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Eight Teams Combine For Record $209.8MM In Luxury Tax Bills

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Major League Baseball has finalized the luxury tax calculations for the 2023 season, and the eight teams over the Competitive Balance Tax threshold will combine for a total bill of $209.8MM, Ronald Blum of the Associated Press reports.  Both the total number of tax-paying teams and the total sum are new records, surpassing the previous highs of six teams (in 2016 and 2022) and $78.5MM (in 2022).

Here is what each of the eight teams owes for surpassing at least the $233MM base CBT threshold….

  • Mets: $100,781,932
  • Padres: $39.7MM
  • Yankees: $32.4MM
  • Dodgers: $19.4MM
  • Phillies: $6.98MM
  • Blue Jays: $5.5MM
  • Braves: $3.2MM
  • Rangers: $1.8MM

As a reminder of how the luxury tax operates, the CBT figures are determined by the average annual value of salaries for players on the 40-man roster.  A player earning $20MM over two seasons, for example, has a CBT number of $10MM, even if the player might earn $8MM in the first year of the contract and $12MM in the second year.  Deferred money in a contract can reduce a luxury tax number to some extent — most famously, Shohei Ohtani’s $700MM deal with the Dodgers contains $680MM in deferred money, so his CBT hit will be roughly $46MM per season instead of $70MM.

A team is considered a “first-time payor” if they haven’t spent above the CBT threshold in the previous season.  A first-time payor would owe a 20% surcharge on any dollar spent between $233MM and $253MM, 32% of anything between $253MM and $273MM, 62.5% on anything between $273MM and $293MM, and then 80% of overages for anything beyond $293MM.  These percentages rise if a team is a tax payor for two consecutive seasons, and then even further if a team exceeds the CBT line in three or more consecutive seasons.  This year’s CBT class featured three first-time payors (Texas, Atlanta, Toronto), three two-time payors (Philadelphia, both New York teams) and two three-time payors (San Diego, Los Angeles).

The $293MM threshold was instituted in the last Collective Bargaining Agreement as a fourth penalty tier, and it is unofficially known as the “Steve Cohen Tax” in a reference to the Mets owner’s penchant for big spending.  Even though New York has only topped the CBT whatsoever in 2022 and 2023, it isn’t surprising that Cohen’s team set new standards for tax payouts.  The Mets’ tax payroll of $374.7MM and approximate $100.78MM tax bill far exceeded the 2015 Dodgers’ previous records of $291.1MM and $43.6MM, respectively.

This bill would’ve been even higher if the Mets hadn’t unexpectedly struggled, and unloaded some expensive contracts at the trade deadline in order to save some money and reload with an eye towards probably 2025 as a more clear-cut return to contention.  Blum also notes that the Mets received a $2,126,471 tax credit related to a CBA provision, which slightly reduced their bill further.

As always, the actual financial cost of exceeding the tax is perhaps the least-important part of the penalties, especially for teams who barely across the first threshold.  Teams who exceed the CBT line would face further punishment in regards to free agents who reject qualifying offers, whether that translates to additional compensation required to sign a QO-rejecting player, or lesser compensation received if a team’s own qualified free agent signs elsewhere.  For instance, signing Ohtani cost the Dodgers not just $700MM, but also $1MM in international draft pool money and their second- and fifth-highest picks in the 2024 draft.  For a team like the Padres, should Blake Snell or Josh Hader sign elsewhere, San Diego’s compensatory draft selection wouldn’t come until after the fourth round of the 2024 draft.

Spending on talent is more often than not a recipe for success on the field, though obviously hardly a guarantee.  The Mets had a losing record, and the Padres and Yankees each squeaked over the .500 mark with 82-80 records.  The other five tax payors reached the playoffs, though the Phillies and the World Series champion Rangers were the only members of that group of five to win at least one postseason series.

The $209.8MM in tax revenues will be split up in three ways by the league.  The first $3.5MM is devoted to funding player benefits, $103.15MM will go towards funding individual player retirement accounts, and the other $103.15MM will be put into a supplemental commissioner’s discretionary fund and distributed amongst revenue-sharing recipient teams who have grown their (non-media) local revenue over a pre-determined number of years.

