Salaries: sluggers before free agency 1920-1976. First of a series.

The annual salaries of the twelve sluggers below will be  displayed and to some extent analized. One slugger is not in the Hall of Fame: Roger Maris. Maris is included so that his salaries can be compared to his Yankee teammate Mickey Mantle.

The original intent was to compare Mantle, Mays, Aaron. This was gradually expanded as other rivalries presented. The final regular season for any of these sluggers was 1976, which means their careers ended before the emergence of the powerful modern players union and just as free agency had started.

									Debut	Debut	Final	Final	Play	Play
First	Last	Bat	Throw	Pounds	Inches	Born	Debut	FinalGame	Years	Days	Years	Days	Years	Days	GivenName
Hank	Aaron	R	R	180	72	1934-02-05	1954-04-13	1976-10-03	20	67	42	240	22	173	Henry Louis
Ernie	Banks	R	R	180	73	1931-01-31	1953-09-17	1971-09-26	22	229	40	238	18	9	Ernest
Joe	DiMaggio	R	R	193	74	1914-11-25	1936-05-03	1951-09-30	21	159	36	309	15	150	Joseph Paul
Lou	Gehrig	L	L	200	72	1903-06-19	1923-06-15	1939-04-30	19	362	35	316	15	320	Henry Louis
Mickey	Mantle	B	R	195	71	1931-10-20	1951-04-17	1968-09-28	19	180	36	344	17	164	Mickey Charles
Roger	Maris	L	R	197	72	1934-09-10	1957-04-16	1968-09-29	22	218	34	19	11	166	Roger Eugene
Eddie	Mathews	L	R	190	73	1931-10-13	1952-04-15	1968-09-27	20	185	36	350	16	165	Edwin Lee
Willie	Mays	R	R	170	70	1931-05-06	1951-05-25	1973-09-09	20	19	42	126	22	107	Willie Howard
Stan	Musial	L	L	175	72	1920-11-21	1941-09-17	1963-09-29	20	300	42	312	22	12	Stanley Frank
Frank	Robinson	R	R	183	73	1935-08-31	1956-04-17	1976-09-18	20	230	41	18	20	154	Frank
Babe	Ruth	L	L	215	74	1895-02-06	1914-07-11	1935-05-30	19	155	40	113	20	323	George Herman
Ted	Williams	L	R	205	75	1918-08-30	1939-04-20	1960-09-28	20	233	42	29	21	161	Theodore Samuel
First	Last	Bat	Throw	Pounds	Inches	Born	Debut	FinalGame	Years	Days	Years	Days	Years	Days	GivenName
	5	R	R						Debut	Debut	Final	Final	Play	Play
	3	L	L
	3	L	R
	1	B	R

Upcoming comparisons:

Mantle, Mays, Aaron

Mantle, Maris: Yankee teammates

Ruth, Gehrig: Yankee teammates

DiMaggio, Williams, Musial

Aaron, Mathews: Braves teammates

Banks and Robinson: not worth comparing, especially since Robinson's salaries start in 1964, not 1956 his rookie season.

From the 50 biggest multi-year contracts through 2020: top ten, the only ones at least $30 million annually, sorted by average annual value, then year:

Rk	Name	Orig Tm	First Year	Last Year	Years	Total Value	Avg Annual Value ▼	Summary	WAR	WAR/yr
1	Gerrit Cole	NYY	2020	2028	9	$324,000,000	$36,000,000	9 yrs/$324M (20-28)	2.2	2.2
2	Mike Trout	LAA	2019	2030	12	$426,500,000	$35,541,667	12 yrs/$426.5M (19-30)	10.1	5.0
3	Stephen Strasburg	WSN	2020	2026	7	$245,000,000	$35,000,000	7 yrs/$245M (20-26)	-0.2	-0.2
4	Anthony Rendon	LAA	2020	2026	7	$244,999,998	$35,000,000	7 yrs/$245M (20-26)	2.1	2.1
5	Zack Greinke	ARI	2016	2021	6	$206,500,000	$34,416,667	6 yrs/$206.5M (16-21)	20.3	4.1
6	David Price	BOS	2016	2022	7	$217,000,000	$31,000,000	7 yrs/$217M (16-22)	10.4	2.1
7	Nolan Arenado	COL	2019	2027	9	$275,000,000	$30,555,556	9 yrs/$275M (19-27)	8.3	4.2
8	Mookie Betts	LAD	2021	2032	12	$365,000,000	$30,416,667	12 yrs/$365M (21-32)
9	Manny Machado	SDP	2019	2028	10	$300,000,000	$30,000,000	10 yrs/$300M (19-28)	5.7	2.9
10	Miguel Cabrera	DET	2016	2023	8	$240,000,000	$30,000,000	8 yrs/$240M (16-23) & 24-25 vesting option	4.8	1.0

1, 3, 5, 6 are pitchers.

Annual salaries in this series are from https://www.baseball-reference.com/:

Salaries may not be complete (especially pre-1985) and may not include some earned bonuses ...

Primary salary data (about) courtesy Doug Pappas, and the Society for American Baseball Research. Additional 1915-1969 salaries researched via Baseball Hall of Fame contract archives by Dr. Michael Haupert of UW-LaCrosse. Salaries for mid-season call-ups or traded players may not be shown. Salaries converted to alternate years using Consumer Price Index (CPI) data courtesy of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Board.

__________________________

The Salary column contains some obvious mistakes. For instance, Willie Mays was paid $12,500 in 1954 after missing most of the previous two seasons in military service in the U.S. Army. Mays was NL MVP in 1954 but is shown for the next season getting the same salary: no raise. No way. The note for 1955 states that The Sporting News has Mays 1955 salary as $25,000, double his 1954 salary. That rings true.

Mays 1955 salary was listed this way: $12,500*

The asterisk (*) was not defined. Baseball Reference was asked about a couple of weeks ago but no explanation has been provided. Ted Williams has an * for all of his seasons. So you can see that the notes contain clarifying information.

To get a better understanding, a matrix was created with four primary sources for alternate salaries:

TSN: The Sporting News

BJHA: Bill James Historical Abstract

AP: Associated Press

UPI: United Press International.

There are other sources in the notes but these four are the most prevalent.

This link contains these tabs so far:

All: More than 200 lines of data for all 12 sluggers sorted by last name, then year. You'll get a sneak preview.

List: the matrix above

Mantle, Mays, Aaron: the three sluggers who will be featured in the next post in this series.

A link to this post will be in future posts in this series.