2020 salary terms are set to be hammered out in the coming days. But what about what’s owed to players beyond that point? The near-term economic picture remains questionable at best. That’ll make teams all the more cautious with guaranteed future salaries.
Every organization has some amount of future cash committed to players, all of it done before the coronavirus pandemic swept the globe. There are several different ways to look at salaries; for instance, for purposes of calculating the luxury tax, the average annual value is the touchstone, with up-front bonuses spread over the life of the deal. For this exercise, we’ll focus on actual cash outlays that still have yet to be paid.
We’ll run through every team, with a big assist from the Cot’s Baseball Contracts database. Next up is the Royals:
(click to expand/view detail list)
Royals Total Future Cash Obligation: $38.75MM
It’s bizarre Whit’s salary drops so low in his final non-option season of the contract. Under $3MM??
Multiple factors there: guaranteed him more money sooner which was desired as a late bloomer signing first extension. he is a player that relies on his legs and is aging. it makes him much more tradable down the line if royals don’t become contenders quickly.
Front-loaded contracts are crazy like that
Wow, Royals and Pirates under 50 million in payroll. Yankees at 500 million. That seems like an even playing field. I wonder why MLB thinks this is ok? Think about that a moment. Why does the NBA, NHL and NFL do it differently in regards to Caps??
Royals and pirates ownership could bump if they wanted to. But they don’t. Blame the owners, not the league as an entity.
The Royals just were sold. Waiting on approval I think unless it has been approved.
Hardly fair to compare owners from a small market with a large market team that has its own tv station. That being said, Royals ownership has been historically sketchy.
The Royals have a new owner. The team was sold only last November.
I gotta side with Falconsball
Royals bumped payroll a lot when they were contending/getting in the playoffs and guess what……..they lost money for the year overall. How you see why they limit their payroll! They did just sign a new TV contract this winter that will pay them a lot more money each year, so they will have more money available for players contracts ect….
Well if the league makes a mandatory floor and cap then there can’t be cheap owners making that greedy decision to not up payroll. Force to sell to owners that actually want to win instead of run it like a massive earning business while lyinh to fans. Nutting is a piece of human trash as an owner. Greed.
Look at your owner bro…
I don’t think either the players or the owners would want a salary cap. The players definitely don’t want their salary capped.
As for the owners, big market owners probably don’t want their ability to build the best team curtailed and the smaller market teams probably don’t care enough to risk a lockout or strike to push for it. Mid-market teams, maybe, because they’d benefit with a leveling of the playing field. But small market teams still wouldn’t be able to compete salary-wise unless the cap was low, which the players would never go for.
There’s also salary floors, revenue sharing differences between the leagues, and the strength of the players unions.
NBA, NFL and NHL want level playing fields. Keeps all their fan bases engaged. All teams must spend within 20% of each other. Can’t horde money, can’t buy up the league. Works great. Baseball is stuck in the distant past.
Yet the Ray’s and A’s had awfully low budgets for contenders and won 96 and 97 games. The Royals are currently in a rebuild and the Pirates just entered one. If the Pirates knew how to develop players (Cole, Glasnow, Morton, etc) they might still have been contenders.
There’s no reason for a small market team to spend money when the team is absolutely terrible. The Royals ramped up spending considerably when the team was in contention.
That deal with Witt works out very well!
If Jorge Soler proves his powerful 2019 season wasn’t a fluke, he might be in line for an extension, no?
Yes!
Yes but if he hits close to 50 home runs again. I doubt his agent will let him sign that extension. Especially since it’s the Royals and they will probably offer him 60 million. He would double that at least if he waits another year to become a free agent and obviously if he continues producing those kind of numbers.
If Soler has another awesome season, maybe the Royals should trade him? He will want a huge contract that the Royals probably won’t pay, so why not trade him for some prospects. I can see Whit being traded as well but it depends on the return. Royals are looking to speed up their rebuild so who knows
agreed
All depends on how much he wants and how he fits the Royals timeline of the rebuild. You want him peaking while the team is peaking. If he doesn’t fit that timeline or commands too much money then trading is the only option. I can’t see how the NL has a dh this year but doesn’t keep it going forward. I love tradition but it’s really a silly concept that the AL has one and NL doesn’t. That being said and assuming that’s the case Soler would have a much broader market. NL teams who have had to shy away from guys who were dh types suddenly will all be looking to add one. Before a universal dh they only had a market with half the teams. That’s why I think it’ll be a trade in the end. He’s going to command more money than before and the Royals return in trade will now be higher.
I didn’t even consider about the dh in the NL. The Royals could get a huge return if the season starts soon or if the NL keeps the dh position into the future. Maybe some team is willing to trade a top 30 overall prospect for Soler if not higher?
No one is giving a top 30 overall prospect for Soler. A top 30 organizational? Yes. Even if the NL got a DH in the future it wouldn’t matter because he would be a free agent. I’d say look at what the tigers got for JDM then divide that return by two talent-wise, maybe 3
Smart move by Whit. Many players have a high-dollar final year, which only incentivizes teams to cut the players. This incentivizes the Royals to keep him if the decision is borderline.
This isn’t the NFL. They’re guaranteed the entire contract.
Actually the opposite. With the lower financial commitment they are much more likely to cut earlier than if they had more invested on that year’s performance.
as mentioned above, the money is all guaranteed so then it just becomes optics for executives when they want to accept that a previous commitment with a significant cost is just bad money holding back better opportunities worth investing in.
Hes amazing tho
I hope Perez sticks around in KC for the rest of his career, the fans love him
Rob Manfred is trash
True and so is his buddy from the MLBPA Tony Clark, who was way better as a player than as an executive director, because he was a good player, though not great.
Whit is so underpaid they shouldn’t take any money from him in the event of a shortened season
yes
Small market teams cannot spend like big market teams – period. Baseball should have a hard salary cap and a salary floor if they truly want parity. I continue to read comments about the rich owners. If you buy your house for $100k and it is now worth $1,000,000 you don’t have that money to spend unless you sell the house.
Except in todays world you can always take out loams based on your personal wealth which many people do.
Only owners that are in financial trouble take loans out to cover those costs, like I believe the Mets did. Which was just to protect their investment, getting a loan to make a playoff run would be shortsighted and frankly plain stupid when you are dealing with an organization worth hundreds of millions. This isn’t an equity loan to build an addition to a house
Small market teams cannot spend like big market teams – period. Baseball should have a hard salary cap and a salary floor if they truly want parity. I continue to read comments about the rich owners. If you buy your house for $100k and it is now worth $1,000,000 you don’t have that money to spend unless you sell the house.
If only they could unload Salvy’s contract. His best days are long gone.
Why? I mean, what is the need to zero a payroll? They are not even halfway through the salary cap. How much less can you invest in payroll for an MLB team?
Its very evident MLB needs to have standards for a min. team salary and a cap on the max. if gone over or under they pay a penalty. Royals team payroll is a joke, maybe in the next decade they’ll be in the playoffs, but I wouldn’t hold my breathe.
It’s unfortunate that teams like KC can only compete once a decade. However, it’s great to know that smart people can sustain success with small market teams. Funny how all the big market teams poach their GMs.
twice*
If the Royals are smart, this number will double or even triple by the end of next year. In addition to a Soler extension, they should be looking to sign some of their pre-arb players like Mondesi to long term extensions, much like the White Sox and Braves have done. Having long term revenue commitments are not a bad thing; in fact they can be quite good (see Albies in ATL) so I’d expect both KC & PIT to do something similar in the next couple of years. Toronto will start doing the same as well with all of their young talent.