Playing around with the Nationals' payroll

November 15, 2010 9:46 AM by Ben Goessling View Comments

I've been spending some time looking at the Nationals' projected payroll for 2011 this morning (detailed breakdowns are available at Cot's Contracts and Baseball Reference). The short of it: The Nationals are going to have plenty of money to make a splash this winter.

They've got $29.15 million committed to seven players - Ryan Zimmerman, Jason Marquis, Livan Hernandez, Yunesky Maya, Ivan Rodriguez, Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper - and they have another seven who should go to arbitration this winter.

Let's assume the following salaries for those seven players: Josh Willingham ($6 million), John Lannan ($2.5 million), Sean Burnett ($1.1 million), Wil Nieves ($800,000), Michael Morse ($800,000), Alberto Gonzalez ($700,000), Jesus Flores ($600,000) and Chien-Ming Wang (we'll call it a $1 million contract, plus incentives, settled before arbitration).

Those arbitration figures are rough estimates, but they'd put the Nationals at $42.65 million. Estimate another $5.5 million for 11 players who could fill out the 2011 Opening Day roster at pre-arbitration levels, and the Nationals would be at $48.15 million.

They had a payroll of $66.275 million on Opening Day 2010, and there's almost no way the Nationals would fill their 2011 roster with 25 players currently under their control. So they'd have at least $18 million to add players for 2011 without increasing payroll.

And let's get crazy and say they add a couple free agents - one for $15 million, and another for $10 million. That would only put the payroll at roughly $72 million (adding those contracts and subtracting a pair of minimum salaries).

From what I've heard from a number of baseball people, the Nationals intend to make a splash this winter. They certainly appear to have the financial flexibility to do so.