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If you can make it that far, professional baseball may be a profitable career. The MLB has had tremendous financial success in recent decades, and as a result, player compensation has skyrocketed. The top players in the game now earn upwards of $35 million each year. Every year!
Although $300 million contracts are becoming the standard in baseball, no current star is the highest-paid MLB player. So, who does it, and how much do they make?
Five players have earned more than $250 million in the MLB
Even though $300 million contracts are being handed out like candy, just five players in MLB history have earned more than $250 million. Three of them were longtime New York Yankees, which came as no surprise.
CC Sabathia ranks fifth in lifetime earnings with $264.8 million. Sabathia signed with the Yankees after spending the first eight years of his career with the Milwaukee Brewers and the Cleveland Indians, and he earned over $200M in NY. However, he announced his retirement at the end of the 2019 season.
Derek Jeter, Sabathia’s longtime colleague, is ranked fourth with $266.2 million. He worked in New York his whole career, yet he never earned more than $27 million in a single year.
Miguel Cabrera becomes the first non-Yankee to make the top five. He’s made over $250M in the Major League Baseball, and he’s just getting started. He is also still expected to cash in more than $100 million in the next five years.
The second ranked is Albert Pujols, with lifetime earnings of $298.5 million. Pujols, like Cabrera, is still going strong in the league. In 2021, he is owed another $30 million.
MLB player all time highest paid player is Alex Rodriguez.
Predictably, Alex Rodriguez is the top player in MLB history, and it isn’t even close. Rodriguez amassed a staggering $450 million in earnings throughout his career. No other MLB player has ever earned more than $300 million.
Rodriguez earned more money with the Yankees alone ($339.9 million) than any other player in MLB history. Before it, he made $110 million with the Texas Rangers and the Seattle Mariners.
Rodriguez is not just the highest-paid MLB player in history. He is also the top paid athlete in American team baseball history. The player was paid more than any baseball, basketball, or football player had ever been paid. By 2030, Mike Trout will have surpassed Alex Rodriguez in terms of lifetime earnings.
Mike Trout is expected to sign a contract that would span across a 12 year period. The contract would be worth a stunning $430 million with the Los Angeles Angels.
$430,000,000.00
a yearly salary of $35,833,333
a monthly payment of $2,986,111
Weekly salary of $746,527
The daily rate is $106,656.
a salary of $4,443 per hour
74 cents per minute
$1.23 per second
Rodriguez may have a sizable lead over second place in career earnings, but that is about to change. Mike Trout has agreed to 12-year contract valued at close to half a billion dollars which would push him to the MLB all time highest paid by the year 2030.
Although Mike Trout is not alone here. After earning $300-plus million contracts, Gerrit Cole, Manny Machado, Giancarlo Stanton, Bryce Harper, and others have the opportunity to catch Rodriguez.
The rules of the game are constantly evolving, even so is the pay changing. So, A-Rod, keep an eye on your back. Your record will not be protected for long.
Conclusion – The average MLB player salary is down 4.8%
From the start of the entire previous season in 2019, the average major league wage fell 4.8 percent to a little under $4.17 million on opening day. According to an Associated Press survey of big league contracts, the average had dropped 6.4 percent since the start of the 2017 season, when it peaked at $4.45 million. The wage decline is just another indicator that baseball is on the verge of labor conflict and a potential work stoppage in 2022. The fall has hit baseball’s middle class the worst.
The average salary – the point at which an equivalent number of players earn more or less — is $1.15 million, a reduction of 18 percent from $1.4 million two years ago and a decline of 30% from the record high of $1.65 million at the start of 2015.
Of the 902 players on opening-day rosters, 417 (62%) earned less than $1 million, with 316 (35%) earning less than $600,000.
The 50 highest-paid players get 33.4 percent of total wages, up from 28.6 percent in 2017, while the top 100 earn 52.4 percent, up from 42.5 percent in 2017.
Trevor Bauer of the Los Angeles Dodgers is the highest-paid player in 2021, earning $38 million after signing a three-year, $102 million contract that he may opt-out of after one season. Mike Trout, an outfielder of the Los Angeles Angels comes in at the 2nd place in league with $37.1 million, Gerrit Cole, the Yankees pitcher is following closely at $36 million.
For more on baseball, read.
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