How much do baseball players make on an hourly basis?

Factual Questions
1

I’m talking about professional, major league baseball players of course. Their contracts are on a yearly basis I think, but if you took the average number of games in a season and the average time of a game how much do they make in an hour?

2

I can’t answer the question, but I can say that you can’t just look at the actual games as being the only time they “work.” In addition to regular and post-season games and Spring Training, they also have team practices (very often, though I don’t know how often), they have to work out to stay in shape, etc. To be fair you’ll have to include all that stuff.

3

I’ll add a bit to this as well. My company’s office holiday party was at Pacbell Park (home of the SF Giants) last Friday and one of the activities was the “behind the scenes tour”. Our guide noted that the players get there early in the morning and may not leave until late at night (they often put in many hours after a game, extra batting practice and whatnot). Anyhow, the point is that they routinely do much more than an 8-hour day (or a 3-hour day if you were just looking at the actual game time).

Which may bring the hourly wage of some superstar down to, say, $3,000/hr instead of $8,000/hr.

What a bargain :slight_smile:

4

The average major league salary is about $2.5 million, ranigng from the major league minimum $300,000 per year, prorated for the number of days spent in the majors) to Alex Rodriguez’s average contract year of $25,000,000.

A per hour gauge is difficult to say because not all players play all games. Regular position players will usually play most games, but pitchers don’t. Nonetheless, if we assume we’re talking about a regular player who plays 150 games (out of a possible 162) and knowing the average major league game takes 2.78 hours to play (as of 2004) then the average player makes a hair under $6,000 per hour, assuming just game time.

Realistically, they probably work at least three to four times that many hours, plus travel time, plus team PR, press junkets, etc.

However, it really depends on the type of player, their age, level of experience, etc.