A Good Piazza Change

David Paisley

Would you turn down $90M over the next seven years?

Why would anyone do that, you ask. It seems that a certain major league catcher has been deemed a greedy bastard by the baseball powers-that-be, and shipped off to the salary dumping hell that is the Florida Marlins, and subsequently the New York Mets. I'm sure the Mets aren't going to be calling him any nasty names, at least.

The Dodgers certainly had their reasons for not wanting to cough up large quantities of green folding stuff, and the quantity of players they picked up certainly broadens their offense, so it wasn't all bad for them. However, Piazza's salary demands have been dubbed entirely unreasonable by the baseball cognoscenti, so let's look at the reality.

The chart below shows the cumulative annualized salary growth in the major leagues since 1968. The blue line represents the league average, while the red line is the league minimum. It's pretty evident that despite a few wiggles here and there, average salary growth has been around 15% for thirty years. The league minimum has increased an average of about 11%, with spikes at the occasional mandated increases pretty evident in the chart.

Despite much recent whining about overpaid ballplayers, the last decade has seen only 11% annualized growth for the league average, while the league maximum salaries have grown at 13%. It's pretty easy to see the artificially deflated growth of the late eighties. And despite claims of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, the two charts show only a slight tendency for the highest-paid players to get bigger increases than the lowest-paid.

Looking at long-term contracts, they frequently end up being really cheap by the end (or even in the middle - just ask Shawn Kemp!), and maybe Mike Piazza (or more likely, his agent) has decided they won't let that happen to them. Piazza is being paid $8M this year, and if you decide you're going to pay him $8M in constant 1998 baseball dollars, you get the following results. The salary projection below just grows at 15% every year to cover "baseball inflation."

Year	15% Growth Factor	$8M Compounded at 15%
1	1.15	9.2
2	1.32	10.6
3	1.52	12.2
4	1.75	14.0
5	2.01	16.1
6	2.31	18.5
7	2.66	21.3
	Total	101.8

If I'm Mike Piazza, I see over $100M at the bottom, but in reality there is no base salary growth relative to the rest of the players. (I can hear the cries of sympathy from all you working stiffs out there, because you're happy with a raise that just beats 3% inflation every year.)

So, is Mike Piazza a whiny cry-baby?

I'm not sure if I've made up my mind. I can at least understand how he can claim that being offered $90M is low, even if I can't see it as actually insulting.

I'd love for someone to insult me like that.

 Dave Paisley discovered a few years ago that he suffers seizures whenever he sees the face of Don Fehr. Explain to him that it's not all that uncommon at drdjp@strikethree.com.