As of now. Note that B.J. Upton, Jason Bartlett, Matt Garza, and J.P. Howell are represented by their 2009 salaries. There is a 99.3% chance that each receives at least some additional cash, meaning the total is likely to exceed the $63M spent on opening day 2009.
Now for some fun facts. All courtesy of the Cot's page:
- That 2011 payroll is made solely of players with non-minimum or arbitration-based salaries. Obviously not every player unrepresented is a free agent, the top four on the list are, however, which frees up roughly $37M, or ~60% of this season's payroll.
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Carl Crawford signed his extension in April 2005, at the time he would have became arbitration eligible after the season. Instead, he inked the four-year, $15.25M deal that included $18.25M and two seasons of club options. Total: six-years, ~$33.5M. Since 2005 he's been worth $82.5M and we still have a season to go. That's nearly a $50M profit. Evan Longoria's contract has seven seasons and more than $40M remaining, he signed that as a rookie, Crawford had a nearly 5 win season under his belt. When/if Crawford leaves for a lucrative contract; don't ever accuse him of being selfish, greedy, or any other negative synonym often associated with a player getting paid big money. He's earned it.
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An interesting aspect of Crawford's contract is all the deferred cash, including a little over $3M last season and $4M this season. None of which is being paid back with interest moving forward. Whether this is for taxation of temptation purposes is beyond me, but nevertheless, the Rays aren't actually paying him $10M this season.
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If you haven't already, read Dave's piece here. Again, I hate to hype up 12 months from now, but next off-season is going to be remarkably intriguing on so many levels.