Highest salaries in Major League Baseball 2024

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 2024 was the starting pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Shohei Ohtani. The three-time All-Star took home a base salary of 70 million U.S. dollars in the 2024 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 2024, the minimum player salary stood at 740 thousand U.S. dollars, a generous increase from the minimum salary of 500 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 4.98 million U.S. dollars in 2024. 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 2024, this payroll cap was 237 million U.S. dollars.

MLB revenue on the up

In 2024, teams of Major League Baseball generated around 378.13 million U.S. dollars on average in revenue per team. The New York Yankees sat top of the pile as the franchise generated revenue of 679 million U.S. dollars. On the other end of the scale, the Oakland Athletics had revenue of 241 million U.S. dollars in 2024.