It's only money

But so much of it.

Giancarlo Stanton, the slugging sensation for the Miami Marlins, just signed a 13-year contract for $325 million.

Let me repeat: 13 years, $325 million.

That’s an average of $25 million per year.

That’s about $154,000 per game.

Until he’s 38.

Let’s say each ball game equals a single work-day (no double headers) and that Stanton plays every game (he has never played in more than 150 games in a season in his five-year career). So that means he gets about $154,000 per work day.

Let’s see, over the course of a calendar year, Joe Sixpack works roughly 244 days — 365 minus weekends and holidays and assuming a two-week paid vacation (which is really 10 days). According to the American Community Survey, “The ACS 2011 U.S. median household income was $51,324 and the ACS 2012 U.S. median household income was $51,371.” Lets round that off to $52,000, just for convenience. So that works out to $213 a game, I mean day.

Just an observation.

By the way, I’m sure there have been studies about the inefficacy of long-term contracts, but I’ll leave them for you to find. Oh, all right, just this one then (warning: that link downloads as a PDF file, so don’t click unless you’re willing to go through all that).

It's only money