Tom Glavine

Tom Glavine returns to the Braves next year and we are glad to see him come back. He came for a discounted price of $8 million dollars. (He turned down $13 million with the Mets.)

What exactly does that mean? Major League Baseball teams play a 162 game season. Pitchers play 1 game in 5. That means if he is healthy, he will start about 32 games. That means he will make about $250,000 for every game he starts. If he averages 7 innings a game, he will make over $35,700 per inning. While I know he is a good pitcher and I know many other pitchers make more money than Tom, surely anyone can see that this is still an outrageous salary. I will teach my entire career and not make 1/4th of what he will make in this one season. In fact, most starting teachers don't make in a year what he makes in an inning.

This could make an interesting math problem for some math classes. You could have students compare the salaries of some of the top baseball players. Comparing the fielders who play most of the games and the pitchers. Then you could compare the salaries of baseball players to the salaries of football players, etc.... You could do some neat graphs in Excel.

We're glad you're back, Tom. We wish you health and success! Go Braves!