Five Minnesota Twins Earned Bonuses for Their 2024 Performances

[Seth Stohs]

Bailey Ober and Griffin Jax will be able to get their young children some great presents this holiday season after MLB handed out its annual pool of money to pre-arbitration players. 

Image courtesy of © D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images

In the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), the players and owners agreed to provide bonus money for pre-arbitration eligible players who perform well based on a calculation using a couple of different Wins Above Replacement (WAR) statistics. Players barely make the league minimum for their first three MLB seasons, if they stick in the league that long. Through the arbitration process, they can start earning some money. This system eases the frustration and inequity of that framework for young players.

Major League Baseball sets aside $50 million. Specific amounts are earned for receiving Rookie of the Year, MVP, or Cy Young votes, or finishing first- or second-team All-MLB. For those award allocations, a player can only receive one bonus each year, whichever is higher. 

The remainder of the award pool is spread out between the top pre-arbitration players in baseball, based on the blended WAR metric negotiated by the two sides. A year ago, ten players earned a bonus of at least $1 million. This year, eight players received a seven-digit bonus led by Royals' shortstop Bobby Witt at $3,077,595. I'm sure it's no surprise to see that Pirates starting pitcher Paul Skenes and Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson earned more than two million dollar bonuses. The others over $1 million are Brewers catcher William Contreras, Royals lefty Cole Ragans, Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran, Padres outfielder Jackson Merrill, and Yankees starting pitcher Luis Gil. Just shy of $1 million were Orioles outfielder Colton Cowser and Brewers outfielder Jackson Chourio. 

This year, a total of 101 players earned a bonus through this program. Twenty-three players earned at least $500,000. None of the Twins players reached that level, but several 2024 Minnesota Twins earned a significant bonus. Here are the Twins players who received bonuses (and what their 2024 salary was): 

Bailey Ober - $381,085 (2024 salary: $761,850)
Griffin Jax - $352,852 (2024 salary: $761,750)
Joe Ryan - $331,054  (2024 salary: $758,850)
Matt Wallner* - $256,296 (2024 salary: $745,550)
Simeon Woods Richardson* - $243,471 (2024 salary: N/A, but not much over the league minimum of $740,000)
*2024 salary shows a full season. These players would have been paid a prorated amount based on their days in the big leagues.

Here are some other bonuses handed out that you might be interested in: 

Former Twins or Twins farmhands: Yankees RHP Luis Gil ($1,098,628), A's DH Brent Rooker ($687,804), Mariners 1B/OF Luke Raley ($312,989).  

Players from Minnesota: Cubs 1B Michael Busch ($325,723), Nationals RHP Jake Irvin ($239,663). 

Bonuses are paid by the MLB team who then gets reimbursed by MLB from that $50 million pool. Each of the 30 teams paid equally into the pool. 

Congratulations to all of these recipients on their well-deserved bonuses. 

View full article

[Parfigliano]

Gotta like a job where your bonus (Ober) is a tick below half your salary for the year.

[tony&rodney]

Congratulations to these fine performers. This list makes it clear what the core of the team is at this time, besides our two handsomely paid faces of the team. The bonuses should, indeed, lend a little sparkle to the holidays for the deserving players.

 

[LambchoP]

These guys all definitely earned it. Trading away any one of these guys would be idiotic.

[stringer bell]

Glad to see those guys get a bump in salary. Sim gets some money, but Royce doesn't--a little surprised by that. Incidentally, I noticed that Woods Richardson is just short of one year of service time, so the Twins have six more full years of control of him. I hope that he will be a significant part of the team for all six of those years.

 

 

[Heiny]

I somewhat understand the economics behind the salaries, but it still strikes me as a bit odd that the MLB minimum for one year is about half of a very good blue collar workers entire career.

[old nurse]

Each team contributes equally to the pool. The Twins did not get back what they put in. It is great for the players that got the money. 

[thelanges5]

Love to see some more of our young guys perform well enough to earn this in 2025. Our season depends on it.

