artie_fufkin wrote:

APRTW wrote:

artie_fufkin wrote:

Not disagreeing with any of what you've written. In fact I'm agreeing with you. My point was aimed those who have accused Pujols of being greedy. He didn't grouse once - at least publicly - about being paid less than a couple dozen or so other players who couldn't hold his jock for the past eight years.
Like most successful businessmen, DeWitt has gotten where he is partly because he doesn't look at things emotionally. It makes very little sense from a business standpoint to pay ~$30 million a year to a player whose skills are almost certainly going to diminish over the length of the contract.
I'm not sure who said last week that if the Cardinals don't sign Pujols, it frees up all that cash to go out and get 2 or 3 other players. What bothers me is DeWitt may not be looking at it that way. The only time he's really increased payroll in the last five years is when he went out and got Holliday, after he admitted the attendance in the early part of 2009 was such that he could take on another high-priced player.

Good point Artie.  There is no way Dewitt is going to increase the payroll 30 million if the dont add Pujols.  He will do what he always does an increase payroll just enough to get by and convince the fans that the team has a chance. 

Another interesting way of looking at things is that Pujols actually made DeWitt.  If a 200th some pick doesnt turn into gold the 2000s wouldnt have been any better then the 90s.  The Cardinals might not have a new staduim or 3 million people paying to see the games every year.

Wow. Someone read something I wrote. My last resort was going to be dropping my pants.

That's cold!  I read your stuff.  I pointed out how you were wrong about the impact of Holliday on the payroll.   (happy)

Union busting in the air ?

Forgive me if someone already posted this.  I went back a couple of pages & didn't see it so here it goes:

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ycn-7916570

He makes some valid points.

forsberg_us wrote:

First Andy MacPhail, now Ken Williams.  Maybe that Dewitt is a lot smarter than we're giving him credit for.  If you believe Pujols sets the ceiling for all future contracts, maybe the owners allow Dewitt to get his man at something close to his price.

Not that the owners would have any sort of pre-existing agreement to keep salaries down.

http://sports.espn.go.com/chicago/mlb/news/story?id=6147503

Frankly, I was a bit suspicious when no one else bid on Holliday.  If the same happens for Pujols, I might have to stop watching baseball altogether.

windwalker wrote:

This post and the one before it really aren't takes, I'm just sick of being Adam Kennedy..

Well, "hello" Russell Banyan.

Apparently the White Sox will not pay Albert Pujols 30 million a season.

That's one Chicago team out of the running.

I dont know if there is any way to know just what the team paid exactly if you are not in the front office.  Fors, you have brought up before that the club takes out insurance policies on major player to protect against injuries.  Defered money is often figured in.  There are some many things that we dont know that all we can do is toughly guess.

APRTW wrote:

I dont know if there is any way to know just what the team paid exactly if you are not in the front office.  Fors, you have brought up before that the club takes out insurance policies on major player to protect against injuries.  Defered money is often figured in.  There are some many things that we dont know that all we can do is toughly guess.

You're absolutely right, and your point about money being added during the season is correct as well.  Anytime someone goes on the DL, the roster adds a 26th (or higher) salary.

APRTW wrote:

I dont know if there is any way to know just what the team paid exactly if you are not in the front office.  Fors, you have brought up before that the club takes out insurance policies on major player to protect against injuries.  Defered money is often figured in.  There are some many things that we dont know that all we can do is toughly guess.

Most likely true, and in all that guesswork I have not seen any speculation that DeWitt expanded Mozeliak's working budget by $6+ M in order to sign Holliday, except by TK. 

My dim recollection of the process was that the payroll had been around $80 M, and WJ worked it north of $100 M briefly, after which DeWitt called for belt tightening, and payroll dropped to about $93-95 where it stayed flat until this season where it looks like it's headed up to about $110, which is very interesting, because if you subtract Pujols's $16 M, we are right back down to $94.

Max wrote:

Most likely true, and in all that guesswork I have not seen any speculation that DeWitt expanded Mozeliak's working budget by $6+ M in order to sign Holliday, except by TK.

Do you think the A's paid the remainder of Holliday's salary in 2009?

I don't have to speculate because the numbers are all over the Internet for you to see. Do know what GOOGLE is? Never mind, don't bother. I'll give you a list of sites so that you can look at payroll yourself:

www.baseball-reference.com
mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/
http://content.usatoday.com/sportsdata/baseball/mlb/salaries/team

And here it is for 2009:

http://content.usatoday.com/sportsdata/baseball/mlb/salaries/team/2009

But that's just me making shit up out of thin air, which says payroll was $88 million on Opening Day in 2009.

Once again you are talking apples and oranges, TK.  Notice that the discussion quickly moved to a more cerebral consideration of the difference between opening day payroll and actual payroll  and how we would ever know the latter, but you have opted to crush stones in the quarry.  Only that day dawns to which we are awake, friend.

APRTW wrote:

He expanded payroll to trade for Holliday but adjusted it to resign him after he became a FA.

2010 opening day payroll was 6 million higher then 2009.  I guess that is a raise but not the kind of raise that you would expect when the team signed a guy for 17 million.

That's all fair, but even that does not necessarily mean that the payroll cap that DeWitt shares privately with Moz moved at all during that period.  As Fors has repeatedly pointed out, just because Moz might know, privately, that he has $10 million to play with, that doesn't mean that the smart thing to do is to spend it all, just to spend it. Moz was fond of talking about the dry powder that DeWitt made available to him.

So, from TK's link, we can see that the $88.5 figure that TK cites is already deceptive, since it already represents a 12% cut ($11.1 M) from the year before.  Indeed, TK's stat was the lowest opening day payroll since 2004!

2010: $ 94,220,500
2009: $ 88,528,409
2008: $ 99,624,449
2007: $ 90,286,823
2006: $ 88,891,371
2005: $ 92,106,833
2004: $ 83,228,333
2003: $ 83,786,666
2002: $ 74,660,875
2001: $ 78,538,333
2000: $ 63,900,000

I am not a serious statistician, TK, but there are ways to estimate the trend, to see whether 2010's $94.2 M figure is above or below predictions.  One way would be to plug the values into a program like SPSS and calculate some measure of trend, such as a regression line.  2009 is certain to have a very large negative residual, meaning it is way below expectation.  But, I am not even enough of a statistician to tell you whether or not you have enough data, or whether these are even appropriate, for a regression analysis to be meaningful.

Last edited by Max (2/23/2011 12:40 pm)