The Toronto Blue Jays payroll has almost doubled from 2005. This year our team payroll is just under $82 million when it was $72 million last year and just under $48 million in '05.
Apparently last year Rogers claimed to have tons of losses running the Blue Jays but elected to increase payroll and award contracts to players like Lyle Overbay and Vernon Wells. So for next year we are going to have players have their raises kick and for our team to get any better we have to keep spending more and more money every year.
Here are the automatic raises next year:
Troy Glaus: $2M (from 10.75 to 12.75 million)
Vernon Wells: $3.6 M (from 5.6 to 9 million and even bigger raises after `08)
BJ Ryan: $1M (from 5 million + 4 million bonus to a 10 million salary)
Lyle Overbay: $1.6 million (from 400k salary and $3.8 M signing bonus to $5.8M)
Expected to get a raise:
Alex Rios (probably should receive a long-term deal)
Scott Downs
Jason Frasor
Gustavo Chacin
Aaron Hill (probably will be a Super2 I think and will be eligible for arbitration)
Jeremy Accardo (same as Hill)
Brian Tallet (may become a Super2, unsure about numbers)
*The rule on Super2s is if a player is in the top 17 percent of players who have 2 years or more service time and have 86 days of ML service this season they are eligible for arbitration.
Most of these players actually earn even more in '09 so we can expect the salary to balloon to somewhere in the 90 million range next year and we may eclipse the 100 million dollar mark in '09.
With a farm system considered to be on the lower end of teams are we turning into our counterparts like the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees? The Yankees had a high payroll and weak farm team years back and it seems JP may be trying to copy that.
What do you guys think? It looks like we are becoming a big money team and there isn't much that is going to stop it unless we go through another dreaded fire sale. One thing for sure though is we can't complain that the Red Sox and Yankees have higher salaries. Our salary is more then enough to compete and other small market teams are having more success so if we don't win soon we can easily point the finger at the man who's running the team.
*Note the title of the post "I'm Slowly Turning into you" is a name of a single off the recently released Icky Thump by the White Stripes.