Joc Pederson Rips Pirates, Orioles And Guardians Owners For Payrolls

Getty Image

Joc Pederson called out the Pirates, Orioles and Guardians owners for having absurdly low player payrolls for the 2022 season.
The Orioles, for example, will be paying their entire roster combined less than 14 individual MLB players.
Read more news about Major League Baseball here.

With the 2022 Major League Baseball season getting underway in less than two weeks, some fanbases are very excited to see how their teams will perform.

Others, as is the case year after year, already know that their season is over before it’s even began. (Sorry, Cincinnati.)

As new Phillies slugger Nick Castellanos put it upon his arrival in Philadelphia, “At the end of the day, baseball comes down to ownership. The owner either wants to invest and cares about winning, or doesn’t.”

Another player who changed teams this offseason and understand exactly what Castellanos is talking about is new Giants outfielder Joc Pederson.

Late Tuesday night, Pederson sent out a tweet highlighting the MASSIVE discrepancy between Major League Baseball teams’ payrolls.

Embarrassed for your fan base…be better. If you can’t, sell ur team to somebody that wants to show the fan base and baseball they’re at least trying to compete. Sorry unacceptable pic.twitter.com/n5KZpxgEor

— Joc Pederson (@yungjoc650) March 23, 2022

Joc Pederson is right. Those team owners, as well as Major League Baseball as a whole, should be embarrassed. With payrolls like those of the Guardians, Pirates and Orioles, it’s little wonder that those teams can’t draw any fans to their games.

In 2022, there will be 14 PLAYERS making more than the entire Orioles’ roster

Max Scherzer, Corey Seager, Anthony Rendon, Gerrit Cole, Mike Trout, Carlos Correa, Miguel Cabrera, Trevor Bauer, Jacob DeGrom, Nolan Arenado, Stephen Strasburg, Francisco Lindor, David Price, and Manny Machado will all make more than every player on the Orioles combined in 2022.

The Oakland A’s at $38.1 million aren’t far behind the Guardians on that list of lowest payroll teams.

From there it “jumps” all the way to $67.5 million for the Marlins, $65.2 million for the Rays, $77.4 million for the Royals and $79.8 million for the Mariners’ total player payroll.

Making those teams’ pathetic payrolls even more troubling are these facts…

MLB teams now each receive at least $100 million every season just from TV deals. That's revenue before a pitch is thrown.

And that's the minimum TV money. Some teams will get several times more than that just from TV.

Keep that in mind when you see payrolls under $100 million.

— Aaron Gleeman (@AaronGleeman) February 25, 2022

The Pirates’ highest paid players at the moment are catcher Roberto Perez ($5M) and 1B/DH Yoshi Tsutsugo ($4M). No Pirates players are under contract beyond 2022.

— Kevin Gorman (@KevinGormanPGH) March 23, 2022

Baseball fans, needless to say, are, as usual, very annoyed.