The picture says it all: Miguel Cabrera is the king of baseball these days. The 31-year old Detroit Tiger’s slugger signed a 10-year, $292 million extension last week all but ensuring he will never be a free agent for the rest of his career. While we’d love to sit here and discuss the inherent risks of signing a 31-year old player to a contract that large, all we can say is that if someone is going to be the highest paid player in baseball it deserves to be Cabrera. He’s won the MVP the last two seasons, he won the Triple Crown in 2012 (the first in 35 years), and he’s incredibly durable. He’s played at least 157 games a year over the past decade. Best hitter in the game, biggest contract, whether you like it or not there’s no denying how flush Major League Baseball is right now.
MLB teams across the country are signing absurd television deals. When we say absurd we mean even the lowly Seattle Mariners just inked a 18-year, $2.5 billion contract. MLB’s larger partnerships with Fox and ESPN is nothing to sneeze at either. Cabrera is king? No, baseball is king and the only professional sport in America without a salary cap right now. Because of that, 28 of the largest contracts in team sport history are in baseball.
The revenue streams are large and endless for even the lowly MLB teams (minus the Marlins and Astros). Even the aforementioned Marlins and Astros aren’t hurting for money right now. So we’ll continue to hear about the NFL running professional sports in America, but there’s no denying that Major League Baseball isn’t worried about football.
Photo by Kellie Warren/Disney via Getty Images
