As the winter opened, there were rumblings the Royals would be looking to maintain their previous seasons payroll. Maintain. Not increase. The news was met with a bit of deserved skepticism as the Royals have shed their cheapskate ways of the previous decade under the leadership of Dayton Moore. If he’s needed the money, more often than not, the cash has been available.
So as the free agent signings continued, along with the arbitration bumps, it became apparent the magic number was around $125 to $130 million, which we heard about early in the winter. Once Alex Gordon was back in the fold, we knew the Royals would be setting another payroll record. This one is mighty impressive.
Don’t forget, Gordon took a pay cut for this year. Sure, he will make that back over the next couple of years, but still, it’s interesting to me he’s making $2 million less than the year before.
The disabled list guys count toward the Opening Day payroll. That’s why Jason Vargas, Mike Minor, Jarrod Dyson and Tim Collins are on this above list. They represent $13.7 million, or just over 10 percent of the Opening Day payroll.
Early spring training long shots in Terrance Gore, Reymond Fuentes, and Chien-Ming Wang represent just over $2 million of total payroll. Surprising and inexpensive!
Louis Coleman is on the list because as eligible for arbitration, the Royals are obligated to pay one month of his salary when he was released.
The Perez salary bonus will push this number even higher. When he renegotiated his contract, they agreed to a $6 million signing bonus. I’m not sure if this was a single lump sum, or if it’s pro-rated. As such, it’s not included in the above table. I will update when confirmed.
How about a visual representation through the dark days to the golden age?
Simply amazing. The 2009 and 2010 payrolls felt so right for the Royals at the time. You would be forgiven if you had thought it would continue to slightly increase over the next six seasons. Slightly. Since bottoming out in 2011 (when the Royals shed the Zack Greinke salary and Gil Meche retired) the growth has been continual and it has been steep. We’ve pretty well buried the “Glass is cheap” meme. The above graph should be the final shovel of dirt.
All contract data is provided from Cot’s Baseball Contracts.
Flanny says the Perez bonus is all this year:
https://twitter.com/FlannyMLB/status/704728629775831040?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
@Max Rieper – Paid to Perez is different that being applied to the payroll budget in accounting terms.
From what I understand is even if it’s paid as a lump sum at the start it’s ammotrized over the length of the contract for payroll and luxury tax purposes. MLB calls the process Average Annual Value (AAV).