Texas Rangers 2010 salary

A lot has been made, and will be made until the Chuck Greenberg group formally gets the keys to the barn about how much our salary will be. My friend Maury Brown over at bizofbaseball.com posted the latest in his salary series, this time covering the Texas Rangers. I decided to cover that story here too with my own commentary.
Now that Scott Feldman came to terms last night, all of our arbitration eligible players are under contract, continuing a streak the team has in avoiding things like this. Here are the currently under contract players for 2010, and the values of their salaries.

• Michael Young – $16,000,000
• Rich Harden – $6,500,000
• Vladimir Guerrero – $6,500,000
• Ian Kinsler – $4,000,000
• Frank Francisco – $3,265,000
• Josh Hamilton – $3,250,000
• C.J. Wilson – $3,100,000
• Darren Oliver – $3,000,000
• Scott Feldman – $2,425,000
• Colby Lewis – $1,750,000
• Brandon McCarthy – $1,300,000
• Chris Ray – $975,000
• Khalil Greene – $750,000
• Dustin Nippert – $650,000
• Esteban German – $600,000

That’s a total of $54,065,000 for 15 players. 15 players does, of course, not make a full team, so there’s more to come. Six more are insufficient service time players, meaning we can renew them if no agreement is reached. Those guys are:

• David Murphy – $414,820
• Jarrod Saltalamacchia – $410,890
• Brandon Boggs – $408,540
• Nelson Cruz – $408,070
• Chris Davis – $406,620
• Luis Mendoza – $406,210

Those numbers are their 2009 salaries. While their 2010 salaries are unknown, Maury theorizes that giving the players a 6.5% pay increase would make the overall salary demand for these six players a total of $2,614,735.
Add that to the previous total, and the salary is now at $52,614,735. We still have four roster spots to fill, so the actual number will be a bit higher. Actually the “four spots” remark comes from Maury. He uses all these players listed above as players to be on the 25 man roster, and as a Rangers fan, I know they won’t all be. Putting all those names above in “slots”, here’s what I come up with:
C Jarrod Saltamacchia
1B Chris Davis
2B Ian Kinsler
3B Michael Young
SS
LF Josh Hamilton
CF
RF Nelson Cruz
DH Vlad Guerrero
BN David Murphy
BN Khalil Greene
BN Esteban German
BN Brandon Boggs
SP Rich Harden
SP Scott Feldman
SP Colby Lewis
SP Brandon McCarthy
SP Dustin Nippert
CL Frank Francisco
RP CJ Wilson
RP Darren Oliver
RP Chris Ray
RP Luis Mendoza
RP
RP
RP
This shows five “slots”, but.. We know who our starting shortstop will be (Elvis Andrus), and we are expecting Julio Borbon to be the starting centerfielder. Neither of these guys were on Maury’s list. On top of that, there’s no backup catcher in this mix (Teagarden, Ramirez, Toby Hall?) either, so that will bump one of the guys on this list to AAA.
Elvis made $400,000 in 2009, and Julio Borbon has a major league salary too. He signed a 4 year major league deal that started in 2007. 2010 is the final year of that. The total value of that contract is $1.3 Million, but the breakdown of that is unknown to me. A straight breakdown of Borbon’s contract is a $325,000 payment, but I find it hard to believe that would be his 2010 salary, as it’s under minimum.
I also find it unlikely that Brandon Boggs & Esteban German will start the year with the big club, and probably Luis Mendoza, too, so the “holes to fill” is probably larger than that. I know their salary counts towards the total club salary obligations, but I believe Maury’s article talks totally about 25 man opening day roster, not total obligations.
As long as we’re talking about obligations, we do have some dead money on the books this year. Most of it is for actual players playing elsewhere that we owe money to somewhat. They are:

• Kevin Millwood – The Rangers are picking up $3 Million of his 2010 salary in Baltimore.
• Frank Catalanotto – Who just today signed with the Mets, we owe $2 million for a buyout of his contract.
• Vicente Padilla – $1.75 Million for his contract buyout

And then there’s Alex Rodriguez. Lest you think his optout from a couple of years ago removed our obligation to him, think again. All that relieved us from was the money we’d have to send to the Yankees for the opted out years of the contract (of which 2010 would have been the final year had it still be in play). No, there’s a still a messy (and it’s messy to figure out) issue of deferred money.
The best I can figure, we owe Alex Rodriguez $3 Million in 2010 as part of deferred money. I know a lot of the Rangers’ obligation went away when he voided the last year of his original contract (which would have been THIS season), but at the time there was some noise made about us still owing some small amount from the voided years (not the years that had happened in TX & NYY). There is still the deferred money from the original years which we’re on the hook for. The original payout plan for that was for it to not be over until 2025, but in looking at it now, I think that deferred money came due earlier, and I think – but am not 100% positive that 2010 is the last year we have to pay for Arod. It’s confusing, because Texas owed deferred money from the original years of the voided contract. When he was traded to NY, the terms were rejiggered a bit to reduce the load on deferred money TX owes. When the contract was voided, I’m a little unclear as to whether the years we owed deferred money was changed (to us being done in 2010), or if there are two separate piles of deferred money Texas is paying on. I think, but am not sure, that the voided years also had deferred money that were attached to them that are owed, despite the base salary not being owed.
Having said ALL of this, our salary looks to be right about what it was last year on opening day, which was $68,178,798. Maury’s article says our 2010 opening day payroll will be $3.25 million less than 2009, but if you add the dead money for Alex Rodriguez into the mix, it’s pretty much a wash.
We’ll find out before opening day how it all plays out, obviously. But it’s still confusing somewhat. :)