Arizona Diamondbacks 40 Man Roster Payroll Update

James already gave us a look at some of the implications of the moves the team has made the last couple of weeks. This is really shaping up as a fascinating off season. It’s looking like the amount of roster turnover could be a lot more than some people might have thought.

I reviewed and reconciled numbers with James, and below is an attempt to put a bit of a finer point on where things stand financially at the moment. This is not in any way a projection of opening day or season end payroll. It’s more of a snapshot of where they are right now. Trades and signings, (and future DFA’s) will continue to reconstitute the roster and payroll.

Spoiler Alert: We just don’t know what kind of budget ownership has given Mike Hazen to work with this year. So we can’t answer the question posed in the article heading. Is the Budget 120M, 130M, 140M ?? Is it higher ? What we do know however is that the team is currently looking at about 100M in payroll as the roster currently stands.

My method of calculation is a little different than what you’ll typically see on other websites. I am concerned with the entire season payroll, not just opening day. (BUT, I’m not calculating luxury tax payroll, which is a little different)

I project pre arb players expenses beyond those that are expected to be on the opening day roster, as in season callups happen frequently due to injuries or poor performance or roster spots opening up due to trades. We can’t know exactly what those will be, but we can estimate pretty well based on precedent. Typically you allow 2M for that, give or take.

Arbitration costs are using the MLB trade rumors estimates. The balance info for signed players, off roster players, and miscellaneous things like options, bonuses, etc, are filled in accordingly. Resources used to compile are listed below. I reconcile info from each and customize presentation.

40 man Roster from MLB. (Currently sits at 37, with 3 open spots)

Cot’s Baseball Contracts

Baseball Reference

Roster Resource

TOPLINE SUMMARY

TABLE VIEW

(Table will display as actual table on laptop or tablet, but maybe not on phone)

A few important notes:

Mike Leake: Some websites are showing the Dbacks only having to pay 3M of the 15M total for Leake, but I’m seeing 4M paid by Angels to Mariners, and Mariners paying 9M to DBacks. So I’m using 6M as the DBacks portion

Bubble Players out of options: I highlighted a few bubble players that are out of options

Stefan Crichton, Silvino Bracho, and Jimmie Sherfy must either make the opening day roster, or be traded or possibly DFA’d. All three will need to have a very good spring training and exhibition season to have a shot at the opening day roster. However, due to the fact that they are out of options, don’t be surprised if one or more of these pitchers makes the roster over a seemingly better pitcher who still has an option or two.

Domingo Leyba still has one option it turns out, as he was given an exemption for the 4th option. He and Ildemaro Vargas are probably competing for the same roster spot. So the fact that Vargas is out of options could be factor there.

WHAT’S NEXT

Heading into the winter meetings and this phase of the off season, we can see that Mike Hazen should have at least 20M still to work with for 2020, and that’s if ownership has cut his payroll budget again, down to say 120M. My guess though is Hazen has at least a 125-130M payroll budget and therefore should still have 25-30M to spend. He has said he will spread his money around, but I can’t shake the feeling he might have a big move up his sleeve. And maybe ownership will surprise us too, and give him even more than our expectations to work with. That would be nice.

2021

It would seem almost a certainty that Mike Leake’s option for 2021 won’t be picked up, since the DBacks don’t have to actually pay it. So without that, they are looking at only 53M so far for 2021, but of course many free agents leaving and a lot of holes to fill. How many of those holes can be filled by the minor league system, and how ready those players will be remains to be seen.