According to Forbes, the St. Louis Cardinals generated $310 million in revenue in 2016, 7th highest in baseball.
On an unrelated note, MLB Pipeline shares today the Competitive Balance draft picks that will be doled out in the 2018 MLB Draft, including the freebie 39th overall pick, which is going to the St. Louis Cardinals.
The new Collective Bargaining Agreement awards the extra picks to teams in the bottom 10 in revenue OR the bottom 10 in market size, which means, barring a titanic shift in the country, the Cardinals will always receive the extra pick, regardless of how well they perform or how much revenue they generate.
For comparison to that 39th overall pick, if Jake Arrieta and/or Wade Davis walk in free agency, the Cubs’ compensatory picks will fall somewhere in the 76 to 85 range. In the 2017 draft, the different in bonus slot value between pick 39 ($1.76 million) and pick 80 ($709,000) was more than a million dollars.
Oh, by the way, the 2017 picks the Cardinals lost when THEY HACKED ANOTHER MLB TEAM TO GET DRAFT INFORMATION were picks 56 and 75.
I’m not mad, though. I’m actually laughing. Yup. Not mad.