Talking Points Memo

It's October and that means the Major League Baseball playoffs. If you are not a baseball fan or even a sports fan, here's an interesting fact about the MLB: There is no salary cap. This means that each team is allowed to spend as much money as its owners please to acquire players. Well, as Donald Trump has demonstrated, not all billionaires are equally rich. Some teams simply don't have as much money as other teams. So, sometimes you end up with a situation like this:
 

Here are the four remaining teams in the 2024 postseason, their payroll and where that payroll ranks in the entire league:

1. New York Mets: $318 million

2. New York Yankees: $309 million

5. LA Dodgers: $241 million

23. Cleveland Guardians: $107 million.
 

You may notice a bit of a discrepancy there between the first three teams and the Cleveland Guardians. The Guardians can't just go out and buy whatever or whoever they want. They have to be efficient. Without getting too in the baseball weeds here, they have to draft players well and then develop those players and maybe even get a little lucky.

TPM is not so different. And we like it that way. We have to be smart about how we utilize our resources. We don't have a massive corporation backing us. We aren't owned by a billionaire who was convicted of insider trading and temporarily banned from managing money, yet is still so goddamn rich he could afford to buy a baseball team.

No. Nothing like that.

Anyway, the point is this: You can rest assured that every dollar spent with TPM, either for a membership or a contribution to the TPM Journalism Fund, is well spent. We share our financials publicly because we have nothing to hide: We invest in quality journalism, and we have done so for nearly 25 years.