MLB team payroll by season, 1985 to 2016
In 1985 the highest payroll in baseball was the Atlanta Braves' $14.8 million. By 2016 the New York Yankees led at $223.0 million, with the bottom of the league, the Tampa Bay Rays, at $57.1 million. The largest single payroll in the window is the Yankees' $231,978,886 in 2013.
How it is measured
Each team's payroll sums the recorded salaries of its players for that season in the SABR Lahman Baseball Database (licensed CC BY-SA 3.0). The salary tables cover 1985 through 2016; the Lahman project stopped collecting salary data after that, so the window is fixed.
What the curve shows
The race is mostly a Yankees story. New York held the league's top payroll in every season from 2000 through 2009, peaking at $231.98 million in 2013 before the Dodgers matched them near the end of the window: $221.3 million to the Yankees' $223.0 million in 2016. The spread widened as the money grew. The top payroll was about four times the bottom in 2016, a gap that fuels the sport's running argument about competitive balance.
Which team had the highest payroll in this window?
Why does the payroll data end in 2016?
How wide was the payroll gap in 2016?
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