Earlier this year, Forbes announced its latest Major League Baseball franchise valuations. It’s a simple reminder that every team is swimming in massive amounts of money, despite the story that’s often shared by many of the owners. Yes, the player salaries are astronomical, but take a look at the owners’ net worth. It’s substantially higher than players, from All-Star to fringe major leaguer.
The 2022 season is, after a new collective bargaining agreement was reached, back on and scheduled to start today (Thursday, April 7), with nine games on the Opening Day slate.
The New York Yankees are king of the valuation mountain, coming in at $6 billion, which is up 14 percent from the previous year. The Yankees were purchased by George Steinbrenner in 1973 for $10 million. This was three years after the Ohio native attempted to purchase the Cleveland Indians for $9 million. It’s kind of incomprehensible to think of a better business decision than Steinbrenner’s purchase of the Yankees nearly 50 years ago. For an individual that cared so much about winning, though, the growth of the franchise certainly came at a cost. Steinbrenner oversaw six World Series championships and 10 pennants during his tenure yet changed managers 20 times in his first 23 seasons.
The St. Louis Cardinals crack the top 10, coming in seventh at $2.45 billion, and the fifth most valuable National League team behind the Dodgers ($4.075 billion), Cubs ($3.8 billion), Giants ($3.5 billion) and the Mets ($2.65 billion). The Miami (formerly Florida) Marlins are last (30th) at $990 million, the only MLB franchise not to surpass $1 billion. The average franchise value is now at $2.07 billion, an all-time high and up 9 percent from the previous rankings.
Yes, the anticipation and buildup for another season of baseball is nearly here. For the Cardinals, this is the first year since 1971 that Mike Shannon won’t be on the radio broadcast. The former outfielder/third baseman joined the team’s radio broadcast prior to the 1972 season. It’s also been 20 years since the team’s greatest announcer did play-by-play. That would be Jack Buck, who somewhere along the line coined the phrase, “That’s a winner!” Buck passed away in June 2002. He had called Cardinals’ games since 1954.
Modern baseball certainly has its concerns. Pace of play is an issue, as the average length of games was three hours, 11 minutes in 2021, according to Baseball-Reference, the longest ever.