The 40-man roster payroll for Major League Baseball was 3.85 billion dollars in 2015. With the recent free agent deals signed, it looks like the league will top $4 billion in salary in 2016. Not bad for 1200 players to split.
The 40-man roster payroll for Major League Baseball was 3.85 billion dollars in 2015. With the recent free agent deals signed, it looks like the league will top $4 billion in salary in 2016. Not bad for 1200 players to split.
Its not split very evenly. I think more than half is shared by 200 players (6-7 players per 40 man roster), and the 1000 other players get less than 2 million, with those under team control averaging much less than that.
A 5 year MLB career means about 10 years out of a players lifetime working capacity, almost 25%. Sure, he makes a nice piece of change up front up, but that is in the highest tax brackets so most come out of it with only a couple of million bucks after tax. Then they start another career rather later than most which puts them at a disadvantage and they aren’t stars so cant market their name. It would be interesting to see data on how most players do after their MLB careers. Unlike military veterans nobody will be falling over themselves to hire an MLB veteran.
pft » You make a good point, and in fact MLB players should be banking most of the money they take home for the first few years of their careers, until they have enough invested to generate a decent yearly salary. Don’t buy your mother a house until you get that first arbitration contract, or sign the multi-year extension.