Just a few days into the Major League season, baseball already has produced a startling statistic: The average salary dropped for the first time in nearly a decade.
Not that major leaguers will be sweating to make their mortgage payments. Despite the 3 percent drop from the start of last season, players on opening day rosters averaged US$2.49 million, according to a study by The Associated Press.
"Maybe that's going to be the trend. Maybe it's going to start going down," said Seattle designated hitter Edgar Martinez, whose base pay by was cut 25 percent to US$3 million.
The New York Yankees bucked the trend, pushing their payroll up to a record US$183 million, led by Alex Rodriguez, whose US$21.7 million salary topped the majors for the fourth straight year.
Boston, forever chasing New York in the standings and at the box office, was second at US$125 million.
And then came everyone else.
Anaheim was third at US$101 million, just ahead of the New York Mets. Philadelphia, fifth at US$93 million, has a payroll almost half that of the Yankees.
Milwaukee, the team controlled by the family of baseball commissioner Bud Selig, has the lowest payroll at US$27.5 million. Tampa Bay is 29th at US$29.5 million -- but that includes US$7 million the Devil Rays are getting reimbursed by St. Louis to pay nearly all of Tino Martinez's salary.
The average salary, which was US$2.56 million at the start of last season, hadn't dropped since 1995, immediately following the 7 1/2-month strike that wiped out the World Series for the first time in 90 years.
"There are a number of factors involved. Certainly, the economy is a big one," Selig said. "Teams had to tighten their belts because of debt."
Baseball's new labor contract, agreed to late in the 2002 season, had new debt regulations and also imposed a luxury tax. Last year, the Yankees were the only team that had to pay the tax.
"I think if you go back in history, the year following any type of a new labor agreement being put in place, there's always a market correction," said Yankees first baseman Tony Clark, a member of the union's negotiating committee.
Since the start of the free-agent era after the 1976 season, the only other times salaries dropped were 1987 -- when owners were found by an arbitrator to have conspired against free agents -- and 1995.
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