MLBTR Podcast: Tyler Glasnow, Jung Hoo Lee, D-Backs’ Signings and the Braves’ Confusing Moves

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The latest episode of the MLB Trade Rumors Podcast is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts! Make sure you subscribe as well! You can also use the player at this link to listen, if you don’t use Spotify or Apple for podcasts.

This week, host Darragh McDonald is joined by Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss…

Plus, Steve Adams joins to answer your questions, including…

  • What’s going on with Atlanta shuffling all these contracts around? (21:25)
  • Will the Mariners do anything with the payroll they jettisoned? (30:15)

Check out our past episodes!

The podcast intro and outro song “So Long” is provided courtesy of the band Showoff.  Check out their Facebook page here!

Braves Sign Taylor Widener To Minor League Deal

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The Braves have signed right-hander Taylor Widener to a minor league deal, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. The righty has been assigned to Triple-A Gwinnett for now but could perhaps be in big league camp as a non-roster invitee.

Widener, 29, was drafted by the Yankees but was sent to the Diamondbacks in the complex three-team deal involving Brandon Drury, Steven Souza Jr. and others. He went on to toss 107 2/3 innings for the Snakes from 2020 to 2022 with an earned run average of 4.26. He struck out 22.3% of batters faced but also gave out walks at an 11% clip. His .274 batting average on balls in play and 80.8% strand rate were both on the lucky side of average, leading to a 5.54 FIP and 4.68 SIERA that weren’t as impressive as his ERA.

He was outrighted by the Diamondbacks in January and ended up spending the most recent season in South Korea, pitching for two different clubs in the Korea Baseball Organization. He started with the NC Dinos but was released in August and then signed with the Samsung Lions. Between the two clubs, he tossed 115 innings over 20 starts and one relief appearance. He had a combined ERA of 4.54 in that time, striking out 20% of batters while walking 8.1% and keeping 60.4% of balls in play on the ground.

Widener was working exclusively out of the bullpen in 2022 but was mostly back in a starting gig in 2023. It’s unknown if Atlanta prefers him in one role or the other but they might like the flexibility. They signed reliever Reynaldo López this offseason and will reportedly stretch him out in the spring, with the plan of moving him back to the bullpen if he doesn’t win a rotation job.

The club currently projects to have a rotation of Spencer Strider, Max Fried, Charlie Morton and Bryce Elder, with López in the mix for a spot at the back alongside guys like AJ Smith-Shawver and Huascar Ynoa. Widener will give the club a non-roster option in that competition or perhaps in their relief mix. If he gets a roster spot at any point, he still has a couple of options remaining.

Julio Rodríguez Tops 2023 Pre-Arb Bonus Pool

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Mariners center fielder Julio Rodríguez will receive $1,865,349 from the $50MM bonus pool for pre-arbitration players, the highest of the 2023 recipients, per a report from Ronald Blum of the Associated Press. The AP later released a full list of bonus recipients.

A notable new element of the current collective bargaining agreement is that $50MM is to be taken from central revenues annually and distributed to players that have not yet qualified for arbitration. Certain portions of the money are to be based on awards voting:

  • Rookie of the Year: $750K for first place, $500K for second place
  • MVP and Cy Young: $2.5MM for first place, $1.75MM for second place, $1.5MM for third place, $1MM for fourth or fifth place
  • All-MLB: $1MM for being named “First Team,” $500K for being named “Second Team”

As Blum highlights today, a player is eligible to receive the bonus for one of those achievements per year, earning only the highest amount. Rodríguez finished fourth in American League MVP voting, meaning he got $1MM for that, which accounted for the majority of his payout. After the bonuses, the remainder of the pool is divided on a percentage basis among the top 100 players based on the joint MLB/MLBPA-created version of WAR.

Players are still eligible even if they have signed extensions, as long as they would have been pre-arb without signing such a deal. Rodríguez and the Mariners signed a convoluted extension towards the end of his rookie season in 2022 but he’s only at two years of service time now. Since he would have been pre-arb without that extension, he was able to top this year’s pool.

The following 10 players got more than $1MM:

Last year, Dylan Cease got the biggest slice of the 2022 pie, taking home $2,457,426.

