Quote (EwokHellKite @ Dec 24 2011 11:13am)
I am really perplexed by the payroll issue, and shed 5 Mill from Lowe, we shed KK and McLouth. I know that there are arb raises and such, but I also thought we were suppose to have a bump in payroll from everything we are told. I dont get how we can never seem to have money to spend. —Mike
I can understand why it’s perplexing that the Braves have so little to spend again.
But you noted how Braves shed Lowe, Kawakami and McLouth. Well, think of it this way: McLouth had a $6.5 mill salary last season, and Bourn is going to make more than that in ‘12, probably go from $4.4 mill last year to around $7 mill in arb for ‘12. So that’s a wash.
Then there’s the approx. $12 mill the Braves shed with KK and Lowe ($5 mill of Lowe’s $15 mill contract is all they saved, paying the rest).
McCann gets a $5 mill raise, from $6.5 mill in ‘11 to $11.5 mill in ‘12 including the maxed-out $3 mill in escalator clauses triggered by his All-Star appearances and Silver Slugger awards. Uggla has a $4 million raise in 2012, because his contract included a salary of $9 mill in ‘11 and then four straight years at $13 mill, plus the $1 mill signing bonus that’s spread over five years ($200,000 each year for accounting purposes).
McCann and Uggla will make $9 million more, which you could think of as wiping out all but $2 mill of the money shed with Lowe and Kawakami being gone.
Then you start getting into the amounts shed by not brinking back Linebrink (only $2 mill, because White Sox paid rest of his salary), Moylan (though they might end up bringing back Moylan at or below the $2 mill he made last year) and Sherrill ($1.2 mill), you’re looking at saving about $5 mill, or only about $3 mill if Moylan is brought back.
Take into account the arb raises also going to O’Flaherty and whomever is kept among Prado and Jurrjens, and you’re really actually back at about even again, in terms of the money saved by getting rid of the players they aren’t bringing back.
So you can see where they’d need to move someone to free up money if they’re going to add a player making $5 mill or so, unless the payroll is being raised more than just a little bump of a couple million bucks (and we don’t even know if that’ll happen).
We didn’t even get into the small raises that go to the under-3 guys, raises that will be a little bigger than usual for Kimbrel (All-Star, ROY) and probably Freeman (ROY runner-up).
yeah i saw that on the DOB blog, makes sense. I'm honestly fine with staying put until the allstar break lol