners are evil. I don’t believe any of that.
“Nobody wants a work stoppage in baseball. Not the players, not the league.”
