MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL SALARIES: 2011 MLB SALARIES BY TEAM *
| TEAM | TOTAL PAYROLL | AVG SALARY | MEDIAN | STD DEV |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York Yankees | $ 202,689,028 | $ 6,756,300 | $ 2,100,000 | $ 8,468,058 |
| Philadelphia Phils | $ 172,976,379 | $ 5,765,879 | $ 2,625,000 | $ 6,227,550 |
| Boston Red Sox | $ 161,762,475 | $ 5,991,202 | $ 5,500,000 | $ 5,576,432 |
| LA Angels | $ 138,543,166 | $ 4,469,134 | $ 2,000,000 | $ 6,048,494 |
| Chicago White Sox | $ 127,789,000 | $ 4,732,925 | $ 2,750,000 | $ 4,810,687 |
| Chicago Cubs | $ 125,047,329 | $ 5,001,893 | $ 1,600,000 | $ 6,194,469 |
| New York Mets | $ 118,847,309 | $ 4,401,752 | $ 900,000 | $ 6,693,551 |
| SF Giants | $ 118,198,333 | $ 4,377,716 | $ 2,200,000 | $ 4,877,657 |
| Minnesota Twins | $ 112,737,000 | $ 4,509,480 | $ 3,000,000 | $ 5,536,653 |
| Detroit Tigers | $ 105,700,231 | $ 3,914,823 | $ 1,300,000 | $ 5,259,443 |
| St. Louis Cardinals | $ 105,433,572 | $ 3,904,947 | $ 1,000,000 | $ 5,027,807 |
| LA Dodgers | $ 104,188,999 | $ 3,472,966 | $ 2,142,838 | $ 3,631,806 |
| Texas Rangers | $ 92,299,264 | $ 3,182,733 | $ 1,251,000 | $ 4,027,146 |
| Colorado Rockies | $ 88,148,071 | $ 3,390,310 | $ 2,318,750 | $ 4,398,021 |
| Atlanta Braves | $ 87,002,692 | $ 3,346,257 | $ 1,275,000 | $ 4,279,462 |
| Seattle Mariners | $ 86,524,600 | $ 2,884,153 | $ 825,000 | $ 4,414,418 |
| Milwaukee Brewers | $ 85,497,333 | $ 2,849,911 | $ 1,050,000 | $ 3,869,134 |
| Baltimore Orioles | $ 85,304,038 | $ 3,280,924 | $ 1,425,000 | $ 3,237,465 |
| Cincinnati Reds | $ 75,947,134 | $ 2,531,571 | $ 825,000 | $ 3,357,823 |
| Houston Astros | $ 70,694,000 | $ 2,437,724 | $ 467,000 | $ 3,960,818 |
| Oakland Athletics | $ 66,536,500 | $ 2,376,303 | $ 1,400,000 | $ 2,073,296 |
| Washington Nats | $ 63,856,928 | $ 2,201,963 | $ 1,050,000 | $ 2,783,056 |
| Toronto Blue Jays | $ 62,567,800 | $ 2,018,316 | $ 1,200,000 | $ 1,906,416 |
| Florida Marlins | $ 56,944,000 | $ 2,190,153 | $ 545,000 | $ 2,877,071 |
| Arizona D Backs | $ 53,639,833 | $ 1,986,660 | $ 1,000,000 | $ 1,854,261 |
| Cleveland Indians | $ 49,190,566 | $ 1,639,685 | $ 484,200 | $ 2,763,453 |
| San Diego Padres | $ 45,869,140 | $ 1,479,649 | $ 468,800 | $ 1,858,830 |
| Pittsburgh Pirates | $ 45,047,000 | $ 1,553,344 | $ 450,000 | $ 1,880,199 |
| Tampa Bay Rays | $ 41,053,571 | $ 1,578,983 | $ 907,750 | $ 1,570,206 |
| Kansas City Royals | $ 36,126,000 | $ 1,338,000 | $ 850,000 | $ 1,143,503 |
* The above information is available through the USA Today Database oF comparative same industry salaries and does not reflect the recent new uber-dollar contracts for 2012 and beyond to free agents like Albert Pujols and Jose Reyes.
The featured payroll graph for Major League Baseball needs no honest comment from me. If it did, what could I say? I didn’t grow up with those kind of dollars in my daily state of mind nor did I lead a life of gold chains, fast cars, and enough green paper to furnish my house with all the federal reserve note toilet paper I could possibly require.
As East End kids in Houston, we played sandlot ball with a curious combination of economy, loyalty, and wildly passionate love for the game. A taped together baseball thrown and batted around all day by nine guys who all played as Pecan Park Eagles was good enough for us. We didn’t play with the thought that a really good game might earn us a chance to move over to another sandlot team that owned a better baseball, a club that might even spring for a free coke for us late in the day.
We were who we were. Dedicated to winning. Playing for the place that was our home turf. Deflated by the very thought of defeat. Joyous as the image of Roy Hobbs in “The Natural” when we won, but without the exploding sparks of runaway electricity. We lived that image long before it ever hit the pages of a book or screamed at us older men (by then) from the movie theater screen.
Heck. We didn’t just precede Roy Hobbs. We invented him. In each of our minds, hearts, and souls, we were him.
At the end of the day, when the baseball quest was won without a betrayal of loyalty, Roy Hobbs went home to the heartland pastures of middle America to play catch with his newly discovered adolescent son in the most bucolic scene ever written into a movie. He didn’t sign a contract that would carry him on a geriatric track into the twilight under barrels of riches provided by the Los Angeles Angels. He went home to family. He went home to love because that was the discovered path of Roy Hobbs’s loyalty.
