The fact is that baseball’s revenues have grown at an extraordinary rate in the last 10 years, and consequently so have the salaries.

However, even with the growth in player salaries, team revenue still dwarfs the current players’ salaries by a disproportionate amount – in baseball only 45% of the sport’s revenue goes back to the players, versus guaranteed* (via each sport’s salary caps) shared revenues of 55-58% in the NHL, NBA, and NFL.

At the current rate of growth, Soriano’s salary won’t seem so bad by the end of it. Just remember how a few years ago the Red Sox were literally offering Manny to anyone who would take him because that $20M / year contract seemed so burdensome. By the end of it, even those club option years looked like reasonable options. I can’t find the post now, but someone did a calculation based on current rates of salary growth that suggested Soriano will cost the current equivalent of an $8 / year outfielder by the end of his contract. I could be remembering the exact number wrong however.

As to why have they have grown so much in the last couple of years, JC Bradbury suggests that there may be less collusion going on among owners than there has been in years past.

as I like to mess around with Excel sometimes and came up with some comparisons. I took the data in 5 year chunks. 2008, 2003, 1998, 1993, 1988. Here’s a breakdown of what I gathered:

Average Team Payrolls
1988 – $11.3M
1993 – $30.6M
1998 – $40.3M
2003 – $70.9M
2008 – $88.9M

Five Year Increase
‘88-’93 – 169.8%
‘93-’98 – 31.9%
‘98-’03 – 75.8%
‘03-’08 – 25.3%

Just some other notes:

• The first time a player made more than an entire team was 1997 – Albert Belle $10M vs Pirates $9.1M
• Team spending is relatively even as the number of teams spending more than the average were in order 14/26, 15/28, and 15,15, and 14 of 30.
• The Yankees currently aren’t any more free spending than other teams, though they may have been the first to take advantage. Without the Yankees salaries still increased 24.6% from 2003 vs 25.3% with them. However from ‘98-’03 without the Yankees, salaries increased 68.9% vs 75.8 with them.
• The disparity between the absolute top and bottom has widened, but again, the current Yankees skew everything. In ’88 the Yankees spent 3.2x as much as the White Sox, in ’93 the Blue Jays spent 5.2x as much as the expansion Rockies, in ’98 the Orioles spent 7.7x as much as the Expos, in ’03 the Yankees spent 7.8x as much as the Rays, and in ’08 the Yankees spent 9.1x as much as the Marlins.
• If you take the Yankees out the past two calculations, the Mets in both ’03 and ’08 spent 6.1x and 6.0x as much as the Rays and Marlins respectively.