(In an interview after the trade, Skubal said that he still hoped Detroit would make him an offer in the off-season. With every superstar the Dodgers add, the more attractive they become to other superstars. But this framing, in which a salary cap is a tool in the fight against the M.L.B. Owners pitched a salary cap once before, in the summer of 1994. “Our union has never been broken, and never will be,” Bruce Meyer, the interim director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, said in June.