Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw will earn $31 million in 2015. (USA TODAY Sports Images)

According to an Associated Press study, the average MLB salary will break the $4 million mark for the first time in 2015, continuing a trend that has seen payrolls skyrocket due in part to increasing revenues from broadcasting deals. The average player will make an estimated $4.25 million this season, up from $3.65 million just two years ago.

And the perks of playing big-league baseball don’t end there. Major Leaguers will also get $100.50 a day in meal money while on the road in 2015.

The per diem may seem high, but it makes sense. Teams invest $4.25 million in the average player, after all, so a little over $8,000 is a pittance if it ensures that players can eat nutritious meals away from the ballpark during the season. And though baseball’s long season means the total amount of meal money is the largest in major U.S. sports, the rate is less on a per-day basis than it is in hockey, football and basketball.

Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson famously cooked for himself on the road, stashing his meal money to reward his kids for good report cards.

Rickey Henderson in 1991. (PHOTO: Alan Greth/AP Photo)

That’s presumably still an option for thrifty ballplayers — especially fringe guys earning the league minimum prorated for the time they spend on Major League rosters.

But that players earning an average of $4.25 million — and often traveling on chartered flights and staying in nice hotels — still get over $100 per day for meal money underscores yet again the huge disparity between big-leaguers and their minor league counterparts, players against whom they plied their trade while en route to the Majors.

Many minor leaguers will earn less all season than Major Leaguers get for meal money alone. And they’re expected to keep themselves in shape while playing in smaller cities and at parks where pre- and post-game meals might not be provided, on about $25 a day in meal money.

Though there’s evidence to suggest that Major Leaguers earn less relative to league revenues than they did a few years ago, the increased average salary and healthy per-diem rates demonstrate some of the ways players benefit from their union, the MLBPA. And barring some sort of radical shift in the game’s economy, it’s not clear minor leaguers have any better recourse than unionizing if they want their own salaries and accommodations to escalate in some way more in keeping with the explosion of money in the game.

(Thanks to Hardball Talk for calling our attention to this story.)