For a Mike Trout, M.L.B. Flaunts Its Wealth. Average Players Reap Austerity.

Recent rule changes in MLB have been a disaster. Tightening the strike zone, done to theoretically add offence, has done the opposite. Hitting is worse. Great hitters are great because they can hit bad pitches. In other words, they're capable of making chicken soup out of chicken-you-know-what. Weak hitters walk less; and the game speeds up. Games now drag on and on. Stepping out/off happens on nearly every blessed pitch. Instant replay, who cares? Beating your opponent and the umpire used to be one measure of greatness. Leave it to the umpires; dump K-Zone. The mound used to be higher, yet Williams hit 400; Bob Gibson hardly ever started a pitch in the strike zone, yet Mays and Aaron hit home runs off him. LEAVE the game alone; it's perfect. Leave stage-managing on-field competition to the NFL. Improve league economics through modest expansion; and be sure to demand great parks and memorable uniforms. The game has pageantry; use it. Adding pitchers through expansion, this alone will fix chronic poor hitting.

Mr. Trout may be overpaid in the eyes of many,but his talent is unique and fills the seats on game day Overpaid chief executives appearing before congress make more than Mr Trout. We need only look to Wells Fargo to see overpaid ineptitude in action.

Foregoing reading the article and submitting my non-sympathy for the "middle class" of pro baseball. Whatever that is.

I agree the players should get as much as they are able as the owners make massive amounts and for years before free agency didn't have to pay players anything close to their value. Of course, parts of the large salaries and owners' wealth are due to the fact that in many places it was city and state funds that got the new stadiums built so much of that money is essentially being paid with taxpayers' money. Trout, Harper, Machado and others receiving the huge contracts are not dumb and have to know that what they receive will limit the amount of money left over to pay other players to build a winning team. There is no salary cap in baseball but there is the overage tax that most teams prefer to avoid.

What an outrageous, ludicrous amount of money for Mike Trout. Take a look: if he plays every single game for each season of the 12 years, he'll be getting paid about $220,000 per game. Think of it...for every game of the 12 year run...a total of approximately 1950 games...he makes $220,000 for each and every one of those games. Umm, that's about $25,000 per inning or $8300 per out...every game...every inning...every out. That's every pop out, every grounder, every strikeout, some hits here and there...this is for each of the 162 games per season, for each of his 12 years. On top of that, he won't play every game. He'll get to rest a bit, and likely have some nagging injuries that keeps him off the field for a time, and likely his career ends or is significantly diminished well before the 12 year run. To use a term of art, this is nuts. Going back to the days of Roberto Clemente, I think he was making $25,000 a year. Yogi Berra had to work at a beer distributorship in the off season to pay the bills. Players who make astronomical sums of money destroy the spirit and the fun of the game.

Finally, an article that comes close to describing how MLB's market for free agents have evolved. I was amazed at how bad most of the articles (in a broad array of publications) about free agency have been over the last 5 months. A fee "solutions" I might propose would be sharing a significantly higher proportion of TV revenues across all the teams in the league and reducing the years of service before free agency to 5 (although that would help player salaries, it could negatively impact the smaller market teams it was supposed to protect).

So who goes to see these stars? The price of admission is now verging on being unaffordable for most people. And didn't the Angels learn from their contract with Pujols? I understand that baseball is part of the entertainment industry and there is no limit to those salaries. It's not just sports but symphony concerts, opera, and museums are getting to the point where families have to think is this possible. Good luck to us all.

Statistics and analytics have allowed clubs to better value their players. Is it worth 10M a year to play someone who will at best have a GWAR of one or two games? So you go with younger players, who aren't going to be that much different than what you get from veteran players. Who also have a tendency to get hurt and break down. Baseball contracts are guaranteed unlike NFL or NBA contracts so teams will have significant losses if they sign players for long term contracts and they get hurt or they don't perform. And because baseball doesn't have revenue sharing like the NFL and NBA only a few teams can bid for marquee players. And if you can't get one of those getting players from the scrap heap isn't going to help you .

“I think the owners are manipulating the system to their advantage,” Welcome to the harsh realities of capitalism. The owners aren't manipulating anything, they are just doing what smart business owners do- manage their money, employees and staff resourcefully. Welcome to the real world, MLB players. its the 10/90 theory all over again. 10% are making 90% of the wealth, the remaining 10% divvied up among 90% of the lower middle class. glad the players are finally get a taste of working class America.

