In Major League Baseball, the rich keep getting richer

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In this edition:

• 💰 Major League Baseball’s disparity keeps growing
• 🏈 The Chiefs want to own Christmas Day
• 🧊 Larry Bird = one cold dude

—Peter & Kyle

On the clock: Today’s newsletter takes ~4.63 minutes to read (1,232 words).

⚾ Baseball

In Major League Baseball, the rich keep getting richer

The gap between Major League Baseball’s spendthrifts and thrifty spenders is growing wider than Michael Strahan’s front teeth, as top teams and players continue to dominate the league’s money conversations.

• The Mets, Dodgers, and Yankees—the three teams with the highest payrolls in baseball—rule a recently released list of top-selling MLB jerseys, with a collective 10 players in the top 20 (and 6 in the top 10).
• The average MLB salary broke the $5M mark on Opening Day for the first time, according to a new study by The Associated Press. But the median salary is dropping, meaning the figure is being driven up by higher salaries bestowed upon top players.

The “Cohen tax” isn’t helping to close the gap

Despite MLB adding a new tier to its luxury tax system in 2022 to reign in big spenders (the “Cohen tax”), the LA Dodgers—thanks in large part to a 25-year, ~$8.4B local TV deal—will spend ~$550M dollars on player salaries and luxury tax penalties this year, a record amount. Cohen’s Mets aren’t far behind at $400M+.

Fall down the ladder…and you’ll find the Miami Marlins, with a payroll of ~$70M, while three other teams—the Rays, White Sox, and A’s—all come in under $90M.

Based on a widely used measure of economic inequality known as the Gini coefficient, overall team spending on payroll and luxury tax this season projects to be the most unequal since at least 1985, the earliest reliable data on record, the Wall Street Journal reports.

But…While throwing out cash like Stratton Oakmont at an office party can almost guarantee a playoff spot—since MLB expanded to 30 franchises in 1998, teams ranked in the top five in payroll have averaged 89 wins/season vs. 74/season for those in the bottom five—it doesn’t appear to correlate to championships.

• Sixteen different organizations have won the World Series since 1998, the most of any major American sport.
• There hasn’t been a repeat champion in baseball since the Derek Jeter-led Yankees claimed three straight from 1998 to 2000.

Looking ahead: The current collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the MLB Players Association expires after the 2026 season. And when it does, owners appear poised to push for a salary cap—something the players’ union vehemently opposes, potentially setting up a future summer without baseball. In 1994, the last time owners seriously pushed for a cap, the World Series was canceled because the players all went on strike.

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⏱️ Catch Up Quick

Headlines de la semaine

🏈 The NFL’s push into flag football is attracting big-name investors. The league is currently reviewing plans to launch pro flag football men's and women's leagues as early as next year, and is considering 10 separate bids from potential league investors, according to multiple reports. The interested parties include Serena Williams and her husband Alexis Ohanian (co-founder of Reddit), TKO Group Holdings (owner of UFC and WWE), business partners Ice Cube and Jeff Kwatinetz, and SMAC Entertainment (co-founded by ex-NFL star Michael Strahan).

🏒 Hockey prospect Ryan Leonard had a whirlwind week. Leonard’s college hockey career came to an end on Sunday, when Boston College lost in the NCAA tournament. The following day, he signed a three-year entry-level NHL contract with the Washington Capitals, who drafted him eighth overall in 2023. Then one day after that, Leonard made his NHL debut in front of teammates and family at Boston’s TD Garden, starting at forward in the Capitals’ 4-3 win over the Bruins.

⚾ Torpedo bat sales have not torpedo’d. MLB teams around the league are scrambling to get their hands on “torpedo” bats—models with the sweet spot moved closer to the handle—after several NY Yankees hitters used them in a teamwide home-run barrage to open the season. Kurt Ainsworth, co-founder and CEO of Marucci Sports, said 50+% of the company’s MLB orders have been torpedo bats since the Yankees’ dominant performance last weekend, while a senior marketing executive at Victus Sports says “everybody wants to try” their torpedo models. Marucci and Victus, both owned by Fox Factory, are the MLB’s two official bat partners after the league split with Louisville Slugger this year.

