CLEARWATER, Fla. — There is a possibility, while unlikely, that there won’t be baseball in 2027. Will there be a salary cap? A salary floor? Both? Right now, there is not a clear picture of what’s coming in Major League Baseball — or when. The disagreement surrounds payrolls ac ross the game. The Phillies carry the fourth-highest luxury tax payroll in the league at just under $312 million, and it’s unclear how grandfathered money might factor into a potential salary cap structure. So they got ahead of the chaos. On Sunday, the Phillies and Jesús Luzardo agreed to a five-year, $135 million extension covering the 2027 through 2031 seasons. He will make $11 million this season in his third and final arbitration year. Luzardo is just 28 and won’t turn 29 until September. Age is a central reason the Phillies felt urgency. If he goes out and posts another 32-start campaign with a sub-3.50 ERA, he could have commanded north of $30 million annually on the open market. The collective bargaining agreement is the backdrop to everything here. The current agreement expires after 2026, and a work stoppage — lockout, strike, or otherwise — would push the next season to 2028. If that happens, Luzardo would be knocking on 30 when the next season began. That’s exactly the age most free-agent starting pitchers, especially left-handers, hit the open market. The window to sign him at a relative discount was now, not next winter. If a salary cap is implemented and the Phillies are up against it, they would not have been as strong a suitor. Locking him up now eliminated that risk. There would have been significant competition for Luzardo regardless. A cap-and-floor system — the structure most likely to bridge the gap between players and owners — would have forced smaller-market teams to spend up, making him an even hotter commodity. The foundation for this deal was laid long before Monday. When Dave Dombrowski acquired Luzardo from Miami in December 2024, trading top-five infield prospect Starlyn Caba and outfielder Emaarion Boyd, the southpaw was coming off a season-ending back injury with an ERA north of six. It was a calculated bet on talent and upside. A healthy 2025 validated it. Luzardo made a team-leading 32 starts for the second time in his career, went 15-7 with a 3.92 ERA, threw a career-high 183 2/3 innings and struck out 216. He finished seventh in NL Cy Young voting. His season wasn’t without turbulence. A stretch of pitch-tipping produced back-to-back disastrous starts — 20 earned runs in 5 2/3 innings. Remove those outings and he pitched to a 3.03 ERA in 30 starts. Once the issue was identified and corrected, Luzardo closed the year with a 2.84 ERA over his final 11 starts. That version of the pitcher is what the Phillies are buying. The Luzardo deal also further validates the decision to pass on Ranger Suárez in free agency this past winter. Suárez landed five years and $130 million with Boston, yet has never made 30 starts in a season or eclipsed 160 innings. Luzardo has cleared 175 innings twice and made 32 starts in each of those campaigns. The Phillies chose the more durable pitcher at $5 million more total. That’s a reasonable trade-off. The financial picture works, too. Nick Castellanos ($19.2 million) and Taijuan Walker ($18 million) come off the books after this season, freeing up roughly $37 million. The $16 million annual increase in Luzardo’s value will be easier to absorb in that context. What has allowed the Phillies to keep investing in starting pitching year after year? In part, one of the sharper trades and extensions in recent memory. Cristopher Sánchez was acquired from Tampa Bay in 2019 for prospect Curtis Mead, who has appeared in just 152 big-league games and hit .238. Sánchez’s hot start to 2024 earned him a four-year, $22.5 million extension buying out his final pre-arbitration year and three arbitration seasons at just over $5 million annually, with club options for 2029 ($14 million) and 2030 ($15 million). A bargain for a Cy Young-caliber pitcher that created the room to keep spending. Looking ahead, Wheeler’s deal expires after the 2027 season, the end of his three-year, $120 million. With Luzardo now signed through 2031, he joins Trea Turner and Bryce Harper as the three players under contract that far out. The roster construction beyond Wheeler’s departure will look very different, and the next CBA — which will likely span longer than the 2021 agreement — will shape how that money is distributed. The next domino worth watching is closer Jhoan Duran, one year away from his own contract year. A work stoppage could delay those conversations or accelerate them. The Phillies may choose to act sooner rather than later. For now, the Luzardo extension is the statement. If he continues to take the ball every five days and pitches to his ceiling, this deal could age as one of the more cost-efficient contracts on the books for a club that has never shied away from spending. There’s a great unknown hanging over the sport heading into 2027. One thing is certain, though. Jesús Luzardo will be in red pinstripes. ...read more read less