Rule: Full playoff share to Melky Cabrera

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To the victors go the spoils. And the Giants are about to get spoiled rotten.

Most members of the team stand to make well over $300,000 for their postseason exploits, thanks to the strange world of playoff revenue sharing in baseball. And that includes disgraced slugger Melky Cabrera, believe it or not. We'll get back to that in a minute, but first we need to try to explain the rules.

Here's how it works (I think): Revenues generated at all the postseason games are split up among all the participating clubs and players. Even some teams that don't make the playoffs get in on the action. Any team that finishes second in its division, even if it doesn't make the new wild card format, gets a piece of the action (albeit 1 percent of the gross).

In 2010, the last time the Giants won the World Series, $54.9 million was distributed among 12 teams. Sounds simple enough, but it's not. After the money is collected, it has to be split between management (the owners) and labor (the players). You'll be surprised to hear that the players get the better end of the bargain. In every series, the money made in the early games goes to the players. The owners don't start collecting their share until the later games.

So, this year, with a 4-0 sweep in the World Series, the players made out better than the owners. Now, that's a strong union.

San Francisco Giants Melky Cabrera turns to the Giants dugout and voices his displeasure after striking out in the 8th inning against the Oakland Athletics during their MLB Baseball Game on Friday June 22, 2012 at the Oakland Coliseum, in Oakland California. less San Francisco Giants Melky Cabrera turns to the Giants dugout and voices his displeasure after striking out in the 8th inning against the Oakland Athletics during their MLB Baseball Game on Friday June 22, 2012 ... more Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Rule: Full playoff share to Melky Cabrera 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

It gets even more interesting when the players start dividing those spoils. Way before the playoffs even start, soon after the July 31 trade deadline passes, all the team members who were on the roster the whole season get together to decide who should get full shares of the prize money and who should get partial shares. The meeting is chaired by the team's union rep, and one can imagine that the conversation is lively. There's a lot of money on the table, literally. On the Giants, for instance, the all-season regulars had to make some tough decisions on what to give someone like Hunter Pence or Marco Scutaro, both of whom joined the team in the second half of the season.

According to the Baseball Almanac website, the great Babe Ruth once made fun of a former teammate who was then with the Cubs. Apparently, the Cubbies didn't vote a full share for Ruth's buddy, Mark Koenig. During the 1932 World Series, slugger Ruth said, "Hey, Mark, who are those cheapskates you're with?" That Babe. He was a card.

We'll find out later this month how the Giants voted. And that's the easy part. It gets crazy complicated when it comes to dividing up the total revenues. The best explanation I could find was on Wikipedia:

There is a separate pool for each series - the Division Series, the League Championship Series, and the World Series. The players' bonus pool is funded with 60% of the gate receipts for the first three games of each Division Series, the first four games of each LCS and the first four games of the World Series; limiting the funding for the pool to these games, the minimum number in each series, removes incentive to extend the series for merely fiscal sake. The value of the gate is determined by the size of the venues, the amount of high-priced premium seating in the venues, the number of games played in the series and whether or not the games sell out. Ticket prices for each series are set by MLB, not the home teams, so they are relatively uniform across baseball.

Oy. Things get complicated when it comes to money. As for who gets what, the site lays it out like this:

The World Series winner gets 35%, the World Series loser gets 24%, both League Championship Series losers get 12%, and the four Division Series losers get 3%. In addition, the two wild card round losers and two second-place teams that fail to qualify for the postseason receive 1% of the pool.

As you can see, the Giants will get the lion's share of the money this year, and rightfully so. And their quick work with the Tigers will not help the team's bottom line as much as a seven-game series would have.

Considering the amount of money - St. Louis Cardinals players received over $362,000 for winning the World Series in 2006 - this is significant for some players. A guy like Gregor Blanco, whose salary was $516,000 this year, adds to his take-home pay significantly. A guy like Barry Zito, who made $18 million this season, will probably stuff the check in his sock drawer and forget it.

Other beneficiaries include the clubhouse guy and the team's traveling secretary. The team goofed up in 2010, voting two full shares, $317,631 each, to the groundskeepers. The head man kept one full share and the rest of the guys split the rest. I guess it's good to be the head groundskeeper.

Then there's Cabrera. He spent 117 games on the roster this season, and he stood to make 72.2 percent of a full share. But an obscure union rule mandates a full share if a player's team plays 10 games after the suspended player is eligible to be reinstated.

Cabrera was eligible to come back for Game 1 of the NLCS. The Giants chose to keep him on the shelf, but the team also played 11 more playoff games. And that triggers a full share for Melky.

Merry Christmas, pal. Don't spend it all in one place.