NEWSLETTER
With six of the Chicago Cubs’ seven arbitration cases settled, and the roster rounding into shape, it’s fair to start taking a look at the Cubs’ 2012 payroll obligations, and what the team might have “left” to spend in the next couple of months.
Our general sense has been (a) available payroll will be somewhere around $125 to $130 million in 2012 (depending on team revenues in 2011 minus non-player expenses in 2012), and (b) to date, the Cubs have committed about $100 million. That would mean that the Cubs still have a considerable chunk of cash left that they could spend in 2012 if so inclined.
But are we wrong?
First, let’s take a look at the players the Cubs have under contract for 2012, with a couple of guesses on the bench for purposes of this exercise:
Starting Position Players:
Geovany Soto – $4.3 million
Bryan LaHair – $480k
Darwin Barney – $480k
Starlin Castro -$600k (estimated raise)
Ian Stewart – $2.238 million
Alfonso Soriano – $18 million
Marlon Byrd – $6.5 million
David DeJesus – $4.25 million
Starting Rotation:
Matt Garza – $9 million (estimated raise)
Ryan Dempster – $14 million
Paul Maholm – $4.25 million
Travis Wood – $480k
Chris Volstad – $2.655 million
Bullpen:
Randy Wells – $2.705 million
Manny Corpas – $1 million
Jeff Samardzija – $2.7 million
Kerry Wood – $3 million
Jeff Beliveau – $480k
James Russell – $480k
Carlos Marmol – $7 million
Bench:
Steve Clevenger – $480k
Blake Dewitt – $1.1 million
Jeff Baker – $1.375
Tony Campana – $480k
Reed Johnson $1.15 million
Total Commitment for 2012: $89,183,000
Hey, all right, awesome. That’s even lower than we thought!
But. There’s always a but. In fact, in this case, there are several buts.
The first but is a big one: the Cubs owe the Marlins the difference between Carlos Zambrano’s salary ($18 million) and Chris Volstad’s salary ($2.655 million), which comes to another $15.345 million.
So, we’re up to $104,528,000. Ok. Well, there’s still plenty of room.
But.
The Cubs also owe Carlos Pena a deferred $5 million payment this month as part of his $10 million deal from last season.
So, we’re up to $109,528,000. Things are getting a little tighter.
But the Cubs still owe Jim Hendry and Mike Quade their salaries for 2012. That money doesn’t come directly out of payroll, but it does reduce the total dollars available for spending in 2012, and, like payroll, it varies from year to year (in other words, payments to executives and managers feels a lot like payroll). So that’s a total of about $2 million more.
Now we’re at $111,528,000.
And then there are the new hires in the front office. Theo Epstein is making a little over $3.5 million in 2012. Jed Hoyer is getting an estimated (by me) $1.5 million. Jason McLeod, Joe Bohringer, Shiraz Rehman, and Matt Dorey together are probably at least another $1 million. And then there was the raise for Oneri Fleita. All told, let’s say there’s an additional $6.5 million in executive expenses this year, which is probably conservative.
That brings things to $118,028,000.
(There is one good but: folks have talked at length about a $2 million payment owed to Carlos Silva in 2012, but after some digging, it looks like that payment is being covered by the Mariners.)
There could also be an extra $500k going to someone like Andy Sonnanstine if he makes the roster (I chose Corpas to make the roster to split the baby in terms of Corpas and Sonnanstine, each of whom the Cubs signed on a split deal that will pay them about $1 million if they make the big team), and I may have gone too low on Castro’s raise (as an auto-renew player, the Cubs can essentially pay him whatever they want – stars, however, tend to get raises as a sign of good faith). And we haven’t even gotten into a variety of new, non-player, non-executive expenses associated with improved organizational technology, facilities, scouts, etc.
The point of this exercise is not to put a precise dollar amount on where things stand (we’re close, but throwing in the executive dollars makes the estimate a bit mushy). Instead, the point is only to help us keep perspective on how much money the Cubs have “left” to spend on players. Sure, it could be another $20 million. Or it could be as little as just a couple million. Or none.
I still think the Cubs make large offers on guys like Yoenis Cespedes and Jorge Soler, in part because the amount of money to be spent on amateur players is very much in flux this year, but it may well have turned out that those “crazy” suggestions that the Cubs couldn’t afford a guy like Prince Fielder this year weren’t so crazy after all.
EDIT: To reiterate, the point here is not to contend that executive salaries are “payroll.” In fact, I said the opposite. The point, instead, is to look at known, hard dollar costs to evaluate how much room is actually available for payroll (because, as Tom Ricketts has said, the total baseball operations budget will approximately equal the revenue coming in the door – so revenue minus unknown expenses = expected payroll. To the extent we can discuss some of those non-payroll expenses – like executive salaries – it’s worth doing so).
Inartfully explained in the original post, but I’m not saying executive pay is a part of payroll. I’m saying it’s LIKE payroll, because it reduces the amount the Cubs can spend on payroll.
Think of it this way: if the Cubs spend $5 million on a free agent, the available dollars for payroll go down by $5 million. If the Cubs spend $5 million on a new executive, because the money is all coming out of the same pot – the total baseball operations budget – the available dollars for payroll also goes down by $5 million.
It’s another way of thinking about it, not a mischaracterizing of the line items on a budget statement.
