When I see ticket prices to pro sports events, which help pay these high salaries, you wonder who is buying the tickets. How many people take the family to a ball game nowadays, vs. how many tickets are bought by corporations and the wealthy, who get a tax write off for buying the tickets???
I wonder if pro sports as we know them will survive into the future, if tax laws changed, and/or corporate types stopped buying the tickets. Could you still have these multimillion dollar contracts if ticket sales and TV viewership declines???
The players who are getting hurt the most are the good, not great, veterans, the backups, the utility players, and the like. Why pay $3-4 million for those guys when you can get almost as good a performance from some rookie making the league minimum (which is quite generous.)
If the Diamondbacks contend for three or four seasons of Greinke’s contract and the attendance and the TV and radio ratings increase, he’ll make that money back for them. Tehre is no way on Earth that your backup catcher or your utility infielder can make back his salary.