MLB salaries down

Major League Baseball payrolls dropped 4% in 2021 compared to the league’s last full season, and the $4.05 billion total was the lowest in a fully completed year since 2015. Falling payrolls have sparked the labor unrest that led to the sport’s first work stoppage in more than a quarter-century this month, when the collective bargaining agreement expired and owners locked out the players Dec. 2. Payrolls are down 4.6% from their record high of just under $4.25 billion in 2017, the first year of the just-expired CBA, according to information sent to clubs by the commissioner’s office and obtained by The Associated Press on Monday. Spending on big league players has not been this low since a $3.9 billion total in 2015. The Los Angeles Dodgers led baseball with a $262 million payroll in 2021, the second highest in major league history behind the franchise’s $291 million mark in 2015. The Dodgers were hit with a $32.65 million luxury tax bill Monday as the sport resumed penalizing big spenders after a one-season suspension of the tax due to the pandemic. San Diego was the only other club assessed a tax, charged $1.29 million after failing to make the playoffs with a roster led by Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, Yu Darvish, Wil Myers and Eric Hosmer. Five teams finished within $4 million of the $210 million threshold on payrolls as calculated for luxury tax purposes: Philadelphia ($209.4 million), the New York Yankees ($208.4 million), the New York Mets ($207.7 million), Boston ($207.6 million) and Houston ($206.6 million). The Yankees had baseball’s second-highest payroll in 2021 — not adjusted for luxury tax purposes — at nearly $204 million, their lowest in a full season since 2018. Pittsburgh was last at $50 million, the lowest total of any team in a full season since Houston’s $29 million in 2013. Cleveland was at $53 million, Baltimore at $59 million, Miami at $61 million and Tampa Bay at $77 million.