The average MLB salary went up to $3.1 million in 2011. The players making the most money, however, are also the most one-dimensional:
Among regulars at positions, designated hitters took over as the highest average at $9.3 million, followed by first basemen at $8.9 million. With the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez spending time on the disabled list and failing to play 100 games at third base, that position’s average dropped from $6.5 million to $5.2 million.
The problem with this is that a regular at a position is considered one with 100 games played at that position. There are not many regular designated hitters:
| Designated Hitter | Games | Plate Appearances | Batting Average | On Base Percentage | Slugging Percentage |
| Johnny Damon | 135 | 596 | 0.263 | 0.328 | 0.433 |
| Victor Martinez | 112 | 466 | 0.340 | 0.393 | 0.511 |
| David Ortiz | 135 | 590 | 0.314 | 0.403 | 0.561 |
| Vladimir Guerrero | 137 | 582 | 0.292 | 0.320 | 0.421 |
| Bobby Abreu | 108 | 462 | 0.247 | 0.345 | 0.345 |
| Hideki Matsui | 110 | 462 | 0.248 | 0.306 | 0.375 |
| Billy Butler | 142 | 618 | 0.299 | 0.367 | 0.465 |
A better measure would be salary per plate appearance for position players. I’m guessing DH would take a big hit in that case.
I think War and salary comparisons are the best. A designated hitter would obviously have a 0 D-WAR, meaning they would need to be better than above replacement fielders at batting to be worth the same salary. Of course, below replacement fielders would be worth less than DH’s
I’m kind of surprised that the other one-dimensional players, pitchers, were that low at $4.9m.
@Joseph J Finn: There’s a lot of pitchers, many who make the major league minimum, so it brings the average down (although I’d be curious what the “regular” criteria is for pitchers). On the other hand, there aren’t that many “regular” DHs and they don’t tend to be young, cheap players, so the average is higher.
It’s a shame that they lumped all the outfielders together. I wonder if there’s much difference between the three positions.