| By Jason A. Churchill |  | By 01-20-2010 |
One of the more interesting and critical aspects of building a roster is the utilization of funds allocated to payroll. We do a lot of rosterbation in the blogosphere -- it's fun, I agree -- but one of the things we don't have is a place to go to keep tabs on the payroll.
So I have created a payroll tab that we can update as figures become public, including the latest extension and arbitration figures.
As of today, David Aardsma, Felix Hernandez and Mark Lowe's salaries have been updated, though the salary of Franklin Gutierrez for 2010 remains unknown. If you read a reliable source's report of useful salary information, please email the site and we'll make the adjustment.
For now, we're assuming Gutierrez's 2010 salary is scaled down and will escalate accordingly during his four-year pact, and we'll wait to hear more definitive figures on Felix to make any assumptions at all.
Moving on --
Haven't heard anything new on the Jarrod Washburn front, but here's my official take:
I don't like it, really, unless it's an incredibly cheap endeavor for the team. Sure, Washburn is a nice presence to have in the clubhouse, but that isn't worth $5 million more than Doug Fister, Jason Vargas or Luke French.
For those that are saying Washburn is worth a similar salary for 2010 are probably putting too much stock in the whole leadership thing. Sure, pitching staffs need some veteran presence. But Hernandez isn't 19 anymore and what is Cliff Lee, a rookie with no experience?
The concerns I have with Washburn are that his knee is never going to allow him to go 190-200 innings of average or better pitching, and that his salary could potentially prevent the club from adding upgrades in other areas, such as second base.
But on the other hand, I can't believe that Jack Zduriencik would make such as addition if it had the chance of negatively impacting the available monies that could land the team an Orlando Hudson or another quality player.
And if Washburn is signed, you can bet that trading for Aaron Harang or Francisco Liriano, or signing Ben Sheets was not a plausible option for the Mariners -- it won't be because Zduriencik prefers Washburn to those other pitchers and gave up pursuit of a better option.
And yes, there is still money to spend, whether the club is planning on spending about what they did a year or have increased that number to a level of which we are all unaware.
payroll
Comments
The following 21 comment(s) for this article are shown below:
| 1. By: FWBrodie on 01-20-2010 02:37:44 Awesome Jason. Nice tool for us to have available. Thanks. |
| 2. By: Jason A. Churchill on 01-20-2010 03:22:26 Thanks, Brodie. And I figure we all kind of pay attention to these kinds of news items, so we can all keep it up. Hopefully I can figure out a way for users to update the spreadsheet themselves. |
| 3. By: 200tang on 01-20-2010 03:28:22 Definitely would pass on Washburn unless every other option was gone. Even if I was expecting 200 innings of Washburn I don't see any difference between him and Vargas. JAC - Rosterbation Question : Can you make any sort of educated guess on how Tui might handle LF defensively? This was brought up over on ProBallNW and I thought it might be the best option depending on his defense. |
| 4. By: pwhit44 on 01-20-2010 03:45:01 Question: Can a player who has signed a one-year deal to avoid arbitration (i.e. Aardsma, Lowe, the hundred others that signed in the past couple days) be traded right away? Or is it like a player signing a normal free agent contract, where they are unavailable to trade until a certain time in the season (forget the date)? |
| 5. By: Jason A. Churchill on 01-20-2010 03:50:10 tang, There's certainly a difference in the reliability of Washburn and Vargas -- Wash is a veteran that is much more likely to fight through the 5th and 6th innings (second and third time around the lineup) than is Vargas or Fister) but the difference isn't worth, say 3-5 mil more in salary. Tui's athleticism would certainly allow for such a move, but he's never played there with any regularity at any level of baseball and it's not something you do in the big leagues. But I like him in a corner OF spot long term much better than at third. Enough arm, good feet. pwhitt, Yes, he can. |
