How Much Money Would Baseball’s Hall of Famers Make Today

By today's standards, how much money would the legends of baseball be making? It's obscene what some professional athletes make today and even more terrible if com pared what the legends made years ago.

Online publication Digital Element broke the numbers down in a recent story and the numbers are amazing.

The method:

To work out a direct comparison between players, we began by selecting twelve legendary names from the game of baseball and choosing twelve current MLB players who play in the same position and have been rated as some of the best in recent years. We then took the 162-game averages for each player and worked out the percentage difference between the two.

Taking the current salary of the 2020 player, we worked out the salary the legend would be paid for each statistic, taking the biggest rise as the amount they’d be paid – assuming the player would be paid a salary to match their greatest skill.

We also looked at the legend as if they were going to play for the same team as their modern-day equivalent, assuming they would have the finances to pay the amount.

The obvious first comparison was Babe Ruth and he was plotted against LA Dodger Mookie Betts. Back in the day, Babe Ruth made $80,000 and Mookie Betts pulled in a whopping $27 million. Comparing Ruth's numbers, especially in the homer category, to Betts conclude that Ruth would be making about $44.3 million.

Digital Element compared another nearly one dozen players of the past to modern day players to come up with a modern day salary for the late greats. The numbers are staggering.

In 1980, the legendary Nolan Ryan made $1 million. That was pretty impressive then, but by today's standards it;'s chump change. Based on Peter Strasburg's stats and salary, Ryan would be making almost $36 million today.

Check out the couplet breakdown here.