The Results

This is a hard problem to analyze, since there are so many additional factors that play into how much ballplayers get paid that aren't related to performance:

• The number of years played - rookies cannot negotiate their own salaries!
• The player union discourages basing pay on stats and often comparables are used to decide on salary.
• As free agents, there's a wide range of salaries - clearly some dependence on how good a negotiator you are!

Does your team matter?

One factor we did not analyze is which team was paying the player. As seen in the graph below, there's dramatic differences in average salary across the markets in Major League Baseball.