| 6. By: pwhit44 on 01-20-2010 03:56:25 By the way, thanks for the payroll tab. Although the one thing I hate about rosterbation is that there is rarely a consensus on all the salary figures across the sites I frequent. I would tend to trust PI... One example: $17M or $18M for Ichiro? For the love of god, which is it? It's obvious that JAC thinks $17M, but why is everyone else confused? |
| 7. By: 200tang on 01-20-2010 04:05:56 #6 http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/2005/01/seattle-mariners.html Cots Contract is your best friend. I'd guess JAC used it as a resource for his payroll tab. JAC : I agree that Washburn is more reliable than Vargas and probably should have worded it better by saying I don't think he'd be worth the salary difference. |
| 8. By: Jason A. Churchill on 01-20-2010 04:14:13 Cots is certainly as reliable as they come, but they were just bought by Baseball Prospectus, so it will likely become premium only. And no, the payroll tab here at PI is not supposed to be premium only. Working on fixing that, my mistake. So as a community we can keep it up for all to have as a reference. As for Ichiro, it's the difference between average annual salary and the actual yearly payout. The M's deferred some of Ichiro's salary so the present day value is about $16 million per. The differences of the 16, 17 and 18 mil salaries lie somewhere between the actual present day salary he's making and the end-result of the deferred payments plus present day salary. For our purposes, what the team is paying out in a given season is what matters most, because it's what matters most to the team for luxury tax purposes. I have updated Felix's 2010 salary to reflect the $6.5 million that has been reported, as well as pro-rating his $3.5 million signing bonus over the 5-year deal, even though we could learn at a later date that he'll be paid that entire amount now, or some mixture in between. Because it's a signing bonus (little like the NFL), the M's can spread that bonus out (for luxury tax purposes) any way they see fit, even if Felix is paid the entire bonus amount now. |
| 9. By: Jason A. Churchill on 01-20-2010 04:39:26 Payroll tab fixed -- now free to everyone, as intended. |
| 10. By: marinermanmatt on 01-20-2010 08:22:57 "I was impressed. Ben was free and easy, throwing the ball really well with not too much effort. He had good velocity. I was especially impressed with his curve ball. He's got a plus Major League curve ball with a lot of depth to it." “It looked to me like he was healthy, and health is the key issue here. I’m going to give him a strong recommendation to our organization.” This about Ben Sheets from mariners scout John Stearns, courtesy of The News-Star. I can only interpret this as good news at the very least. |
| 11. By: jgstecker on 01-20-2010 08:44:52 Ichiro's sometimes reported at 18 million because he had a $45 million signing bonus, that is sometimes reported as being spread out over 5 years. Personally, i think its easiest to view team salary in terms of actual cash spent on a given season. The M's always only report their finances in terms of profit/loss, which is based on actual cash spent, not luxury tax pro-rating. In that regard, Ichiro's salary would only be $12 million, since the other $5 mil is conceptually only "invested" and not spent. In 2013, assuming Ichiro is gone he'll still be on the "roster" for $1 million. Anyway you want to calculate payroll is fine, as longas its consistent from year to year. Spreading out signing bonuses can be problematic if the team has decided there's a specific time to pay that bouns when they think they'll have more money. The difference between accounting for all of Fliex's $3.5 million bonus at once versus spereading it out over 5 years could be impactful on the year it was actually paid. With the Mariners, this will always be a very inexact science. They are probably one of the tightest mouthed orgs in the game when it comes to money, or just about anything really. |