Baseball is clearly under paying cause they are choosing not to be competitive. Look at my dream, the Braves. New stadium, new network on the way, revenue up and young players on the cusp. Yet their payroll is less than 2018. That's choosing not to compete.

I have been a baseball fan all my life, apparently part of a vanishing breed if the reports are to be believed. I still remember when $100,000 contracts were an aberration. Since that time the players have gained the right to free agency and journeyman players now make far more, all the while avoiding the imposition of the salary cap that exists in every other major sport. The development of advanced metrics has enabled teams to more accurately evaluate player value and perhaps predict future performance. The overall result of this is that teams have begun paying for future rather than past value. This seems completely rational, if revolutionary, and the notion that this somehow constitutes collusion or discrimination completely escapes me. Ultimately, these guys are getting paid a staggering amount of money to play a kid's game.

There are always unanticipated consequences with negotiated labor agreements in sports given that it is relatively easy to identify which players truly make a difference. Most of the union membership consists of players who don't. What I don't understand is why this majority doesn't exert its voting power within the union, cap salaries on the few difference makers and spread the wealth among everyone else so that owners don't have the incentive to do exactly what makes sense under the existing labor agreement - replace mediocre older players with younger, cheaper talent.

Isn't that the way it should be, especially in a meritocracies like professional sports leagues? The fact is, most players on a given MLB roster are fairly replaceable...probably only 20-30% contribute meaningfully to making their teams better.

These players will do nothing to better the life of anyone on earth with their sport (though they may channel some money to a foundation, which, as far as I can tell, is started to assuage the guilt from making so much money). The best way to understand these sports is that they are purely entertainment. Ability is hyped to a degree that is absurd. But they hype has to be paid for so we get a few people being paid nearly half a billion. No way on earth they are worth that in terms of winning games, but the hype makes it seem fans MUST see them. It is pretty much insanity, especially to those of us who pay no attention to these sports and whose lives are not affected one iota whether they are played or not.

"There are several dynamics at work in the sport, where huge wealth still flows to the best of the best, while there is less money left over for the so-called middle class, despite continuing growth in baseball’s revenues." It sounds like what's been happening in American society as a whole.

My reaction to the massive salaries is sadness, the game is moving further away from the average person, there is less and less sense of "our team".

If the fans had to pay for all this, it wouldn't happen. But we subsidize the stadiums, we pay, in our product purchases, the advertising costs that support the media that show us the "free" games on television and radio, including the costs of clicking on a sports article on the internet - sponsored there by an advertiser who shows you an ad and pays for every click. We have no way to add up these costs. They are hidden fees that, in essence, overprice just about everything we buy. And the money we pay these great athletes isn't just about their teams winning games - no single athlete can be so responsible for wins and losses. It's more about star power and image, and how fans are prone to worship heroes. That star power, especially when promoted (for example with such a gaudy contract) is a real money-maker for the teams, the advertisers, the media - you could say for the entire market conspiracy. The sport is great, but it's overpriced in our society. And we don't really make a fair, informed choice for it, because for the most part we don't see how much we pay for it. And because we pay so much, we have less to spend on less glamorous things like education, infrastructure, a clean environment, and more.

Wage stagnation for most employees in an industry? Not news for most of America! With regards to Mr. Trout, he is by far the best player of his generation. If he can get paid $430 million, more power to him.

I don't think the players getting 50-some percent of the revenues is enough. They should be getting more like 80% or 90%, which would be closer to equalling their value to the game. The owners are making out like bandits.

The fix for the current situation is obvious: the player's union and MLB must enable the younger players to escape from club control earlier to reap the big salaries while their value still makes it worth it. This doesn't have to be a one-way street. For giving up players sooner in whom they have invested time and money developing, the clubs will want something too. There's a deal to be had here, they just need the will to hammer it out.

Designated hitters, pitchers clocks, pitching mounds pushed back by 2 feet, all to support these contracts that no one can go to see.

LOL he'll just get fat and lazy, like other overpriced athletes before him.

Stands to reason - why shouldn't baseball mirror what is happening in the society it entertains? If you think $30 million is the peak of absurdity, stay tuned. Meanwhile a bus driver cannot afford to take his family to a game anymore. The whole mess is a disgrace.

