The Rays’ 2011 Payroll
The Rays’ owner, Stuart Sternberg, made some waves earlier this week by announcing payroll would be reduced next season. This information came as a surprise to some, despite being pretty obvious based on the Rays’ current contract outlooks.
As of this writing, the six highest paid players on the Rays are:
Carlos Pena $10.1M
Carl Crawford $10M
Pat Burrell $9M
Rafael Soriano $7.5M
Jason Bartlett $4M
Dan Wheeler $4M
A resounding five of those players (everyone but Bartlett) will reach free agency at season’s end. Assuming no extensions or trades occur before November, that’s roughly $40M off the books. Throw in Gabe Kapler and Grant Balfour’s combined $3M and the Rays have more than half of their 2010 $70M payroll coming off the books.
Assume the Rays see some aggressive pay raises through arbitration and they would still have to take on something like $30M in 2011 salary to be near this year’s tab. Take the Yankees’ and Red Sox’s off-seasons as a testament to how much money that really is. The super-rich Yankees added Javier Vazquez ($11.5M), Curtis Granderson ($5.5M), Nick Johnson ($5.5M), and Randy Winn ($1.1M) which totals less than $25M. The super-aggressive Red Sox added John Lackey ($18M), Adrian Beltre ($9M), Jeremy Hermida ($3.3M), Bill Hall (~$1M), Mike Cameron ($7.3M), and Marco Scutaro ($5M) for a total of nearly $44M. Take Lackey’s salary out of the equation, though, and they added about $26M in 2010 salaries.
Of course it’s asinine to try and project a team’s lineup a few weeks from now, to attempt and project all the changes and especially with such mass departure over 12 months away is pointless. In a general sense, the free agent class will feature some attractive options like Cliff Lee, Joe Mauer, and the guy who would turn all the Tampa-based Yankees’ fans into Rays’ fans for a few days, Derek Jeter, but it’s just hard to see the Rays spending and acquiring so much salary within a single off-season.
So yeah, the Rays’ payroll is probably going to be reduced in 2011. The sun will probably rise tomorrow morning too.
Desmond Jennings time
I have watched him several times. He’s not there yet or even close. P late discipline has a long way to go.
When Crawford departs he’ll get a long look— I would say June ’11 is a safe bet
That looks like a list of players that will be traded for prospects after the All-Star break. Unfortunate.
Meh. Two of the names are relievers; definitionally fungible if their name isn’t Mariano Rivera. Pena is cool, but first basemen are also tolerably fungible. They won’t miss (or resign) Burrel. So what are we looking at? Crawford and Bartlett? I’d say that resigning those two is well within the Rays’ means.
They don’t have to re-sign Bartlett. He’ll be entering his final arbitration year. With Jennings waiting, they might do better than re-signing Crawford by getting a big basher for 1b (several are figured to be on the trade market) or a stout RH bat like Jayson Werth
Should go after Adrian with that cash. Any way to quantify the NET gain in the division should they add his WAR upgrade while keeping him away from Boston?
They’re just too close to wild card contention to let Boston and New York keep up the dynasty–as it looks like they may for a while. Seems like the sort of team who should value every incremental win more than most!
I’d imagine the organization would be better off with a $70M contender than the best perennial 3rd place team at $50M.
I have a vague memory of Tampa having a pretty good 3b. What’s his name again?
Ethan Longholio or something
There are few things more amusing than watching someone be a smart-ass whilst making an incorrect assumption about his subject’s point.
Try Gonzalez. And not shooting from your hip.
Any way to quantify the NET gain in the division should they add his WAR upgrade while keeping him away from Boston?
Sure, calculate the difference in expected WAR Boston would get from the team it has without Gonzalez and the team it would have with him, and add that to the difference betweens Rays with Gonzalez and Rays without him. It would take some guesswork on figuring out exactly who the Red Sox would have surrendered to get him, but you could roughly do it, yeah.
I’m tired of hearing about these small market teams and their payroll problems. If “small market” teams can’t compete at the major league level, maybe its time baseball goes back to fewer teams and cities like Miami, Tampa,Kansas City etc. lose their franchises and become AAA cities where maybe they belong.
Yes! Everyone should move to New York. Then it will be fair, plus ESPN won’t have to change it’s plan of just showing New York teams all the time.
dude your an elitist loser!
1. This article never stated that the Rays have a payroll problem. It just said they would have a payroll reduction, not necessarily because of their economic situation but because of how their contracts are lined up.
2. It should be abundantly clear that the Rays are able to compete at the major league level.
I’m tired of commenters like Kevin Davis
To clarify for those who failed to read past the title, neither the Rays nor the post says anything about being less competitive. Rather, it would take free agency signings matching Boston’s this year for their payroll NOT to be reduced, therefore commenting about reduced payroll is simply stating the obvious.
What is ignored in this article is the fact that the yankees and the red sox spent that money bringing in players from the outside, not retaining their own. Given that the Rays stand to lose their starting LF and 1B, their closer and primary set up man, that is four major pieces that will have to be replaced. If they count on replacing them from within to remain in the lower third of payroll rather than middle third, then they will inevitably follow the course of the A’s of the big three, giambi and tejada – slowly disappearing from relevance.
“have to take on something like $30M in 2011 salary to be near this year’s tab. ”
that’s nice, except for one problem. this year’s tab is over $70M and the owner said next year’s “tab” will be below $60M. On top of that, considering built in raises and all of the core players in arbitration next year (Upton, Zobrist, Garza, etc.) the Rays have at least $50M committed to next years payroll. So I have no idea where the author gets $30M. Try about $10M. And while bargains can be had these days. $10M is not going to be much to replace all the free agents listed in this post.
He didn’t say they would add 30 million. He said THIS YEAR’s TAB. Not what he thinks next year’s will be. So if your 50 mil is correct, then it would be 20 million needed to get to this years tab. So you are just as far off as he is, and that’s assuming your 50 mil. estimate is correct.
Only two of the free agents need to be categorically replaced, Crawford and Pena. Jennings is expected to approximate Crawford’s value so that takes care of that at the league minimum. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Pena have a hard time finding a team so he could be back on cheaper 1 year deal or he could be replaced with a trade. The other 3 are relievers and the Rays have no shortage of great arms to toss into the bullpen and hope for the best. They’ll be in position to trade one of their established starters, Shields or Garza probably, for any other needs since they have Price, Davis, Hellickson, and Niemann all set to earn the minimum. Moore and McGee probably won’t be far off by then, whether that entails pen work or not.
So basically I expect 5 players to be replaced with 1 real contract (to a 1b), and 4 near minimum deals. Something like 8 million.
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Seems to me your having the same problems that we have in the UK with the smaller soccer clubs trying to compete with the premier clubs on an uneven playing field.