Had Roy Hobbs been Albert Pujols, he would still be playing first base for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2012 and keeping alive the heating up debate on the identity of the greatest Cardinal of all time? Stan Musial or Albert Pujols?
The jury on that one is now in. It was never close anyway, but now its certain. As the greatest Cardinal of all time, 90-year old Stan “The Man” Musial is richer in the stuff that determines true wealth than the great player Albert Pujols ever can hope to be. Longer live Stan Musial. He truly is the man.
Lately I’ve needed a few reminders in contemporary sports to remind me that winning at all financial cost is not the most important aim out there, not if it involves investing all your resources in the “rent a bum” method of talent procurement. Even if the “bums” are HOF-talented hobos, if they are just doing it for the money, I could not care less about what they accomplish.
Now I’m bracing for Kevin Sumlin eminently to leave his post as head football coach at the University of Houston for the better paying, more prestigious job as head coach for Texas A&M. If if he does, I don’t really blame him for doing so anymore than I blame Lance Berkman for signing with the Cardinals and then coming back to Houston in 2011 to beat the Astros in the head with his bat. Lance, at least, tried to come home, but the Astros wouldn’t let him. He didn’t fit into their new “pare-the-salaries-down-as-much-as-possible” policy dedication – and that turned out to be the break of Berkman’s career. Today he has a World Series championship ring to show for that door-closing by the Astros.
Maybe I’m just a member of the aging, fading away minority that places too much emphasis on that early sandlot dedication to winning with a level of integrity and loyalty to a common cause that no longer seems to exist in large quantities anywhere in contemporary American culture.
Perhaps, you will be able to look at the graph and find something that should make us want to get more involved in baseball. I don’t see it myself. Too much of my enjoyment is just still too wrapped up in the joy of the Japonica @ Myrtle streets sandlot and the old minor league memories of the Houston Buffs at Buff Stadium.
No matter what happens next, they can’t take that away from me.
Tags: loyalty essay, MLB salaries 2011
The Pecan Park Eagle 
December 10, 2011 at 3:43 pm |
St. Louis was wise to Let Pujols go, they dont need him, put Berkman on first and allow Craig to play right field. I will take heart over braun anyday
December 10, 2011 at 6:48 pm |
Bill, The names of my streets in the East End were different but our memories and ideals are the same. The real “heart” of the game left us a long time ago.
December 10, 2011 at 7:01 pm |
John Miggins is correct. Heart is what won those historic games in last year’s playoffs. The Yanks, Red Sox, Phills , teams with the hightest payrolls in baseball all lost games they should have won , to the last out even to the last strike , the win went to players who had the most heart, money could noy buy a victory it was not an issue in the defeats. Rays , Cards , came from nowhere to capture a chance at the big prize , and heart had a lot to do with it.
The Angels will not be a better team with the signing of Pujols,& TJ Wilson , these two will crater to enormous $$ pressure to succeed, team moral is wasted here for just two rich players.
Now banished to the American League West it will be another long ,long season for our Baby Astros .
December 10, 2011 at 7:04 pm |
Bill, I agree with what you are saying, but I’d be interested to learn if you thought this money-grubbing was any different among Wall Street firms, top software companies, medical/pharmaceutical research, politcal lobbying or any other industry where stakes are high.
December 10, 2011 at 11:04 pm |
Mike:
Thanks for helping me sharpen my point.
No, the money-grubbing and slight of hand and backstabbing is the same in baseball as it is on Wall Street. It wasn’t that way on the sandlots I knew and, now that we really need baseball to stand out from life differently in the “business as usual lane, sadly it does not.
To enjoy baseball today, a fan has to grab hold of of an especially driven club like the Giants of 2010 or the Cardinals of 2011 and try to block out that this other stuff that happens on the business side as you enjoy the ride.
It’s just getting harder to do these days. The fun rides are shorter and the rude awakenings (vis a vis an Albert Pujols-level reminder)
just seem to be colder and harder to take.
Baseball used to be a respite from harsher reality. Now its become the face of self-centered concern for things that have nothing to with the bliss of committed loyalty.
December 11, 2011 at 1:04 am |
Two comments, Bill.
First, John Thorn, MLB’s official historian, reminds us on his blog that players have jumped teams for more money since the beginning of professional baseball. As he points out, that led to formation, in 1876, of the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs. Check out his blog, which I discovered only recently, at http://ourgame.mlblogs.com.
Second, as I commented elsewhere, the Angels should have been reading Bill James before handing Albert all that money. James wrote in his 1982 Baseball Abstract: “Most players are declining by age 30; all players are declining by age 33.” More than 25 years later, he said in an interview with Sports Illustrated that “hitters’ bats die at age 33 . . . [T]here is quite significantly more loss in batting ability at age 33 than at any other age.”
December 11, 2011 at 6:14 pm |
Yes, I agree with John’s points 100%. Of course, if the latter one holds true, it potentially helps the Astros once they start playing the Angels as a division foe. Perhaps Pujols really will turn into a slightly slimmer, less fun-loving Carlos Lee. Ha.
As for these things getting harder to take, 100 years ago some players jumped mid season. That must have been rather tough for the home fans.
December 12, 2011 at 6:23 pm |
Bill
I totally agree. Since my roots were with the Cardinals the days of integrity and willingness to adjust your personal contract in order to stay with the team that established your place in history are gone. With the shocking exit of Albert, who I met when he was rookie in spring training, those days are over. I really thought, after meeting him and keeping up with him throughout his career with the Cardinals that there would be no way he would do what he did. I kept saying he is another Cal Ripkin, or Chipper Jones. I too long for my days in Negro League baseball, and sandlot before that. It was all about the love and nothing about money!
Lefty O’Neal