| 12. By: mymrbig on 01-20-2010 09:24:43 Yeah, for me Washburn is the final option on a relatively cheap contract. I like the idea that he probably has a more reliable and narrower range of productivity than Vargas/Fisters/French/etc. That can be useful for the latter half of the rotation. But he is what he is, and if you can get similar production for 1/5 the cost (or less), then he is redundant. Keep the channels open, but don't get too serious unless other options disappear at LF/DH and SP. Jason (and others), even though BP has acquired Cot's, Kevin Goldstein said it will remain free. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=9906 "Cot's Contracts is coming over to the Baseball Prospectus family. The product as you all know and love will now be hosted at baseballprospectus.com with a variety of visual improvements, and will remain a free product. We will also be developing a premium version for our subscribers with a variety of in-depth searching and sorting tools to better mine this fantastic data." |
| 13. By: marinerdan on 01-20-2010 09:52:29 “I was impressed,” said Seattle Mariners scout and former Major League catcher John Stearns, following Sheets’ outing. “Ben was free and easy, throwing the ball really well with not too much effort. He had good velocity. I was especially impressed with his curve ball. He’s got a plus Major League curve ball with a lot of depth to it. “It looked to me like he was healthy, and health is the key issue here. I’m going to give him a strong recommendation to our organization.” http://www.thenewsstar.com/article/20100120/SPORTS/100119027/FRESH-SHEETS-Major-league-pitcher-proves-he-s-still-got-it-for-scouts Sheets looks really good apparently. |
| 14. By: brianc1279 on 01-20-2010 09:52:34 Have you heard anything about whether or not Felix has a limited no trade clause in his contract? Buster Olney mentioned this on Twitter. |
| 15. By: KingFelix on 01-20-2010 10:18:48 I thought we were only on the hook for $1M of Bill Hall's contract? |
| 16. By: marinermanmatt on 01-20-2010 11:57:00 13- You said almost exactly the same thing I did just a few comments before yours. |
| 17. By: ARock on 01-20-2010 12:16:25 Great feature! On Bill Hall, I feel that listing him as ~$7.15M is misleading. His value should be an estimation of the difference between what we got from Minnesota, and what we are paying Boston. That should be a relatively small number. Lookout Landing has a salary estimate up as well, which is worth comparing this to: http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2010/1/19/1261096/felix-contract-details-the-state Differences of signifigance include (not counting various 100k differences): Ichiro: $17M here, $18M LL Bradley+Silva: $9M+$5.5M here, $10.33+$5.5 LL They have nothing listed for Hall, while Jason lists $7.15M. I dont see either of these as correct, it looks like we should account for whatever small amount more we are paying Boston than we are receiving? And they have $1.5M for Ackley which probably should not be listed. |
| 18. By: jgstecker on 01-20-2010 12:35:37 Seattle doesn't owe Hall anything. The money passed on to Boston was the money sent to us from Milwaukee. Boston assumes Hall's contract, including the 2011 option. |
| 19. By: ARock on 01-20-2010 12:37:00 "Seattle doesn't owe Hall anything. The money passed on to Boston was the money sent to us from Milwaukee. Boston assumes Hall's contract, including the 2011 option." Are we sure that it exactly cancels? I had thought there was about 500k left over that we had to pay, but certainly the number should be either 0 or something small, not ~$7M. |
| 20. By: ARock on 01-20-2010 15:50:25 Baker just posted regarding the Hall money: "As far as the $7.15 million in cash the Mariners sent to Boston in the Kotchman deal, I've checked with a Mariners official and been told that the money is the exact amount that the Brewers were paying Seattle for Bill Hall. So, the Mariners simply gave Boston the player Hall is and passed on any salary relief they were getting. It's a straight-up deal. You don't count any of the cash on Seattle's balance sheet." |
| 21. By: maqman on 01-23-2010 08:39:40 As i noted elsewhere, the Ms payroll budget for 2010 was reported on the Mariner’s Official Website on November 19, 2009 in an article by Jim Street as “this year's projected payroll of around $96 million.” Now if they let that figure stand on their own website it either has some basis in fact or is deliberately misleading (to what advantage?) or they just don’t pay attention to the details of stories on their own website (Bavasi might have done that but Z I doubt). The article is at: http://seattle.mariners.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20091118&content_id=7685234&vkey=news_sea&fext=.jsp&c_id=sea |
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