Terry McGuirk's comments provide some food for thought.
As I understand it he said season ending payroll last year was $126M. He said the target was $120M (I take it this was the target for the season not opening day).
He said the projection for 2020 is $140M. I interpret him to be taking about the target for the season not opening day.
With these caveats in mind, I switch now to talking about opening day payrolls.
Last year (by my calculations) I had us at $113M. Those of you who keep track please chime in on whether your numbers are similar.
AT this point I have us at $114 for 2019 opening day payroll. If we sign someone like Bud Norris we will be at $117M or so, a small increase over 2018.
We did take on some payroll mid-season last year (Gausman, O'Day, Venters, Brach, Duda, Duvall). About $8M if your prorate it for the fact we had those players for about a third of the season. Add that to the 113 opening day and you get to 121M. How does McGwirk get to 126M. Well players spend some time on the DL and you need to bring up guys from the minors. That's maybe 2M. So we are up to 123M. He may also be counting the salaries of guys on the 40 man but not on the 25 man roster. That gets you pretty close to 126M.
As for this year. If we start at 117M, I'm guessing we will have flexibility to take on another $10M prorated mid-season (or contracts with annual value of 25-30M).
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