I just this morning found a place where I can see Baseball Prospectus/Cot’s Contracts projected 2024 26-man salary figures. They report Arizona as the 15th biggest spenders putting out $163,326,000-ish in Opening Day salaries for 2024. They have Colorado (!) as the 16th biggest spenders at $143,485,000-ish. That would put the median MLB team (the 15.5th ranked one, which you can reach by catching the train on platform 9 3/4) at $153,405,500.
75% of that is $115,054,130, which we would round to the nearest quarter-million at 115,00,000. That would be only a $5,250,000 reduction from Opening Day 2023, and would not require using our 6% collar to stem the collapse.
THIS IS NOT OFFICIAL. IT IS ONLY AN ESTIMATE.
For example: Jordan Montgomery is included in Arizona’s table, but his contract is “expected to be made official today”, according to MLBTraderumors. If his $25,000,000 gets dropped from the D-backs’ official Opening Day salary, we’re back to our 6% collar ($112,250,000).
Final figures probably won’t be available for a few days. I’ll share them and their import as soon as I see them.
For those of you who want to go that deep into the weeds — perhaps so a pitching line like Josiah Gray’s (4 ip, 7 er) is out of your line of sight — here are three links:
Arizona payroll data: see row 60, column M
Colorado payroll data: row 61, column M
League-wide estimated 40-man data (the data I’ve been using all spring) — Baseball Prospectus subscription might be needed , but it might not, too.
