Baseball’s middle class is disappearing

Bob Nightengale: Players are either rich or earning near minimum salaries

PHILADELPHIA – It was Major League Baseball’s center stage, with the Braves-Phillies season opener at Citizens Bank Park.

Bryce Harper, who signed the richest free agent contract in baseball history, $330 million, was being unveiled for the first time in a Phillies uniform. He got multiple standing ovations Thursday, with the Phillies’ fans celebrating like it was 1979 all over again — when Pete Rose made his Phillies debut.

It was a glorious afternoon, featuring some of the greatest players in baseball. And some of the richest. Twenty players on the two teams — 13 on the Phillies — are earning at least $5 million this year, with three earning at least $20 million.

Across baseball’s landscape, 252 players on opening-day rosters will make at least $5 million, according to USA TODAY’s annual MLB salary survey, with 126 earning at least $10 million. This comes after $1.7 billion was handed out in extensions to 22 players.

Yet baseball’s salary structure still has a problem. There are plenty of players who have set up generations of their families for life, and while the young players wait for their day in salary arbitration, it’s the middle class that’s getting squeezed. There are more than 850 players on opening-day rosters and injured lists, but only 89 players are being paid between $3 million and $5 million.

You’re either rich or making close to the minimum salary.

This winter’s free agent signing landscape was dominated by players receiving only one-year and minor league deals. Only 35 players signed multipleyear deals. In fact, just 13 players were signed to deals of more than two years, and only six got four years or more.

Teams have shown they’ll pay the game’s biggest stars — and they have no choice but to pay their finest young players in salary arbitration shy of free agency — but the rest are feeling the squeeze.

“There’s an understanding right now in the way baseball are paying guys is that it’s just part of the gig,” Phillies closer David Robertson said. “You work your way up, and once you get out of that range, your increase in pay is supposed to go up a lot. It’s just so hard to get there . ... I’d love to see it change where everyone is supposed to get paid what they’re worth.”

No one would dare dispute that Yankees All-Star outfielder Aaron Judge is worth more than $684,300, Dodgers coace Walker Buehler should be paid more than $15,000 above the minimum salary ($555,000) and Brewers All-Star Josh Hader should be paid as much as any reliever in baseball, instead of $687,600.

Their day will come when they’re eligible for arbitration, but how about fivetime All-Star Adam Jones, who signed a $3 million deal with the Diamondbacks, or 2012 21-game winner Gio Gonzalez, relegated to a minor league contract worth $3 million with the Yankees.

“Although we continue to study the market, we don’t see data suggesting a trend of dollars going to top players taking away from any other class of players,” said Bruce Meyer, senior director of the player union’s collective bargaining and legal division. “What we do see is a trend of teams increasingly favoring players with less service time who are more subject to team control.”

The Yankees and Cubs each have 15 players earning at least $5 million on their opening-day rosters, and 18 of those 30 are making over $10 million.

But the middle class is virtually nonexistent. There are just four players on those teams earning between $3 million to $5 million, all on the Cubs.

The Tigers have three players — Miguel Cabrera, Jordan Zimmermann and Nick Castellanos — earning a total of $64.5 million. The rest of the team is earning a combined $37 million.

And 2015 AL Cy Young winner Dallas Keuchel and four-time saves leader Craig Kimbrel are unemployed.

“That’s so hard to believe,” Robertson said. “We’d all like to see some changes.”