MLB payroll details, thoughts and analysis.
Payrolls
Devil Rays News
Tampa signed a pair of Damians, Moss and Rolls, bringing their 2004 payroll to a tidy $21m, in their race to stay ahead of the Brewers for lowest payroll in MLB.
To make room on the roster, they designated Rob Bell for assignment. Bell had been signed back in Decemeber to a $500k deal, but it was only guaranteed if he made the roster.
Updated Payrolls
All the payrolls have been updated with the flurry of activity we've had over the past few days (only 5 teams didn't make a move of some kind: Colorado, Detroit, Minnesota, Oakland, and St. Louis); most of the details come from Lee Sinins' invaluable ATM reports, with an assist to the Transaction Guy and MLB.com.
I got the details on Joe Borowski's contract from the Cub Reporter.
Cleveland Corrections
Clarified some Cleveland payroll information, thanks to this post. I had missed Jimenez's contract (1yr/$1m), and the details of Bere's minor league deal (1yr/$400k).
Halladay Signs
Just updated Toronto's payroll with this news. Looks like a yet another solid signing by JP Ricciardi & co; they've got the following players locked up for a total of $16.4m in 2005, $21.3m in 2006, and $24m in 2007:
- P Roy Halladay (through age 30 in 2007)
- 3B Eric Hinske (through age 29 in 2007)
- OF Vernon Wells (through age 28 in 2007)
Avoiding Arbitration
Lots of payroll activity over the past two days with teams and players coming to agreements on deals to avoid arbitration. So far 24 teams have been involved in moves of one type or another, so I'll be refreshing the payroll data for all of them, hopefully by tomorrow evening at the latest. Three tidbits for now:
- Yesterday's deals with Trot Nixon and Byung-Hyun Kim, coupled with the re-signing of Scott Williamson, have, according to my calculations, driven Boston over the luxury tax limit ($120.50m for 2004). Their projected cap number (including the ~$7.55m for player benefits) is at $130m as of now. And Boston still has to come to terms with David Ortiz - the club submitted an arbitration number of $4.25m, while Ortiz countered with $5m.
- Boston will join the Yankees (projected cap number: $184m) as the only teams currently over the luxury tax threshold. Anaheim (projected cap number: $112m) and Seattle (projected cap number: $101m) are the only other teams within spitting distance of the tax boundary.
- I've been able to update some details on deferred money in Jeff Kent, Craig Biggio, and Jeff Bagwell's contracts thanks to this list on www.astrosdaily.com. The actual updated payroll sheet is now up.
Catching Up
Putting up all of this information on the blog has left me a few days behind on all of the roster moves...I'll be catching up on them shortly. Thanks for your patience!
All Payrolls Up
I think I've fixed the problem that was causing the slow page loads. And the first cut of each team's payroll should be up and live now. If anyone notices a problem, please email me.
Slow Access
My apologies....as I've gotten more of the payrolls up, the links don't seem to be functioning as well. I'll be working on re-organizing them shortly.
Thanks!
Payroll Guide
Just a few notes on the payrolls that I'm posting:
- All salary figures are in millions of dollars
- Negative numbers are listed in parentheses
- Orange numbers are used when I'm unsure of the year-by-year breakdown of a contract
- Red numbers are used when I'm sure a figure is incorrect (e.g., unspecified amount of cash included in a deal)
Welcome
Welcome to my blog! I plan on using this blog to track the payroll and luxury tax information for major league baseball teams. As you can see in this post, I've started with the Yankees. Over the course of the next few days, I'll be putting up payroll information for all 30 MLB clubs. I hope to keep current with this information as roster moves are made - as well as to provide some analysis on major moves and how they impact a team's payroll structure. You'll see that for each club, I list both actual payroll information and a "salary cap" number for the years 2004 - 2006. I've calculated the salary cap number based on the rules set forth in the Basic Agreement. I'm no accountant or lawyer, however, and it's a big task keeping up with the movements of all 30 teams (though many of the great blogs you see linked here are an invaluable help) - so I encourage those of you who have any kind of input to email me (dugoutdollars@yahoo.com). Whether it's information about how a contract breaks down, a question about how a particular salary cap number was calculated, or just your thoughts on the site, I'd love to hear it. I'll probably break most of this information out into some kind of FAQ section eventually, but for now enjoy the work in progress! Thanks for visiting!
Syndicate This Site (XML) Powered by MakeRSS