In my opinion these multimillion dollar sports contracts are outrageous, and the whole enterprise is ridiculous. I grew up listening to baseball on the radio with my father as he worked in the garage. It's a pleasurable memory to have. I happily went to games, grabbing a beer and a hot dog, while we tracked the game and people-watched -- cheering when our team won or feeling a bit sad when they lost, but still happy to have enjoyed the game come what may. I don't care for what sports and games have become: money-making, substitute-war-mongering enterprises. I'm sorry it's come to this but I haven't gone to a game and years and won't be supporting the enterprise in the future. I don't typically say this at all, but in this case I DO mourn for the loss of the past.

Baseball is a fun “game” when you can get together with your friends on the weekends and enjoy the time. Professional baseball, except in its heyday, between two world wars and during WWII, is a rather boring, and overpriced, waste of time. If you can’t find something better to do with your time and money, other than watch a group of grown men play a child’s game, then that’s your loss.

We have lost our collective minds. This is how this experiment in democracy will end. Awash in dollars for the very few....

One counter: The Oakland A's. Nonetheless, being a wealthy owner or ownership group, doesn't guarantee intelligence.

"The Best of The Best" (the top 1%) command outlandish compensation; whether it is Mike Trout or Jeff Bezos or Paul Allen. This is not because of a "rigged system;" it is because they generate far more revenue than they are paid! Further, Paul Allen (and many other 1%ers) contribute a huge amount to charity.

We all should remember that as a consumer we have a choice to spend our recreation money. So people put aside in our budget money for recreation. Everybody can decide if that money should go into say entry ticket to a national park, local theater group, or paying MLB or NFL players huge salary. My choice is clear. The symphony orchestra deserves my recreation money way more than MLB or NFL. What irks me is the collusion of the major league sports franchises with the cable companies. Even if people do not want to watch sports but still want cable TV, they pay lots of money for ESPN which funds in turn all the excesses in sports compensation. (This is one of many reasons I do not have TV). It amazes me that anti-trust laws are not rigorously enforced in that collusion between sports franchises, ESPN, and cable companies.

Not only less money for the average player, but A LOT less money for families have to sacrifice a lot to pay the ticket prices that pay these salaries in order to bring their kids to a game. Mike Trout's obscene salary is money taken away from middle and working class families, and pretty soon, they are not going to pay it. Major League Baseball thinks a few rule changes are going to reverse its decline as America's past time. But the decline will continue as long as MLB teams go for short-term gains in order to finance these salaries. If it plans to survive into the future, what MLB really needs to do is build its future fan base. It is failing tremendously at that. And its failing because of its own doing: going after ad revenue by scheduling most games - especially playoffs and world series - at night after the kids have gone to bed; and ticket prices that make it utterly unaffordable for a families who are not upper middle class or wealthy to afford a day at the ball park. Paying these outrageous salaries now ensures the marginalization of baseball in the future. Why? because no one will care; a whole generation will have been lost.

I work at major league baseball games for $10 an hour. In the last discussions, team owners gave us a ten cent raise. This is absolutely true.

The bottom line is baseball skills, and the analytics used to evaluate the true value of a player's performance, is a commodity for a large swath of players. Generational talents, like Trout and Bryce Harper, are the exceptions, not the rule. The performance of younger players making the major league minimum salary in many cases are adequate substitutes for veteran players making millions of dollars. Where a cheaper alternative exists that is going to provide a similar (or in some cases, better) set of skills, what do you expect the teams to do?

I hope baseball stays healthy as a sport. The NBA is also great. Recommendations: -Expand the league by four teams. Regional fan bases are big, so let's get more regions. Portland, Vancouver, San Antonio, and Montreal would be neat. -Shorten seasons by ten games. Would reduce player fatigue and prevent Minnesota from getting snowed out. -Realign divisions to help match geography and reduce long haul travel. Go Mariners!

I understand that owners' and general managers' thoughts on this have changed over the past few years, but is it really any different from other forms of entertainment? Top movie stars get paid huge amounts, while other actors in the movies make significantly less. Same with network news anchors, late night hosts, etc. People go to baseball games to see a Mike Trout, Manny Machado, Bryce Harper, etc., not to see (for lack of a better term) the supporting cast. Or they go to see the team regardless of the players (much as people go to see a movie regardless of the actors.