Braves Release Matt Carpenter

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The Braves have released veteran infielder/designated hitter Matt Carpenter, reports Mark Bowman of MLB.com. Atlanta acquired Carpenter a few days ago, taking on $4MM of this year’s $5.5MM salary (and the associated luxury tax hit) as a means of effectively purchasing left-handed reliever Ray Kerr from the Padres.

While the Braves had hoped to trade Carpenter in similar fashion to Marco Gonzales, Evan White and Max Stassi (all of whom they acquired and quickly dealt away in salary-driven swaps), it seems they weren’t able to find a taker for Carpenter even at that rate. He’ll now be a free agent who’ll cost a new team only the league minimum for any time spent on the big league roster — the Braves and Padres will remain on the hook for the rest of his salary.

Carpenter, 38, had a brilliant bounceback season with the Yankees in 2022 when he slashed .305/.412/.727 with 15 home runs in just 154 trips to the plate. A broken foot ended his season, but that eye-popping resurgence was still enough to land him a two-year, $12MM deal with the Padres last offseason.

Unfortunately for the Padres and Carpenter alike, his 2023 campaign looked more like the 2020-21 version of Carpenter who’d looked to be on the decline. In 237 plate appearances with the Friars last year, Carpenter hit just .176/.322/.319. He still walked at a massive 17.3% clip, but Carpenter’s strikeout rate spiked as his exit velocity and hard-hit rate trended in the other direction. The former Cardinals star’s newfound focus on elevating the ball at career-high levels served him well in 2022, but he perhaps took that too far in ’23, lifting 10 harmless pop-ups in his tiny sample of plate appearances. Given his huge walk and strikeout rates, Carpenter only put 125 balls in play last year — 10 of which were effectively automatic outs.

Now that he’s a free agent and can be signed on a league-minimum MLB deal or even on a minor league deal and spring training invite, Carpenter should draw interest from teams seeking left-handed bats. A return to that Herculean production from the summer of 2022 might not be plausible, but there’d be little to no risk for a new club trying to catch lightning in a bottle in the same manner as the 2022 Yankees did.

Braves Plan To Trade Matt Carpenter

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The Braves are planning to trade DH Matt Carpenter, report David O’Brien and Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic (X link). Atlanta acquired the left-handed hitter this evening in a salary-motivated swap with the Padres.

San Diego’s primary goal was offloading a portion of Carpenter’s $5.5MM salary. The Athletic’s Dennis Lin reported that the Padres were kicking in $1.5MM to facilitate the trade. The Braves took on $4MM in salary and luxury tax obligations. The Friars saved $4MM in cash and $4.5MM against the competitive balance tax.

Carpenter’s CBT number was marginally higher for the Padres than it is for Atlanta. His two-year, $12MM deal with San Diego was front loaded, as he collected $6.5MM this year. That came with a $6MM tax hit as the contract’s average annual value, but a traded player’s CBT calculation for an acquiring team is recalculated based on how much they’re still owed at the time of the trade — in this case, $5.5MM for one year.

The point of the trade for Atlanta was to essentially “purchase” the rights to hard-throwing depth reliever Ray Kerr, whom San Diego included in the deal. As a second-year luxury tax payor in the second tier of penalization, the Braves are paying a 42% tax on the $4MM of Carpenter’s salary they assumed. The trade will cost them around $5.68MM altogether. Atlanta’s competitive balance tax number sits around $267MM, as calculated by Roster Resource. The third tier of penalization kicks in at $277MM.

Atlanta’s front office has somewhat curiously taken on a handful of underwater contracts as a means of adding talent at the bottom half of the roster. They almost immediately traded Marco Gonzales and Evan White after bringing them in alongside Jarred Kelenic. Catcher Max Stassi, whose contract was included in the David Fletcher trade, was promptly flipped to the White Sox. Carpenter appears next in line.

As was the case with Gonzales and Stassi, the Braves might have to pay Carpenter’s salary all the way or near the league minimum to find a taker. The veteran is coming off a .176/.322/.319 showing.

Braves Acquire Matt Carpenter, Ray Kerr From Padres

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7:12pm: San Diego is including $1.5MM in cash, reports Dennis Lin of the Athletic (on X).

