Toronto Blue Jays Payroll

 

 

The Toronto Blue Jays recently announced that they will increase their team payroll next season, to an undisclosed amount. The reasoning behind this is based upon the notion that the Blue Jays will need to spend, spend, spend, in order to compete with the Boston Red Sox & New York Yankees of the AL East.
 

 

JP and the organization quote statistics such as an increase in attendance and TV revenue as a sign of success. While this is true, it may not be as rosy as they make it out to be. According to ESPN the Jays have the 16th highest payroll, at approximately $72 million. For their increased payroll the Jays have seen a rise in their attendance, but they still only place 19th in average game attendance. Attendance league wide is up, mostly due to the parity of the 2006 season. The Blue Jays also contend that without the injuries sustained by AJ Burnett, that they would be in the hunt for a playoff spot. The truth of the matter is that AJ has a history of injuries and that this is baseball, every team has injuries to deal with. Nonetheless, the organizations higher ups are sold on JP’s plan and will commit more financial resources to next year’s payroll.

 

One note before I move on. I’m sure most Jay’s fans have heard the rumbling of Vernon Wells wanting out of Toronto. Well, so have I. So, for this example we are going to leave Vernon and his future with the Jays, his likely salary, etc out of this example. Just keep in mind that if the Jays are some how able to keep Vernon on the roster in upcoming years that it will cost them, at minimum $10 million per season.
The Blue Jays currently have four players locked into large, long term contracts. The players are Troy Glaus, Roy Hallady, BJ Ryan, & AJ Burnett. The table below illustrates the “big four’s” combined salaries this, and the next couple of upcoming seasons.

 

 

Year	Big Four
2006	$27,950,000 (Rest of the roster: $43,950,000)
2007	$40,400,000
2008	$44,500,000

 

  

As the table shows, this season the big four are making $27,950,000 this season, while the rest of the roster making $43,950,000. This is due to structure of BJ Ryan and AJ Burnett’s contracts, as Ryan only counts for $4 million against this years team salary, and AJ accounts for only $2.2 million. Starting next year and heading into the future, both players salaries will increase significantly, with both players making over $10 million a season by 2008.

 

 

Even if the other twenty-one players maintain their salary level, the payroll next year will jump to $84 million, but it will be very difficult to maintain the current talent level at this cost. But this will be extremely difficult. It’s safe to say with players such as Vernon Wells ($4.4 million) Reed Johnson ($1.2 Million), Alex Rios ($354,000) and forth coming free agents such as Lyle Overbay ($2.5 Million) that the Jays have been able to field a good amount of talent for a very low cost. The Jays minor league system has very little above replacement major league ready talent available. This is important fact, as a first year player is paid a right around $350,000 per year, which is the maximum salary of a player that has yet to reach arbitration. This does not take into account previous signing bonuses, but these are paid out to players whether they are on the major league roster or not. What this leaves the Jays with is the need to fill in the remaining twenty one roster spots with inexpensive talent, a tough task to say the least when it is not produced from your farm system. In order to compete, the Jays will be forced to re-sign these players at a significant raise (which will raise their salary structure), replace them with mid-tier farm players, trade for similar players (which will be difficult considering the lack of MLB & farm level trading value) or replace them in the free agent pool for a large amount of money (again, raising the salary structure). The only feasible way to combat this is to trade one of the big four, which may be difficult due to their respective salaries. This would also go against the logic of signing them in the first place, which was to win.
 

 

After studying the Jays contract and salary structure for this season, it becomes readily apparent that this team was constructed to win in the 2006 season. This has not happened, but the management seems to be willing to give it another try next season. With the burden of the big four on the payroll, the only way the Jay’s are going to be able to compete and even maintain their current level of success in the AL East is by raising their salary structure to around $90 million. With the Jays currently only 19th in the league in per game attendance, it is hard to fathom how revenue will even come close to expenses. That’s much to ask from a small market team, regardless of who owns the club. Sooner, or later, the business core at Rogers will be unwilling to accept mounting financial losses. Hopefully I’m wrong here, but if the Jays aren’t able to make the playoffs and in turn drastically increase their revenue at the ticket booth in the next couple of seasons, they may be forced by Rogers to cut payroll, and go back to fielding a roster with a payroll around $40 – $50 million.