PITTSBURGH — The New York Mets' opening-day payroll this season is projected to be $345.1 million, according to Cot's Baseball Contracts. That is $74 million more than the New York Yankees will spend as the next-highest-paying team. The Mets also are expected to pay nearly $100 million in luxury tax, more than the payrolls of nine MLB clubs, including the one you follow.
A lot of people who love baseball find that offensive.
The Pirates' opening-day payroll is projected at $71.8 million. The Penguins' payroll this season — in a capped league, no less — is $96.4 million.
That's right — your baseball team won't pay anything even close to what your hockey team is.
Now that is offensive.
But, hey, don't accuse the Pirates of being cheap. They have put in a beautiful new scoreboard at PNC Park that's nearly double the size of the old one. It is supposed to enhance your enjoyment of what? Their many losses?
Is it being too cynical to suggest the Pirates are hoping the scoreboard will distract you from the product they are going to put on the field?
I really hate to be cynical.
Complaining about the Pirates' payroll is nothing new, of course. We have been doing it for years. I'm guessing we'll be doing it for as long as Bob Nutting owns the team.
Sadly, Nutting has no plans to sell.
What is new are the complaints about the Mets' spending. It seems as if a lot of people are ticked off at team owner Steve Cohen. Other club owners are furious. Some have suggested Cohen is ruining the game.
Isn't that rich?
I love what Cohen is doing.
Don't you wish he owned the Pirates?
"I didn't know I was going to have to spend like I did," Cohen, who bought the Mets for $2.4 billion in November 2020, told ESPN last week. "But once I got comfortable and realized, 'OK, what's it going to take to put a great team on the field?' I still had made a commitment to the fans and to baseball that I was going to come in and turn this thing around. I came in saying, 'I'm all in.' I keep my word."
And, channeling his best Frank Sinatra, Cohen said:
"I'm going to do it my way."
Imagine that.
An owner who actually tries to win for his team's fans.
Cohen figures it's been too long since the Mets won their most recent World Series in 1986.
I also loved Cohen's response to the criticism from his fellow billionaire owners. He scoffed at it.
"I kind of look at that, like, you're looking at the wrong person," he said. "Maybe they need to look more at themselves.
"I'm not responsible for how other teams run their clubs. I'm really not. That's not my job. And there are disparities in baseball. We all know that to be true. I'm following the rules. They set the rules down. I'm following them."
Cohen is right. The other owners have a lot of brass jumping on him. They have signed off on the system that many now say is ruining baseball. They do it every time there's a new collective bargaining agreement. All of them are making too much money to fight for change.
MLB isn't like the NHL was in 2004. The hockey owners locked out their players and shut down their sport for a year to get a salary cap because only a handful were making money. The Penguins weren't one of them. They wouldn't be here without the salary cap, without the commitment to build what is now known as PPG Paints Arena and without the ping-pong ball bouncing their way in the Sidney Crosby draft lottery.
It's almost impossible to imagine Nutting and the other baseball owners taking that kind of stand against their players' union.
Well, it is impossible.
Here is hoping you enjoy that new scoreboard.
