Cubs News: Free agent salaries are bigger than ever |
The economic status of baseball may be possible, at best, as it has ever been since the latest collective bargaining agreement. This offseason alone has seen nine MLB free agents receive contracts that will pay them over 100 million dollars. Of those nine, four players will make 200 million dollars, and two will make 300 million dollars. Eight players will make at least 25 million dollars per year, four at least 30 million dollars per year, and two will receive over 40 million dollars per year.
That is just from this offseason alone. Across the entire MLB, a whopping 30 players are making at least 25 million per year, a historic 17 players are making at least 30 million per year, and a record three players will be making 40 million this season. Of the 25 most significant contracts in MLB history, over 20 players who received them are still playing or on those contracts. The point is, there are vast amounts of money going around — and almost every team is participating. Only four teams have never dished out a contract worth over 100 million dollars (White Sox, Royals, A's, and Pirates). And, of all 30 teams, only seven players who have received their franchises' most significant contract are either off their respective teams or retired. There are a lot of MLB players who are richer than ever, and the game is at its healthiest when its best players are getting paid. After COVID-19 hamstrung a lot of teams financially and forced a lot of teams to make cost-cutting moves, we are back at a financial place in the game that appears to be extremely healthy. While natural economic inflation can be attributed to the fact that contracts are up league-wide, gas prices, grocery prices, AND MLB contracts are higher than ever — some additional external factors need to be mentioned. MLB teams are making more money than ever, and their franchises are worth more than ever. With fans back in the stands, each team is profiting and profiting like never before. Ticket prices, parking, jerseys, hats, t-shirts, waters, beers, hot dogs, and pizzas are all higher than ever before — and if fans are forced to pay more, they should be able to see their team make their best effort to win, and that often comes by spending large amounts of money on getting good players to play on your team. First, the league raised the luxury tax threshold, meaning teams can spend more money. Plus, the league's new collective bargaining agreement has increased many of these numbers. In the past, a lot of times, smaller market teams were tentative to make a large splash contractually because it would eat up such a large part of their allowed amount of money to spend without getting penalized — this encourages every team to spend more, as does the competitive balance tax put in place and the draft lottery to make tanking less appealing and yield penalties. All of this should lead to more teams trying to win, and now with the MLB's expanded playoffs; more spots are available to play in October — all of this also points to good signs in the overall health of a thought-to-be dwindling sport's popularity. The MLB seems to have gotten over the significant hurdle that COVID-19 caused both financially and physically — and as a result, MLB appears to be its healthiest economically and socially in quite some time.
