A Closer Look at the Orioles 2015 Payroll

There was a lot of talk going into the season about how the Orioles had a quiet offseason. Unlike the lead up to 2014, when they signed Nelson Cruz and Ubaldo Jimenez, the Orioles didn't sign any high profile free agents this past offseason. This led a lot of people to think they didn't spend any money, but that's not exactly true. One reason for the perceived inactivity is certainly they thought they would be getting a lot of production to cover the losses or Nick Markakis and Nelson Cruz from returning players like Matt Wieters and Manny Machado, as well as expecting a rebound season from Chris Davis. An equally important factor though had to do with having to re-signing players they already did have, a lot of whom received raises from arbitration or entered the arbitration process for the first time which can result in a substantial increase in pay from the league minimum, which is around a half million dollars.

Steve Pearce got a raise of almost $2.9M, which is probably a bargain still after the 2014 season he had. J.J. Hardy was re-signed to an extension and got a raise of more than $4M. Bud Norris got a raise in arbitration of about $3.5M. Alejandro De Aza hit arbitration and got a raise of more than $4M. And of course most free agents aren't going to sign for the one year "show me" deal Nelson Cruz did, meaning it's just not this year's payroll the team would need to consider. The team has a number of players who are due to hit arbitration in the coming years they're almost certain to keep, like Manny Machado and Kevin Gausman. And of course, there's the eleven impending free agents after this season the team is going to need to deal with.

The last thing to keep in mind is the still unresolved MASN deal. There's the potential for MASN to make the team a lot of money, but there's also the potential MASN could owe a lot of money to the Nationals. With so much uncertainty in how much money the team could expect to see from its Regional Sports Network in the coming years (which is how a lot of MLB clubs account for revenue nowadays) it makes sense for them to restrain spending until its resolved. There's no way to tell for sure of course that's what is happening, but my bet is the answer is yes. And when the dispute is resolved (whether in favor of the Orioles or not) my guess is there will be more money to spend. Jonah Keri of Grantland wrote a great article on this prior to last season, and even though its now more than a year old, I think it's still well worth the read if you haven't yet (or wanted a refresher on some things like I did).

But leaving all that aside, the team has set itself up with a certain team and payroll for this season. I wondered if they were getting a good deal. I probably don't even need to run the numbers on last season...they won 96 games and their first division title in 17 years, not to mention a sweep in the ALDS. They could have spent as much as the Yankees, the fans would probably still consider it a good deal. For the record though, they spent just shy of $110M. That may seem like a lot, but it really isn't these days. The Dodgers, who didn't win any playoff series, spent a little more than $244M. They were by far and away the biggest spenders, but still...the Orioles advanced in the playoffs and the Dodgers didn't, so it was a good deal by at least one measure.

For this year, I thought I'd look just within the division. For each team's payroll, I calculated a value for a win, using the ZiPS projections on Fangraphs for how many wins the teams are expected to get by the end of the season: