MLB salaries: Top-paid player has no team
CHICAGO – We are in the middle of a pandemic, and Major League Baseball is embarking on the strangest season in history, so we’re going to have weirdness on the field, off the field and in the bank accounts.
You want bizarre?
The highest-paid player in MLB this season will be a pitcher who won’t even wear a uniform.
We’re talking about Wei-yin Chen, who was released by the Miami Marlins last November and will be paid nearly $22 million this season. If the Marlins had waited to release him after baseball was shut down this spring, they could have saved themselves $14 million. Oops.
The New York Yankees are on the hook for $21.142 million with outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury, who was released last season, although the Yankees are arguing that he violated his contract and won’t pay him. The dispute will be resolved in a grievance proceeding between the Yankees and the MLB Players Association.
The Yankees, even if excluding Ellsbury, still will have the highest payroll in baseball at $220.7 million in USA TODAY’S annual MLB salary report, buoyed by the signing of ace Gerrit Cole to a nine-year, $324 million payroll and the 30-man roster.
Cole, who was scheduled to earn $36 million this season, would have been the highest-paid player in baseball alongside Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels.
Yet, with only 60 games on the schedule this year, Cole and Trout will instead receive $13,333,333 million. It’ll be the lowest salary ever paid to the game’s highest-paid player since slugger Albert Belle of the Baltimore Orioles was paid $11,949,794 in 1999.
There are only 12 players who will earn $10 million or more with their prorated salaries this season. It would have been 13, but Dodgers pitcher David Price, whose salary is $32 million this year, opted out of playing this season, forfeiting $11.85 million.
You know these are weird times when the Yankees’ pro-rated 30-man payroll, including those on the injured list, will be nearly $84 million, the lowest they’ve shelled out since the heart of their dynasty when their payroll was $88.1 million in 1999.
The wackiest salaries are the players who were scheduled to earn less than $750,000.
Remember, every player under a straight guaranteed contract already received $286,500 in advance money during April and May under terms of the March 26 agreement. The player would keep the money if there was no season, but if the season commenced, the money would be repaid, taken out of their paychecks.
This means players under contract paying them with $773,500 or less this year will be paid, uh, zero.
So, Jack Flaherty of the St. Louis Cardinals, who finished fourth in last year’s Cy Young balloting, may be pitching in hopes of leading the Cardinals to the postseason but won’t receive a dime. The Cardinals technically are withdrawing $4,300 a day from his paycheck until the advance is fulfilled.
If the season is shortened because of the pandemic and 60 games are not played, players will be permitted to keep the remainder of advance money.