Insider Jeff Goodman compares Kentucky with $8,200,000,000-worth MLB franchise amid reports of $20M spent on roster moves

College basketball insiders Rob Dauster and Jeff Goodman consider the Kentucky Wildcats to be the winners of the transfer portal. The Wildcats added Kam Williams, Jaland Lowe, Mouhamed Dioubate, Jayden Quaintance and Denzel Aberdeen.

However, one of the reasons Kentucky appears to have had such a solid performance has to do with resources. Wth the school having a reported $20 million allotted to basketball players, Goodman couldn't help but compare them with a Major League Baseball team during Thursday's edition of The Field of 68 After Dark.

"(Kentucky's payroll) It's somewhere in that 17 to 20, $22 million range. And that is an astronomical, insane number. When you look at it, it's like, it's like what we used to talk about, you know, with the New York Yankees, right? And you look at those, you know, the Yankees and the Kansas City Royals, and be like, how the hell can the Royals compete with the Yankees?," Goodman said (7:04).

The comparison stems from MLB's payroll disparity between the league's largest teams and the small market organizations. Because Major League Baseball doesn't have a salary cap, the $8.2 billion-worth New York Yankees (per Forbes) have a $290,153,323 million payroll, while the Kansas City Royals are at $123,813,888, according to Spotrac.

However, that's not even the largest difference between teams in the Majors, with the Los Angeles Dodgers paying a reported $331,017,666 payroll for players, while the Miami Marlins' is at $67,936,028.

The amount of resources available allowed Mark Pope's staff to land some talent in the transfer portal. Jayden Quaintance (Arizona State was the fourth-ranked player in the portal.) The other four were in the top 100. Kentucky will also get Malachi Moreno and Jasper Johnson back.

"It's going to be either almost or more than double, most of the other, even of the other teams that are spent from five to 20 in the country, because we've said there's going to be about 20 teams in the country, according to my sources, that are going to be in the 10 million range," added Goodman.

---

Kentucky's Travis Perry enters transfer portal

Even after getting such a talent haul in the transfer portal, not everything is perfect for the Wildcats. Freshman Travis Perry entered the transfer portal on Tuesday, becoming the second scholarship player to enter, after Kerr Kriisa.

Perry averaged 2.7 points and 0.8 rebounds over 9.8 minutes in his first season in Lexington. While the guard saw more playing time than expected, he still decided to look for a future elsewhere.

The Eddyville, Kentucky, native came to Kentucky after becoming the state's all time high school points leader. He will have two seasons of eligibility remaining.