6:48pm: The Padres and Braves have agreed to a trade, per announcements from both clubs. Designated hitter Matt Carpenter, left-hander Ray Kerr and cash considerations are heading to Atlanta in exchange for minor league outfielder Drew Campbell.

Carpenter, 38, had a multi-year run of success with the Cardinals but his production dipped towards the end of the previous decade, to the point where he hit just .169/.305/.275  in 2021. He made a concerted effort to revamp his swing before 2022 and it seemed to work. He hit an astounding .305/.412/.727 for the Yankees in 2022, but in just 47 games before he fouled a ball off his foot and had his season ended by a fracture.

The Padres decided to bank on that bounceback, signing him to a two-year deal going into 2023. That guaranteed $12MM and allowed him to opt out after the first season.  He couldn’t keep that magic run with the Yankees going, as his time as a Padre resulted in a line of just .176/.322/.319. As a player who saw all of his time at either designated hitter or first base, the complete lack of offensive productivity put Carpenter on the fringe of the roster.

San Diego kept him on the roster all season. Carpenter made the easy decision to exercise his $5.5MM player option. That’s not an outrageous sum but clearly beyond what San Diego wanted to devote to a player on the bubble. The Friars have spent much of the offseason cutting payroll. It’s unclear how much of the Carpenter deal for which the Padres remain responsible after accounting for the cash considerations, but they’ll offload some portion of the money in exchange for sending Kerr to Atlanta.

A 29-year-old reliever, Kerr was acquired from Seattle as part of the Adam Frazier deal over the 2021-22 offseason. The 6’3″ southpaw has pitched in 29 MLB games over the past two seasons, most of which came this year. Kerr owns a 5.06 ERA in 32 innings, but he has shown a promising arsenal. He has punched out an above-average 28.1% of batters faced at the highest level. Kerr fanned 29% of opponents while pitching to a stellar 2.25 ERA in 36 Triple-A frames last season.

Kerr has atypical velocity for a left-hander. He averaged 96 MPH on his heater and a solid 82.5 MPH on a curveball in his MLB time this year. That resulted in an excellent 14.7% swinging strike percentage. He has never consistently harnessed that power stuff, however. Kerr walked nearly 10% of opponents in the majors and over 11% of batters faced in Triple-A. Over parts of six minor league seasons, he owns an 11.6% walk percentage.

With less than one year of major league service, Kerr is at least two years away from arbitration. He still has a minor league option remaining, so the Braves can keep him at Triple-A Gwinnett for another season. Kerr slots in behind A.J. Minter, recent trade pickup Aaron Bummer, Tyler Matzek and Dylan Lee on the lefty relief depth chart.

Atlanta has shown a willingness to take on part or all of other teams’ undesirable contracts to acquire players of interest. They took on money in the Marco Gonzales and Evan White deals to bring in Jarred Kelenic from Seattle. They subsequently offloaded Gonzales to the Pirates and flipped White to the Angels as part of a deal that brought in David Fletcher and the Max Stassi contract, which they subsequently paid down to deal the catcher to the White Sox.

It’s fair to wonder if they’ll look to move Carpenter as well. For now, he projects as a left-handed bench bat. Atlanta is in the the second tier of luxury penalization and will be second-time payors next year. They’ll therefore pay a 42% tax on whatever portion of the Carpenter contract they’re assuming.

San Diego also adds the 26-year-old Campbell. He was a 23rd round pick in 2019 out of Louisville. A left-handed hitter, Campbell posted a modest .254/.307/.404 slash in 300 plate appearances as a 25-year-old in Double-A. He can play all three outfield spots but spent more time in a corner this year. After going unselected in the Rule 5 draft, he’s likely to start the season in Triple-A.

Images courtesy of USA Today Sports.

Braves Outright David Fletcher

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The Braves announced Wednesday that infielder David Fletcher, who they acquired from the Angels last week, has cleared waivers and been assigned outright to Triple-A Gwinnett. The move amounts to a formality, as Atlanta was surely aware that another team wouldn’t claim Fletcher and the $14MM still guaranteed to him on his current contract. The Angels outrighted Fletcher twice during the 2023 season. At 4.168 years of MLB service time, he’s four days shy of being able to reject an outright assignment while still remaining the entirety of that sum.