[tony&rodney]

1 hour ago, stringer bell said:

Sim gets some money, but Royce doesn't--a little surprised by that.

Curious why this was surprising to you. 

[saviking]

PERFORMANCE BASED PAY .. Well, there's an idea. Why doesn't every player get paid based on performance? Give everyone a base salary and pay them on performance based on everyone else.  

Naw, that would make too much sense ..

[rdehring]

Interesting seeing Raley on that list.  Do you remember, Seth, that unbelievable season he had at Rochester back whenever?  Or was it a part of a season?

When I think about how good Jax and Ober were, gotta feel they got shortchanged.  They had to be every bit as good as several of those guys around $1M.

[NYCTK]

3 hours ago, Heiny said:

I somewhat understand the economics behind the salaries, but it still strikes me as a bit odd that the MLB minimum for one year is about half of a very good blue collar workers entire career.

You should learn about minor league salaries then. That's the more appropriate comparison. 

 

2 hours ago, saviking said:

PERFORMANCE BASED PAY .. Well, there's an idea. Why doesn't every player get paid based on performance? Give everyone a base salary and pay them on performance based on everyone else.  

Naw, that would make too much sense ..

Is that how your job works? You get 10% of your salary guaranteed and then everything else is performance based? 

[bean5302]

5 hours ago, Heiny said:

I somewhat understand the economics behind the salaries, but it still strikes me as a bit odd that the MLB minimum for one year is about half of a very good blue collar workers entire career.

Average US blue collar worker makes $50k a year in current dollars.
avg. blue collar 45 years of work = 2.25MM.
HVAC industry more like $3MM+
an electrician, more like $4MM+

Studies on household income level "happiness" is reached between $80-100k-ish per year on average as I recall.

You're in the ballpark if you're in a blue collar skilled trade. Food industry is the lowest, skilled trades in construction/housing in the middle, with maintaining expensive equipment being the high end. In general from what I've seen.

[tony&rodney]

2 hours ago, bean5302 said:

Average US blue collar worker makes $50k a year in current dollars.
avg. blue collar 45 years of work = 2.25MM.
HVAC industry more like $3MM+
an electrician, more like $4MM+

Studies on household income level "happiness" is reached between $80-100k-ish per year on average as I recall.

You're in the ballpark if you're in a blue collar skilled trade. Food industry is the lowest, skilled trades in construction/housing in the middle, with maintaining expensive equipment being the high end. In general from what I've seen.

Are you saying that people only need to work for 45 years now. When I was a .....

[jmlease1]

16 hours ago, tony&rodney said:

Are you saying that people only need to work for 45 years now. When I was a .....

assuming that you start professional work at 18, that means retiring at 63. Which certainly used to be pretty normal and it would be awfully nice if people didn't have to desperately keep hanging on for 5-7 more years so that they don't go broke in retirement. Especially for people working blue collar jobs which generally have physical demands that make it exceptionally hard for folks to keep working well into their 60's.

[Fatbat]

On 12/14/2024 at 9:50 AM, saviking said:

PERFORMANCE BASED PAY .. Well, there's an idea. Why doesn't every player get paid based on performance? Give everyone a base salary and pay them on performance based on everyone else.  

Naw, that would make too much sense ..

That would change the while league. Might be an interesting change!!

[bean5302]

18 hours ago, tony&rodney said:

Are you saying that people only need to work for 45 years now. When I was a .....

Just ball parking it. Not everybody starts working in their career path at age 18. Some work a retail or service industry job while they figure out what they're going to do or there are some internships which don't exactly pay well, etc. Kinda nit picking 45 vs. 47 years, LOL.

[sun]

I'm happy for Joe Ryan. Sometimes I think that he's under appreciated. I'm looking forward to him pitching a no hitter someday. He's capable of pitching a gem. Give that Deadhead some more money  & eventually Twins fans will be Dancin' in the Streets!

[saviking]

22 hours ago, Fatbat said:

That would change the while league. Might be an interesting change!!

It would take some type of salary cap I'm afraid. But then, I;ve always wanted baseball to have a salary cap as well.