Deciphering Braves Payroll

nsacpi

nsacpi

Expects Yuge Games
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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What about 2020. Let's work backwards from that $140M McGuirk threw out. 5M roughly is "roster churning." 10M is mid-season moves. So $140M would equate to about 125M opening day.

That's what we are talking about.

So the progression for opening day payrolls looks roughly like this:

2018: 113M
2019: 117M
2020: 125M
 
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nsacpi said:
Terry McGwirk'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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He would be counting the 40 man payroll, I would think. That's what would be important to the team from financial point of view.

He did also confirm that the Braves budget for in-season acquisitions. He referenced adding to the needs of the team, but also delivering the psychological boost to team (and fans) that they organization is doing something to help. Not ground breaking stuff, but pretty much confirms that they are not going to start season with max possible payroll.
 
nsacpi said:
What about 2020. Let's work backwards from that $140M McGwirk threw out. 5M roughly is "roster churning." 10M is mid-season moves. So $140M would equate to about 125M opening day.

That's what we are talking about.

So the progression for opening day payrolls looks roughly like this:

2018: 113M
2019: 117M
2020: 125M
Click to expand...

It might look like that. I think it would just depend on circumstances. If their acquisition at the deadline carries significant salary, they might start higher in 2020, but theoretically have less flexibility to add (or at least they would have to pay more to get money back).
 
It's good to know they made a mid-course adjustment of $6M last season. If they hadn't done that AA would have been much more restricted in the moves he could have made last mid-season. I do wonder if part of the "deal" involved paring back a little on payroll in 2019.
 
I imagine the conversation last mid-season went something like this:

AA: The team is doing much better than expected. Attendance is surprising to the upside. It is important for the fans and players to feel ownership is willing to step up at a time like this.

Liberty: OK. We're bumping up your budget by 6M. But please budget conservatively at the start of next season so we don't have a similar conversation next year.

The result is that AA is starting out this season with roughly 10M budgeted for mid-season moves (which prorates to taking on salaries with an annual value in the 25-30M range).

Last year the opening day payroll left room for only 2M of of mid-season moves (which ended up about 8M after ownership made a mid-season course adjustment). AA knows he can't make those kinds of mid-season requests an annual thing.
 
nsacpi said:
I imagine the conversation last mid-season went something like this:

AA: The team is doing much better than expected. Attendance is surprising to the upside. It is important for the fans and players to feel ownership is willing to step up at a time like this.

Liberty: OK. We're bumping up your budget by 6M. But please budget conservatively at the start of next season so we don't have a similar conversation next year.

The result is that AA is starting out this season with roughly 10M budgeted for mid-season moves (which prorates to taking on salaries with an annual value in the 25-30M range).

Last year the opening day payroll left room for only 2M of of mid-season moves (which ended up about 8M after ownership made a mid-season course adjustment). AA knows he can't make those kinds of mid-season requests an annual thing.
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McQuirk says he has autonomy over the payroll. Obviously, that's not entirely correct, but Liberty is too big of a corporation to particularly need the Braves to kick cash up to them. I suspect his marching orders are to keep the books in reasonably good order and to not do anything that would stop the value of the team from appreciating. They just want the write offs and to show investors growth.
 
Southcack77 said:
McQuirk says he has autonomy over the payroll. Obviously, that's not entirely correct, but Liberty is too big of a corporation to particularly need the Braves to kick cash up to them. I suspect his marching orders are to keep the books in reasonably good order and to not do anything that would stop the value of the team from appreciating. They just want the write offs and to show investors growth.
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Yes. If terry needs 6 million to spend he only has to look at his books and take it from another piece of the pie. I.e. pay less debt.
 
OK so payroll was 126M or 130M, does it matter? Not really when $40.7M of that was being paid to people not playing for the braves. mainly Kazmir and Adrian Gonzalez. We Played much of the second half of the season with a payroll of <$80m on the field.
 
depley said:
OK so payroll was 126M or 130M, does it matter? Not really when $40.7M of that was being paid to people not playing for the braves. mainly Kazmir and Adrian Gonzalez. We Played much of the second half of the season with a payroll of <$80m on the field.
Click to expand...

winning the division last year was a small miracle

or as i like to call it The Miracle of the Golden Wrens
 
nsacpi said:
What about 2020. Let's work backwards from that $140M McGuirk threw out. 5M roughly is "roster churning." 10M is mid-season moves. So $140M would equate to about 125M opening day.

That's what we are talking about.

So the progression for opening day payrolls looks roughly like this:

2018: 113M
2019: 117M
2020: 125M
Click to expand...

We no longer have any dead money on the books right? Might not be a bad exercise to also include payroll of players actually on the field (ie useful pieces and not dead weight). I know we had Gonzalez, Kazmir et al on the books last year, so I think I read the on-field payroll was like $85M or so - around that.
 
nsacpi said:
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).
Click to expand...

Roughly the same - $114,200,000 using $600,000 for renewable players' salaries.
 
So with Keuchel (13M) we are around 129M. With roster churn we are around 133M.

As noted in the opening post, McGuirk said we were at 126M (including roster churn) in 2018 and had a target of 140M for 2020. I suspect that signing Keuchel takes us very close to the limit for 2019. We probably have room for someone like Will Smith (half of his $4.2M salary) but that would be about it.

Now we understand why money had to change hands in the Swarzak for Viz trade to keep things even.
 
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