Thursday, April 9, 2009

Poor MLB Players!

Look how young Derek Jeter is!

Yankees vs. Orioles [Game 3]
Top of 6th: bases are loaded - Cano at 3rd, Swisher at 2nd, Ransom at 1st. Brett Gardner's up. He hits. Brian Bass throws to the catcher, the catcher MISSES. Cano and Swisher both make runs while Ransom gets to 3rd. AMAZING.

As I am laughing/screaming, my mom says:
"Baseball is so sad and stressful. The poor catcher. He's going to get into so much trouble from his boss!"

So let's see how poor and stressed these players are:

There is a 0.002 chance that a high school baseball player will join the MLB.

From 1990-1992, 20 players had sex scandals, 31 were banned for life, 63 players were arrested/treated for cocaine. 1 player
died of on field injuries, 18 died within a year of having played, 4 were murdered and 5 committed suicide.

Only 5.6% of the MLB had college degrees in 2004 [Mike Mussina graduated from Stanford with a degree in economics!]

Average retirement age of pitchers is ~42-43 years, but the average career of an MLB player lasts 5.6 years.

1 in 5 position players will have only a single year career.

Baseball careers are not normally distributed. Many have short careers lasting only a few years while some have very long careers [10 years+]

The average salary of an MLB player topped $3 million in 2008.

NFL players are jealous of MLB players' pension plans.

Average 10 year retiree gets $180,000 a year.

Their retirement plans are part "defined benefit" and part [optional] "defined contribution."


*This is sad.

4 comments:

  1. Esther: Thanks for posting about baseball and about Nick. Question: is the 0.002 chance a percentage? About education, the twins have two pitchers who are amazingly smart. Check this out:http://minnesota.twins.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090327&content_id=4076402&vkey=news_min&fext=.jsp&c_id=min. Craig Breslow graduated from Yale as a biochemistry major and decided to be a MLB player until he decides to go to med school. Oh, he also has a charity for pediatric cancer http://minnesota.twins.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?mid=200810233639983. Pretty cool, huh. Another pitcher of ours (Joe Nathan) used to be a stockbroker and consultant.

    One thing though. Baseball players deserve a lot more than football players do. They work REALLY hard. Their salaries in the minor leagues are really low. Like 40K if they are lucky. They definitely have to work harder. Although the game isn't as intense as football, they have 162 games AT LEAST every year. They definitely get into less trouble. At least they don't murder people through drunk driving and torture dogs.

    I really didn't know a lot of that stuff. Thanks for the info! Hope you're having an awesome time in NY.

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  2. 0.2%

    Biochem major and charity?! I like this Craig Breslow fellow.

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  3. i still think DJ sort of looks like mr nieves

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