2009 NPB Team Payroll Ranking
This ranking is based on calculating information from Daily Sports Online, and converting into US dollars at the April 24 dollar-yen exchange rate from Google Finance. The numbers are based on the start of the 2009 season. I hope this will be interesting and insightful for new NPB fans to learn how much Japanese teams pay their players.
| Rank | Team | Payroll | Players Under Contract | Highest Paid Player |
| 1 | Yomiuri Giants | $45.30M | 78 | Seung-Youp Lee, $6.2M |
| 2 | Hanshin Tigers | $40.49M | 74 | Tomoaki Kanemoto, $5.6M |
| 3 | Softbank Hawks | $34.11M | 74 | Nobuhiko Matsunaka, $5.1M |
| 4 | Chunichi Dragons | $30.02M | 70 | Hitoki Iwase, $4.4M |
| 5 | Chiba Lotte Marines | $27.67M | 78 | Naoyuki Shimizu, $2.4M |
| 6 | Seibu Lions | $26.75M | 68 | Kazuhisa Ishii, $2.8M |
| 7 | Orix Buffaloes | $26.04M | 69 | Tuffy Rhodes, $3.3M |
| 8 | Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters | $24.97M | 66 | Atsunori Inaba, $3M |
| 9 | Â Tokyo Yakult Swallows | $23.77M | 71 | Norichika Aoki,$Â 2.6M |
| 10 | Yokohama Baystars | $23.03M | 68 | Shuichi Murata, $2.6M |
| 11 | Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles | $20.74M | 67 | Hisashi Iwakuma, $3M |
| 12 | Hiroshima Toyo Carp | $17.71M | 70 | Katsuhiro Nagakawa, $1.6M |
- One note is that teams with more than 70 players on contract are from the existence of ikusei (training) players.