The luxury tax became a salary cap in disguise and the Red Sox teardown is the proof
The competitive balance tax was sold as a soft deterrent, a small penalty for the biggest spenders to help keep the league balanced. In practice the big-market teams now treat the first tax threshold like a hard ceiling they refuse to cross, which means baseball has quietly backed into a salary cap without ever calling it that or giving the players anything in return. When a franchise with the revenue of the Red Sox starts shedding salary and talking about staying under the line, you know the incentive has flipped from spend to win into manage to a number. Fans of big clubs used to be able to count on ownership simply outspending their problems. Those days are mostly gone. [VDG Sports' luxury-tax explainer](https://vdgsports.com/mlb-luxury-tax-explained-threshold-competitive-balance-tax/) covers exactly how teams behave around the threshold. Call it what it actually is.