Here’s how the Guardians’ postseason run could help payroll 2025: The Week in Baseball

The exact dollar amount is unknown, but here’s how MLB’s postseason capital is distributed between players, owners and the commissioner’s office. Sixty percent of the total gate receipts for all guaranteed playoff games will go into the player pool:

• Sixty percent of the first four games of the World Series.
• Sixty percent of the first four games in each League Championship Series.
• Sixty percent of the first three League Division championships.
• Sixty percent of the first two games of each Wild Card series.

The commissioner’s office receives 15% of all gate receipts, while teams/owners collect ticket receipts for all games played over the guaranteed number of games.

The Guardians and Detroit went the distance in the best-of-five ALDS. This means that for Games 4 and 5, the two teams, minus the 15% cut by the commissioner’s office, split the receipts for those games.

Game 4 was played in front of a sellout crowd of 44,923 at Comerica Park. Game 5 was played in front of a sold-out crowd of 34,105 at Progressive Field.

The Guardians and Yankees played five games in the ALCS, meaning they split the proceeds of Game 5. A sellout crowd of 32,545 witnessed the Guardians lose 5-2 in 10 innings at Progressive Field.

“It’s certainly good to get some additional revenue,” said Chris Antonetti, Cleveland’s president of baseball operations. “We’re in a very fortunate position with our ownership because all the revenue we generate goes back into baseball operations. For the major league salary, for the infrastructure, for the people. Everything we earn, we invest in the team. So things like making the postseason definitely help.”

Here’s how the player pool is broken down:

• World Series Winner: 36%.
• Losing World Series: 24%.
• LCS Losers (two teams): 24%, 12% each.
• LDS losses (four teams): 13%.
• Wild Card Losses (four teams): 3%.
• Player allocations are expected to be made within 30 days of the conclusion of the World Series.

Last season, the amount of players was a record 107.8 million dollars.

The World Series champion Rangers received $38.8 million and gave away 64 full shares worth $506,263 each, along with 12.56 fractional shares and an additional $48,000 in cash. The Diamondbacks, who lost the World Series, received $25.9 million, and the full share is worth $313,634.

Here are the individual shares for the other postseason teams starting in 2023: Houston $173,187, Philadelphia $171,184, Baltimore $43,801, Minnesota $42,859, Los Angeles $36,929, Miami $10,154, Toronto $9,592), Tampa Bay $8,728 and Mil waukee $8,336.

The guards opened the 2024 season with just over $98 million in payroll for a roster of 26 major leaguers and injured major leaguers. The Guardians said during their postseason press conference that they added about $9 million to that salary over the course of the season, likely through the additions of players like Lane Thomas, Matthew Boyd and Alex Cobb.

It will be interesting to see where the payroll will be when the season opens on March 27, 2025 in Kansas City.

Replay, Dodger style

On Friday night, baseball’s night owls were rewarded with Freddie Freeman’s magnificent 10th inning grand slam that gave the Dodgers a 6-3 victory over the Yankees in Game 1 of the World Series.

In 1988, I was sitting behind a pair of pipes in the press box at Dodger Stadium in the bottom of the ninth inning when Kirk Gibson limped to the plate and hit his famous home run off Oakland’s Dennis Erkersley.

I already wrote my story about the A’s winning the game. As I frantically finished rewriting the story, I sent it to The Plain Dealer only to find that the copy editor had already rewritten the story so they could meet the deadline.

I thought about that as I watched Freeman smash Nestor Cortez’s first pitch deep into right field at Dodger Stadium. I also thought about the fake pitch Cortez threw to Andres Gimenez, the Rangers’ second baseman, during the Yankees’ visit to Progressive Field this year.

Maybe it would have been better for Cortez to fake another pitch to Freeman, but in the World Series, you have to throw the ball.