Professional athletes often draw the ire of the public for getting paid ludicrous amounts of money to play a game for a living. Baseball players are no exception, with today’s superstars often getting paid upwards of $300 million. However, this sort of compensation has not always been the norm. The oldest contract that we have on record was from 1870, and it stipulated that third baseman Levi Meyerle be paid $1,500 for a year of playing baseball. In today’s world, that contract would be worth about $35,000. As stated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average U.S. yearly income is roughly $57,000, meaning that today Meyerle would be making about 61% of the average American income.
Pay issues for players weren’t limited to the early ages of baseball in the 1800’s. According to the New York Times article, “Chances Are Extra Work in Off-Season Involves Baseball, Not a Second Job”, Hall of Famers Stan Musial and Jim Palmer had to find work in the offseason in order to pay the bills. In that article, author Andrew Keh explains, “Stan Musial, who amassed 3,630 hits during his Hall of Fame career, sold Christmas trees from a parking lot alongside his St. Louis Cardinals teammates. . . during the late 1940s, when Musial was a three-time World Series winner and three-time National League most valuable player.” Despite being at the peak of a sensational playing career, Musial still needed a source of additional income. Similarly, Jim Palmer went from winning a World Series in 1966 to working at a clothing store: “‘I was the youngest player to ever throw a shutout in a World Series,’ [Palmer] said, laughing. ‘Next thing I know, I am selling men’s clothes at Hamburgers.”’
So how have the contracts of Major League Baseball players gone from startlingly little to unbelievably large? Moreover, how do teams determine the contracts they dole out? This project aims to answer these questions across a few different mediums. When navigating this site, I suggest that you first visit the comprehensive timeline to explore key events that forever changed the financial landscape of the MLB. Next, venture over to the section on data and relationships to learn which statistics teams truly care about. Finally, complete your journey by experimenting with an interactive model that predicts what a player might receive in free agency based on his statistics and other attributes. Along the way, reference the “Glossary” and “About” sections for questions about terminology or data collection.