David O’Brien of The Athletic tweets that Braves brass still “fully expects” Fletcher to be their primary utility infielder next season. For the time being, however, passing him through waivers creates some extra flexibility by opening a spot on the 40-man roster. The Braves can always select Fletcher back to the 40-man roster prior to Opening Day. Once he’s accrued even four more days of service time, they’ll lose the ability to shuffle him around in this nature, as Fletcher could elect free agency and retain his salary, leaving Atlanta on the hook for that money.

It’s still a modest surprise to see Fletcher outrighted at the moment, given that the Braves already had five open spots on the 40-man roster. Timing aside, the outcome was always going to be the same when he was placed on waivers though, so making the move now versus making the move in February changes nothing. It sounds quite likely that Fletcher will be added back to the 40-man before long — if not prior to Opening Day then early in the 2024 campaign.

Fletcher, 29, came to the Braves as part of a convoluted series of trades that have added a considerable amount of money to Atlanta’s luxury tax ledger but haven’t left the roster with much in the way of clear upgrades. The Braves acquired Jarred Kelenic, Evan White and Marco Gonzales for Jackson Kowar, prospect Cole Phillips and cash — then immediately flipped Gonzales and cash to the Pirates for a player to be named later. White was traded to the Angels alongside minor league reliever Tyler Thomas to acquire catcher Max Stassi and Fletcher. Atlanta quickly sent Stassi and cash to the White Sox for another PTBNL.

Ultimately, they were left on the hook for the remaining $14MM on Fletcher’s deal, nearly three quarters of Gonzales’ $12.25MM salary, and the associated luxury taxes they’ll pay on each player. It’s a steep price to pay to effectively buy low on Kelenic and install Fletcher as a utility infielder — particularly when the Braves already had a very similar utility option in Nicky Lopez, who was traded to the ChiSox as part of the Aaron Bummer trade. Perhaps the PTBNLs acquired for Gonzales and Stassi will be of some significance, but it’s hard to imagine a team in the Pirates’ or White Sox’ positions giving up substantial prospect talent for short-term stopgaps — even at positions of need and with paid-down salaries.

Fletcher signed a five-year, $26MM extension with the Angels on the heels of a .298/.356/.395 showing from 2019-20 — a productive stretch at the plate during which he fanned at a tiny 10.1% clip and played superb defense between three infield spots (second base, third base, shortstop). He’s since floundered at the dish, however, batting just .259/.296/.327 in 990 plate appearances. Fletcher’s bat-to-ball skills have actually improved (8.6% strikeout rate), but his quality of contact has plummeted and rendered him an unimpactful player in the batter’s box. He’s still a versatile and talented defender, and the Braves will likely lean on him as a glove-first utility option this coming season.

White Sox Acquire Max Stassi From Braves

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December 11: Atlanta is paying Stassi’s deal down to the league minimum, according to the Associated Press; they’ll send $6.26MM in cash. That amount also counts against the Braves luxury tax number, which sits at an estimated $263MM according to Roster Resource. As second-time payors in the second tier of penalization, they’ll pay a 42% tax on that money. Stassi will cost the Braves around $8.89MM overall.

December 9: The White Sox have acquired Max Stassi and cash considerations from the Braves in exchange for a player to be named later. Both teams have announced the deal. Per Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun Times, the Braves are expected to pay for the majority of Stassi’s $7MM salary next season.

Stassi, 33 in March, spent just one day in the Braves organization after being acquired from the Angels yesterday in a multi-played deal with the Angels alongside infielder David Fletcher. Now, the veteran catcher is off to his third organization in two days, where he figures to have the opportunity to step into a regular role on the south side of Chicago. The White Sox lost Yasmani Grandal to free agency earlier this offseason and were in need of a veteran backstop to pair with youngster Korey Lee behind the plate in 2024.

It’s a need Stassi is more than capable of fulfilling. While the veteran missed the entire 2023 season, only the first half of his absence was due to the left hip strain that prevented him from being on the Opening Day roster in Anaheim last season. Stassi recovered from that issue midseason, but he and his wife revealed last month that the three-months premature birth of their son necessitated Stassi to step away from the game and attend to his family for the remainder of the 2023 campaign.

