I mean, I understand what you are saying, and it's got a real 'workers should own the means of production' vibe to it, but what you described isn't some weird hypothetical counterfactual, it's happening every day in our capitalist society.
For the last 40 years or so productivity levels have increased without workers taking home a proportional share of the gains, its why you see so many stories about executive pay and wealth inequality, etc.. No one stops working because that's not an option for basically anyone. When my company increased revenues last year, we didn't all get raises, because that's profit sharing or employee ownership, not a normal labor market practice. When companies can increase production and reduce costs by automating jobs, that's all increased profit, and they can actually pay workers less because there is now a greater supply of people looking for the remaining jobs.
Now because they are unionized and specialized, baseball players could strike, but that's the whole point, it would require collective action, not JDM sitting out the season.