NY Yankees 2005 Payroll

NY Yankees is a very rich organization which often gives them the luxury of spending Top Dollar to acquire the best talent. Many baseball enthusiasts despise the Yankees cos they believe that Yankees with their dis-proportionate spending gives them a huge advantage over other competing teams who cannot afford such big Budgets thereby effectively "Buying" the championships every year. Several attempts have been made to introduce a Salary cap or a spending limit in order to make it an even playing field for everyone.

Here are the NY Yankees salaries for the year 2005 -

PLAYER SALARY (US$)
1. Alex Rodriguez 25,705,118
2. Derek Jeter 19,600,000
3. Mike Mussina 19,000,000
4. Randy Johnson 15,419,815
5. Jason Giambi 13,428,571
6. Gary Sheffield 11,496,689
7. Jorge Posada 11,000,000
8. Mariano Rivera 10,500,000
9. Carl Pavano 9,000,000
10. Hideki Matsui 8,000,000
11. Jaret Wright 5,666,667
12. Shawn Chacon 2,350,000
13. Kyle Farnsworth 1,975,000
14. Ron Villone 1,950,000
15. Tanyon Sturtze 850,000
16. Mike Myers 600,000
17. Bubba Crosby 332,950
18. Andy Phillips 317,200

Total Team Salary: 205,938,439

Let's compare that with the other teams in MLB-

MLB TEAM PAYROLL (US$)

1. NY Yankees 205,938,439
2. Boston 121,311,945
3. NY Mets 104,770,139
4. Philadelphia 95,337,908
5. LA Angels 95,017,822
6. St. Louis 92,919,842
7. San Francisco 89,487,426
8. Chicago Cubs 87,210,933
9. Seattle 85,883,334
10. Atlanta 85,148,582
11. LA Dodgers 81,029,500
12. Houston 76,779,022
13. Chicago Sox 75,228,000
14. Baltimore 74,570,539
15. Detroit 68,998,183
16. Arizona 63,015,833
17. San Diego 62,888,192
18. Florida 60,375,961
19. Cincinnati 59,658,275
20. Minnesota 56,615,000
21. Oakland 55,869,262
22. Texas 53,891,258
23. Washington 48,581,500
24. Colorado 48,107,500
25. Toronto 45,038,500
26. Cleveland 41,830,400
27. Milwaukee 40,234,833
28. Pittsburgh 38,133,000
29. Tampa Bay 37,975,067
30. Kansas City 36,881,000


Let's address the whole level-playing field issue- If I were, for instance, the CEO of an organization and I had the requisite resources, would I like to go about attracting and recruiting the best talent available in the industry? I certainly would! After all my vision would be to develop a strong organization. On the other side, If I were a player with a certain skills set, would it be fair that I get paid a certain fixed sum for my services cos there is a salary cap in place whose only purpose is to prevent me from getting paid a higher sum just so the business competitors can operate within their budgets?

But in the end it doesn't even matter. Just look at the salary budgets of the two teams that made it to the world championships - Chicago W.sox and Houston Astros. Baseball is a great leveller.

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