Salaries are obscene, unless your team benefits
MLB is paying its players lavishly — and the economics support it
 Ted S. Warren / AP file Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, 26, has great stuff, including a specialty pitch called a 'gyroball' that bends like a screwball and sizzles like a slider. |
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Ask any American what’s wrong with the game of baseball, and the issue of runaway salaries is more likely than not to top the list.
Unless, of course, it’s your own team handing out the money. Then it’s simply a prudent investment.
That’s why the news that the Red Sox are prepared to spend something along the lines of $100 million for a guy who’s never thrown a pitch in the major leagues didn’t exactly plunge Boston fans into fits of despair. On the contrary, they would be dancing on top of the Green Monster right now if they could.
Let the Kansas City Royals or Minnesota Twins worry about skyrocketing salaries and competitive imbalance. The Red Sox have an evil empire to conquer.
Besides, look around this week at the general managers’ meetings in Florida. The price of entry to the 2007 season is getting a whole lot higher.
Daisuke Matsuzaka will end up costing the Red Sox some $20 million to $25 million a year when he’s finally signed in the coming weeks. The hated Yankees, meanwhile, will counter by spending just about the same amount of money per season for Mike Mussina.
Outfielder J.D. Drew walked away from the final three years and $33 million of his contract with the Dodgers, certain he would get more on the open market. There’s little doubt he will, despite the feeling in Los Angeles that he was a chronic underachiever who wouldn’t play if he had the sniffles.
The New York Mets gave a deal worth $12 million to Orlando Hernandez, a 41-year-old who has lost as many games as he has won the last two seasons — average, by anyone’s standards. And the bidding for Alfonso Soriano has barely begun.
“It sounds like a lot of clubs this year have spending ability that they haven’t had in years past,” said San Diego general manager Kevin Towers.
Sure does. But if astronomical salaries bother you — and a recent AP-AOL poll showed fans think baseball has no bigger problem than skyrocketing salaries — maybe it’s time to switch to another sport.
Like it or not, baseball is a rich man’s game.
The owners are rich, and the players are rich. Even the clubhouse attendants are doing pretty well.
The sport is awash in cash flowing in from new television deals, and the 75 million people who paid their way to see a game last season. Baseball has even managed to do what other sports merely dream of — find a way to make big bucks by charging fans to watch or listen to games on the Internet.
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