That said, Stassi is expected to return to the field in 2024 and has shown himself to be a quality big league catcher over the past few seasons. Initially drafted by the A’s in the fourth round of the 2009 draft, Stassi made his big league debut back in 2013 with the Astros but did not find a regular role in the majors until the 2018 season when he split time behind the plate in Houston with Brian McCann and Martin Maldonado. Stassi did well for himself in a backup role that season, slashing a respectable .226/.316/.394 in 250 plate appearances. While Stassi struggled through 51 games in 2019, prompting the Astros to trade him to the Angels at that year’s trade deadline, Stassi was given a more prominent role upon his arrival in Anaheim.

In 118 games between the shortened 2020 campaign and his first full season as an Angel in 2021, Stassi combined above-average offense at the plate (113 wRC+) with strong defense behind it to be the ninth most valuable catcher in the league according to fWAR. That strong performance led the Angels to sign Stassi to an extension, though that decision would prove ill-fated. As effective as Stassi was during those two seasons, he took a step back in 2022, slashing a meager .180/.267/.363 (63 wRC+) at the plate while posting framing numbers that were closer to average than the elite figures he had posted earlier in his career.

While the struggles Stassi faced in 2022 and his time away from the game in 2023 make it an understandable decision for the Angels and Braves to go in another direction behind the plate in 2024, it’s easy to see why the addition of Stassi would be intriguing for the White Sox. After all, Lee has less than 100 plate appearances of experience in the big leagues and, even if the club believes the former top-100 prospect to be their catcher of the future, will surely need time and assistant as he looks to transition into a new role as a full-time big leaguer. The addition of a veteran catcher such as Stassi should help with that transition, while also creating a substantial bit of upside for Chicago. Stassi’s contract includes a $7MM 2025 club option that features a $500K buyout; if the veteran is able to regain the form he flashed in 2020 and 2021, that $6.5MM decision would be a no-brainer to pick up and make for an attractive trade chip as the White Sox retool their roster with an eye toward the future.

For the Braves, the deal clears a portion of Stassi’s salary from their books while clearing an unnecessary piece from their roster. Atlanta already had one of the best catching tandems in the game with Sean Murphy and Travis d’Arnaud behind the plate, rendering Stassi as largely superfluous. In conjunction with the trade that brought Stassi and Fletcher to Atlanta in exchange for Evan White and the deal that shipped Marco Gonzales to the Pirates, the Braves have shaved roughly $5MM off their payroll since acquiring Gonzales and White as part of the Jarred Kelenic trade during the Winter Meetings while adding a bench piece in Fletcher who better fits the club’s roster than any of Gonzales, White, or Stassi.

Braves Finalize Coaching Staff

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The Braves announced that they have named Matt Tuiasosopo third base coach, Tom Goodwin first base coach and Erick Abreu bullpen coach. Also, bench coach Walt Weiss will have his responsibilities expanded to oversee the club’s infield. These moves finalize the coaching staff under manager Brian Snitker.

Tuiasosopo, 37, played in the big leagues from 2008 to 2016. He continued playing in the minors and independent ball until he retired and transitioned into coaching for the 2019 season. He has managed the Triple-A Gwinnett club for the past three seasons and will now get his first crack at coaching at the big league level on a permanent basis, having briefly filled in for Ron Washington in 2023 while the latter was away from the club. The announcement adds that he will assist Weiss with the infield duties.

Goodwin, 55, has plenty of coaching experience on his résumé. He was the first base coach for the Mets from 2011 to 2017 before jumping to the same role with the Red Sox. He won a World Series in his first year in Boston and stayed with that club through 2021. He has been a roving minor league instructor in Atlanta’s system for the past two years but will now return to the majors.

Abreu, 40, has spent the past nine seasons as a pitching coach for various minor league clubs in the Astros’ system. This is his first appointment to a major league coaching staff.

Atlanta lost their previous third base coach, Washington, when he was tapped to manage the Angels in 2024. He brought Eric Young Sr. with him, which created a vacancy at first base. The bullpen coach vacancy was created when Drew French jumped to the Orioles to be the pitching coach with that club.

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