In 2021 the median household income in the US was $79,900.

In 2021 the average income of a Major League Baseball player was $4.17 million, with the highest being Angels future Hall of Famer Mike Trout at $37,116,667.

Although it may be difficult for the average person to wrap their head around the amount of money a person makes to play a game, the thing to keep in mind and in perspective is that at any given time during a regular baseball season, there are only 25 players on the active roster of each of the 30 MLB teams. That’s a total of 750 players in the entire world – a world with an estimated population of 7.9 billion people.

As a basis of comparison, Babe Ruth, the single greatest player of all time (Mike Trout notwithstanding), made a total of $856,850 over his 22-year Major League career.

As of this writing, MLB team owners have offered the MLB Players Association a new five-year Collective Bargaining Agreement minimum salary contract of:

2022: $640,000
2023: $650,000
2024: $660,000
2025: $670,000
2026: $680,000

The MLBPA countered with a new five-year CBA minimum salary contract of:

2022: $775,000
2023: $805,000
2024: $835,000
2025: $865,000
2026: $895,000

Even at MLB’s first-year amount of $640,000, that’s more than half a million dollars ($561,000 to be exact) than the average American made in 2021.

But getting back to that 750 players in the entire world thing. On Thursday evening, Dodgers All-Star right-hander Walker Buehler posted this on Twitter regarding the current snag in MLB/MLBPA negotiations:

Moments later, he followed that tweet up with this one:

Regardless of which side of this argument you are on and despite the insane amounts of money involved, the very bottom line is that if we want to continue to enjoy America’s National pastime, MLB must ‘pay the man.’

Play Ball!

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