A topic on 98.5 the Sports Hub's midday show, Zolak
and Bertrand sparked an interest in me.
The two co-hosts, Scott Zolak and a voice filling in
for Mark Bertrand whose voice I couldn’t figure out and didn’t stay long enough
to hear their name, talked about Major League Baseball attracting more players
to its Home Run Derby by offering $1 million to its winner. The show’s
producer, Jim Louth, introduced the topic, which eventually turned into Zolak
shooting the idea down. When Louth stated that the winner would make $1 million
for two hours of work, Zolak stated that players make that anyway. Louth
quickly shot that notion down.
Obviously, Zolak was wrong. Anybody can do the math in
their head to prove that if a player makes as much at $30 million, and because
teams expect positional players to play in 150 games or so, a positional player
will play between 450-600 hours of baseball per year. That’s $50,000 an hour
for someone making $30 million per year and less, obviously, for someone that
makes less. Pitchers don’t make much more or less.
The topic made me wonder though: How much does each
Red Sox player really make per hour or per game?
Well, I did the math out. Some numbers initially
surprised me, such as Andrew Benintendi making $4,125.30 per game played as
well as David Price making $955,263.16 per game played.
I performed the math
for each Red Sox player on the 25 man roster as well as important players
currently on the disabled list (Christian Vazquez, Dustin Pedroia, Drew
Pomeranz, etc.).
Before I share with you how much each Red Sox player
made per game played, I have to share with you how I figured each number and
some aberrations to the formula.
So, to get dollars earned per game played, I factored
that 98 games played is 60 percent of the season. Therefore, each player will
have received 60.5 percent of their salary and thus, is divided amongst each
game played. Here is an example.
Andrew Benintendi will earn $605,000 this season
according to spotrac.com. 60.5 percent of that number becomes $375,402.50.
Benintendi has played in 91 games this season, therefore $375,402.50 gets
spread across 91 games, which equates to $4,125.30 per game played. In math
terms:
$605,500 x .605 / 91 = $4,125.30.
Of course, some aberrations occur, such as Ryan
Brazier earning $82,431.25 per game played. It’s unrealistic because Brazier
earns a portion of his $545,000 only when he is on the Major League roster.
Brazier has been on the Red Sox 25 man roster for only 10 days and has appeared
in four games. So of course his salary per game is crooked and not reflective
of his actual salary. Also, pitchers appear in less games than positional
players and starting pitchers even less than relievers. If a pitcher and batter
both make $1 million and the pitcher pitches in 50 games and the batter plays
in 150 games, of course the batter will make less per game even though they
make the same amount of money and most likely spent the same amount of time on
the 25 man roster. So it is not an exact science, but it’s pretty darn close. I
created this spreadsheet for your enjoyment, which depicts how much each Red
Sox player has earned per game played. Salaries are based on spotrac.com and
rounded to the nearest hundredth.
You can access the spreadsheet here
You can access the spreadsheet here