🏀 NCAA

Elite Eight ratings drop, thanks to the calendar

While upsets have been absent on the court this March Madness season, there have been two notable ones off the court. Duke being mad about The White Lotus—and media execs about Elite Eight ratings.

Not that elite: Men’s Elite Eight games averaged 9M viewers across CBS, TBS, and truTV, down 10% from last year, thanks in large part to weak Sunday ratings. The 2024 Elite Eight concluded on Easter Sunday, resulting in an out-of-home (OOH) viewership boost.

The highs and lows: Through the first two rounds, CBS and the TNT Sports networks posted the biggest March Madness numbers since 1993.

• But the next round, the Sweet Sixteen—after the proverbial basketball clock struck midnight and all the Cinderellas were home and in bed—averaged 9.8M viewers, down 6% compared to 2024. 

It’s the same story for the women’s tourney…whose ratings are down from the Caitlin Clark–driven 2024 tournament—in which the championship game outdrew the men’s for the first time—but up compared to other years.

Looking ahead: The women’s Final Four tips tomorrow, while the men’s tips on Saturday. 

+Speaking of tips…For those putting money on Duke (the favorite) to win the men’s tourney, may the force of the data be with you—betting favorites are 51-13 straight-up this year, tying the 2007 tournament for the best record since the field expanded in 1985.

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💬 Word on the Street

Overheard

"[The Chiefs] want to be a staple on that holiday, similar to the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day.”

Along with their uniform colors, the Kansas City Chiefs and Santa Claus could have one more thing in common: showing up on Christmas every single year.

• The NFL this week unveiled plans to host a trio of games on Christmas Day 2025, marking the holiday’s third straight year with pro football—and the Chiefs will be part of the action once again, a league source told The Athletic.
• More broadly, the Chiefs have requested that the NFL make them a permanent fixture on Christmas Day, The Athletic reported.

Chiefs of state: Kansas City has grown to become the NFL’s most prominent franchise in terms of viewership, with last season representing a prime example. 

Ahead of Thanksgiving Day, the NFL revealed that the Chiefs were featured in four of the league’s five most-watched games up until that point. Kansas City subsequently went on to play in Amazon’s inaugural Black Friday game, a divisional round matchup that set ESPN’s all-time NFL viewership record, then in the most-watched Super Bowl of all time.

📰 News

What else is happening

• 🏒 Alex Ovechkin scored his 892nd career goal; he's now three away from passing Wayne Gretzky with seven games left in the regular season.
• ⚽ Real Madrid’s treble hopes are still alive after Antonio Rudiger headed home an extra-time winner to book the club’s spot in the Copa del Rey final.
• 🥊 UFC reached a multimillion-dollar, multiple-year sponsorship deal with Meta.
• 🏀 Wooden Award finalists: Cooper Flagg (Duke), Johni Broome (Auburn) and Walter Clayton Jr. (Florida) headline the men's side; fellow Final Four participants Paige Bueckers (UConn), Lauren Betts (UCLA), and Madison Booker (Texas) headline the women's.
• 🏈 NFL owners approved a variety of rule changes this week (but kicked the tush-push can down the road); they include using Hawk-Eye cameras to measure first downs (✌️ chain gang), having both teams possess the ball in OT during the regular season, and spotting touchbacks at the 35-yard line (vs. the 30).

🌐 Web Gems

Cool things to click

🧊 That’s cold: Watch a five-part story documenting Larry Bird’s sh*t-talking 60-point game against the Atlanta Hawks where he kept calling his shots. (One | Two | Three | Four | Five)

💪 Sneaky yoked: One-handed pullups, but the hold keeps getting smaller.

📖 Read: How US women's soccer coach Emma Hayes plans to grow the sport 

🤔 Trivia

Load the chamber: It’s time for franchise roulette

How it works: We give you three facts about a professional sports franchise—then you tell us which franchise we’re talking about. Eligible franchises are those currently playing in the Big 4 (MLB, NHL, NFL, NBA).

Today’s team:

• Was involved in one of the most famous sports brawls of all time
• Plays in one of the 12 US cities that has teams in all four major sports leagues
• Holds three NBA championships

Hint: A movie franchise bears the same name as one of its eras.

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p

s
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🤔 Answer

The Detroit Pistons, who are associated with the “Malice at the Palace” and whose late ‘80s/early ‘90s teams were deemed the “Bad Boys.”