The Jays’ 2010 financial situation examined

By Paul Bruno

Heading into this off-season, Jays’ fans are in a quandary to try to guess what direction management is going to take. Are they going to spend a lot more than they have in recent years or are they going to try to build a roster on the cheap?

First, let’s consider the contracts that are guaranteed next year. All figures supplied by the following web-link:

 http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/2005/01/toronto-blue-jays_05.html

Vernon Wells – $16,142,847
Roy Halladay – $15,750,000
Lyle Overbay – $7,950,000
Edwin Encarnacion – $5,175,000
Scott Downs – $4,000,000
Aaron Hill – $4,000,000
B J Ryan – $10,000,000 (even though he was released last season, the Jays are still on the hook for the last year of his deal).

So, that’s $63 Million spoken for, covering 6 returning players (and the added burden of Ryan’s deal).

After that, the Jays have control of a number of other players, holding arbitration rights on the following players, whose salary will be no more than $1 Million, and in some cases much less:

Pitchers: Brain Tallet, Jeremy Accardo, Shaun Camp, Brandon League, Dustin McGowan, Jesse Litsch, Casey Janssen, Jesse Carlson and Shaun Marcum

Batters: Jose Bautista, Adam Lind 

Throwing a nominal increase at each of these players would bring the team’s payroll into the neighborhood of $75 Million for a total of 18 players.

Then we’ll add the following young players whom the Jays also control and we “re-up” without any big financial hit.

They include David Purcey, Scott Richmond, Travis Snider, Brett Cecil, Brad Mills, Ricky Romero and Mark Rzepczynski, among others.

After crunching all these numbers, and assuming the Jays don’t trade one of their big guaranteed salaries (Halladay, Wells, Overbay, etc.), it seems as though the club will be on the hook for a total salary hit of around $80 Million, if all of these players are retained..

When you take a hard look at this roster, they have accumulated quite a stable of young arms, which should allow them to cobble together a decent enough pitching staff. It’s the offense that has some holes. The infusion of another $30-$40 million, would possibly allow the club to find a veteran starter to bolster the young rotation and the remaining money could be directed at a few upgrades in the batting order.

As the playoffs wind down and free agency approaches we’ll take a look at the players who are available and may be of interest to the Jays.

Simple enough, but then who isn’t good at spending someone else’s money.

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