Matthew Coller looks at salary inflation in baseball and concludes that Rusty Greer and Paul O’Neill would be $100 million ballplayers today.

You’re telling me Rusty Greer would have gotten paid $126 million had he hit the open market in 2010? Nah, he would have made more. When ole Rusty posted those numbers, he was younger than Werth (age 27) and hit more doubles in the three-year span with around the same number of homers. Sadly for Greer, Werth will be making more at age 38 than the long-time Ranger made in his entire career. As for Buhner, Lankford, O’Neil and Bonilla, well, all their power numbers were significantly higher than Werth’s and had similar or better defensive numbers.

The rest of baseball is finally catching up to Alex Rodriguez‘s two contracts. In the decade prior to that deal, players constantly leapfrogged the previous high contract, at least on a per-year basis. Alex’s contract was so out of line that it’s taken this long for other players to start to catch up. It’s finally happening.