A salary floor would be a big part of it.

The real question is would the owners agree to a floor. In the NFL and NBA, the cap is ~50% of per-team league-projected revenue, and the floor is ~90% of the cap. The MLB is right about $12 billion in revenue, or $400 million/team. That equates to a $200 million cap and a $180 million floor, if we're going off other leagues.

10 teams spent above $200 million on their 40-man roster this year. The average amount those teams are over the theoretical cap is $58.4 million; however, that is skewed by the Dodgers and Yankees being way over. If you take those two teams out, that drops the average amount over down to $43.5 million.

On the flip side, the other 20 teams spent below $180 million on their 40-man roster this year. Seven of those teams are within $30 million of hitting the floor, but the other 13 teams average $80 million under. Miami, Cleveland, and Tampa Bay would need to increase spending by $100 million to get to that number.

Bringing the high spending teams down to the cap would reduce salary to players by $583.9 million, but bringing the low spenders up to the floor would increase salary out to players by $1.128 billion. The star players would come out worse, but it would significantly increase salary for the bulk of players.

That's a very basic approach to a cap and floor. Unlike other professional sports, MLB has a robust minor league system (for now) where a lot of additional spending is used. Could some of that be used to offset the floor? Maybe. We could also have a larger gap between cap and floor and how it's calculated.

Setting aside the cap/floor discussion, there are still things like shared TV revenue (the Dodgers have a unicorn deal), international draft, years of service before free agency, etc.

Manfred starting discussions with both sides earlier is a positive at least. He does have a labor and employment law background as well, which might be another positive.