A’s 2007 Payroll
With only Bobby Kielty left unsigned, the 2007 payroll is nearly complete. Here’s the projected 25-man roster, with each player’s estimated 2007 salary. The % column represents the portion of total team payroll that each player occupies. League minimum was used for players not yet eligible for arbitration or signed to mulri-year deals, and Bobby Kielty’s salary was estimated. Some figures were borrowed from mlb4u.com and Cot’s Baseball Contracts.
Also, this doesn’t include any money the A’s would be paying for a player that’s not on the 25 man roster, for whatever reason. Such as 2006, when the A’s were paying Keith Ginter $1 million to pad his free agent resume in Sacramento.
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| $ | % | |
|---|---|---|
| Joe Blanton | $380,000 | 0.5% |
| Milton Bradley | $4,000,000 | 5.5% |
| Kiko Calero | $1,600,000 | 2.2% |
| Eric Chavez | $9,500,000 | 13.1% |
| Bobby Crosby | $2,500,000 | 3.4% |
| Justin Duchscherer | $1,187,500 | 1.6% |
| Mark Ellis | $3,500,000 | 4.8% |
| Alan Embree | $2,500,000 | 3.4% |
| Chad Gaudin | $380,000 | 0.5% |
| Brad Halsey | $380,000 | 0.5% |
| Rich Harden | $2,000,000 | 2.8% |
| Dan Haren | $2,200,000 | 3.0% |
| Dan Johnson | $380,000 | 0.5% |
| Jason Kendall | $8,000,000 | 11.0% |
| Joe Kennedy | $2,800,000 | 3.9% |
| Bobby Kielty | $2,200,000 | 3.0% |
| Mark Kotsay | $8,000,000 | 11.0% |
| Esteban Loaiza | $7,000,000 | 9.7% |
| Antonio Perez | $500,000 | 0.7% |
| Mike Piazza | $8,500,000 | 11.7% |
| Kirk Saarloos | $1,200,000 | 1.7% |
| Marco Scutaro | $1,550,000 | 2.1% |
| Huston Street | $380,000 | 0.5% |
| Nick Swisher | $380,000 | 0.5% |
| Jay Witasick | $1,500,000 | 2.1% |
| Total | $72,517,500 |
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And how does this compare to historic A’s payrolls? Looking at the data we have going back to 1988 (thanks to USA Today), it looks like the payroll is skyrocketing. When compared to the Consumer Price Index, the A’s have been escalating by leaps and bounds every year. Of course, so is the rest of baseball. I used CPI data for January of each year, since that’s when most contracts get signed. For this year, since January data is unavailable, I used Dec. 2006’s CPI. Just so you know.
Looking at this graph, it’s apparent what the trend is. The A’s payroll is grass colored, while the CPI is in gray stone. For scaling purposes, the CPI has been reduced by a factor of 10, while payroll is reduced by one million. That is to say, the numbers on the left hand side represent millions for payroll, and tens for CPI.
It’s interesting to note, you can see how the A’s payroll expanded as they signed a bunch of players after the World Series win in 1989. When most of them (including the big contracts of Ruben Sierra, Danny Tartabull, Ron Darling, Rickey Henderson and Dennis Eckersley) came off the books after 1995, payroll came crashing back down. They went from 10 players making more than $1 million to just four. There was another drop after 2004, when Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson were traded and league-minimum players took their places, and Jermaine Dye’s $12 million disappeared.