Mark Madden's Hot Take: Even a salary cap couldn't fix the Pirates

MLB needs a salary cap. The payroll imbalance is too great. Four layers of playoffs disguise and dilute the competitive imbalance by adding an element of randomness. But too many teams have zero chance going into a given season.

Or, in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ case, a given decade.

A salary cap wouldn’t fix the Pirates.

A cap is accompanied by a floor. Owner Bob Nutting would spend to the floor, not a penny more. The well-heeled pack would come back to the Pirates, but not nearly enough.

Nutting doesn’t want a salary cap. He won’t lobby for it. The cap floor would be higher than he spends now.

It’s laughable when the usual suspects bleat about the Pirates “freeing up money” via trades and expiring contracts.

There’s no cap. Ergo, you don’t “free up money.” Teams spend as they choose (or choose not to). A team’s budget isn’t the same as a cap. It’s not rigid.

Using such phraseology implies that the Pirates will take money “freed up” and spend it to better the team this coming offseason.

They won’t.

The Pirates will shop at Dollar General, like always.

Anyway, big-time talents don’t want to play in Pittsburgh. The Pirates don’t get in bidding wars, let alone win them. The Pirates are the last-chance saloon for otherwise unemployable slugs.

No adjusting of MLB’s financial structure can save the Pirates from the grifter that owns them.

The Pirates are wasting the best pitcher in MLB.

The ownership has no intent to win, let alone urgency.

If a season is lost while MLB and the players’ union fight over a salary cap, that’s OK. An unused PNC Park would still be beautiful. All drone shows, all the time. Imagine a lengthy residency by the Savannah Bananas. An honest type of clown show.

Bryce Harper should be suspended for menacing Rob Manfred when the MLB commissioner visited Philadelphia’s clubhouse. Harper is a bully and a meathead. Does he think he can intimidate Manfred out of looking to get a salary cap?

Harper is also selfish.

Half of MLB’s players make less than 4% of Harper’s $27.5 million paycheck.

MLB players collect a lower percentage of MLB’s revenues than their peers in the NFL, NBA and NHL.

More than 20% of MLB players make the league minimum of $760,000. That’s a lower minimum salary than the NFL, NBA and NHL pay.

A cap would get more money paid to MLB’s players as a whole. Lower-end players would benefit. But what stars make would get reeled in.

The Major League Baseball Players Association does the opposite of what a union is supposed to do: It protects upper-echelon employees at the expense of the rank and file. Harper isn’t Norma Rae holding up that sign at the factory. If an MLB player gets hurt while performing his job, his pay is guaranteed. Salaries are individually negotiated, not collectively bargained. Job security doesn’t depend on seniority. The union is controlled by the stars and agents.

The salary-cap debate is moot in Pittsburgh. It doesn’t matter.

What happens when the Pirates’ lease at PNC Park expires in 2030 might matter.

Nutting moving the Pirates seems unthinkable, right? It’s unlikely given that he resides in nearby Wheeling, W.Va.

But how could Nutting’s greed possibly be underestimated?