Highest salaries in Major League Baseball 2021

American professional sports leagues are known for paying their players handsomely and Major League Baseball is no different. The highest earner in the MLB in 2021 was the center field for the Los Angeles Angels, Mike Trout. The 29-year-old eight-time All-Star took home an annual salary of 37.17 million U.S. dollars in the 2021 season.

MLB salaries

The MLB has both a minimum player salary and a competitive balance tax (also called Luxury Tax) in place to ensure the league remains competitive and that no single team can buy its way to victory. In 2019, the minimum player salary stood at 563.5 thousand U.S. dollars, a generous increase from the minimum salary of 414 thousand U.S. dollars ten years earlier. However, because of the astronomical earnings of some of the star players in the league, the average player salary across the MLB was 4.17 million U.S. dollars in 2021. If a team’s payroll exceeds a certain figure, they are forced to pay a luxury tax in order to discourage the largest teams from buying the best players in the league. In 2021, this payroll cap was 210 million U.S. dollars.

MLB revenue on the up

In 2019, teams of Major League Baseball generated around 345.8 million U.S. dollars on average in revenue per team. The Los Angeles Dodgers sat top of the pile as the franchise generated revenue of 185 million U.S. dollars. On the other end of the scale, the Miami Marlins had revenue of 96 million U.S. dollars in 2020.