I would love to know who voted "Yes, and he deserves it" and "No, but he deserves it" because whoever did has incredibly over inflated opinion of player values and how much money they deserve to earn. No player deserves even the $25 million a year A-Rod is earning now and to say he deserves $30 is <insert adjective of choice here> to say the least.
There's another line of thinking on the subject, per Scott Boras, who I heard as a guest on XM two nights ago. That is, there is a general rule of thumb that the players salaries should approximate 50% of gross revenue, with the rest going to operating expenses and profit. Revenues have been skyrocketing in recent years as teams get smarter about media contracts, MLB.com, etc, and so therefore player wages should move in a corresponding direction.
Of course Scott Boras is very self serving in his remarks, but there is an element of fairness to his contention that player compensation should increase when revenues increase.
It would be interesting if you could conduct a poll, along the lines of this. Ask 50% of your audience if they think A-Rod should make $30m annually, if you believe he's the best player in the game. Then ask the other 50% if they believe that if revenues increase, players should get a fair share of the increase. I bet most folks would say "no" to paying A-Rod $30m, but would say "yes" to players sharing in the growth of revenues. Well guess what, that's two sides of a very similar question.
Poll