Have MLB Financial Questions You’d Like Answered? Ask Them Here

Obtaining accurate financial numbers in baseball is hard. If you need convincing of this statement, just try to answer this simple question: What were the terms of Jose Quintana’s just-concluded contract? Spotrac states Quintana signed for $26.5 million over five years back in 2014, while Cot’s Contracts lists the deal at only $21 million over the same period. Both are reputable sites, but both are victims to baseball’s taciturn financial reporting policies.

For the past four years, I have been slowly learning the hard way about a variety of odd financial rules in MLB. Things like the revenue sharing formula, how option years are treated under the luxury tax, and arbitration rules. It occurs to me that many of you may have some of the same questions I did, only you had neither the time nor inclination to research the answers.

As such, I would like to open the floor — aka the comment section — to any questions our readers might have about baseball finances. Don’t worry if you stumble on this article weeks or months after publication. I’ll probably still periodically check in for questions.

Some I will answer directly in the comments, some may warrant a longer answer that requires a full post. But all will be answered.

Oh, and for those who are curious about the Quintana thing, he signed a five-year, $21 million contract extension with a built-in trigger clause that bumped the value up to $26.5 million if he qualified for super-2 arbitration status. He did in fact qualify for the larger contract, hence the disparity in the figures above.