clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

The Rays roster: 2015 and beyond

Keeping track of the team both now and in the years to come.

A Ray for awhile.
A Ray for awhile.
Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports

The Rays roster has been changing rapidly this offseason, and it may not be finished.

Keeping track of contracts and what they mean for both the present and the future of a team is difficult, so here's a spreadsheet showing Rays' major-league payroll commitments from now until 2023 (when the Evan Longoria contract expires). This is probably not the roster the Rays will enter the season with. This is what they could field right now (assuming full health). We'll try to keep this on the front page and update it as it changes.

Notes for understanding the chart:

  • Blue denotes seasons before a player reaches arbitration, orange denotes his arbitration seasons. Basically, when a player is promoted to the major leagues, he is under team control for six seasons. For the first three of them he is played the league minimum (about $500K), and then in his fourth season of "service time" he'll enter arbitration, wherein his salary escalates a bit each year, based on his performance. For more information on the service time clock, read the entry in Steve Slowinski's ever-useful FanGraphs glossary.
  • There's an exception to the basic arbitration rule. When a player begins his third year of service time, if he's in the top percentage of all players beginning their third year of service time he is designated as a "super two." That means that rather than playing for the league minimum in his third season he immediately enters the arbitration process and will have four arbitration years, making him more expensive (Drew Smyly is a super two).
  • I've taken service time and arbitration year projections from this chart at Cot's baseball contracts.
  • For 2014 arbitration prices, I've used the projections from MLB Trade Rumors. For future years, I've merely noted which arbitration year it will be for the player. As a rough rule of thumb, players will earn 40% of their free agent value in arb1, 60% in arb2, and 80% in arb3. This will of course go up for super two players. Note that when there is no salary figure in the chart for a season, it is not added to the salary total at the bottom. This does not mean that it doesn't exist.
  • Purple denotes players under contract. Baseball contracts are guaranteed.
  • Green denotes a team option. This means that the Rays can choose whether or not to retain the player. In some cases, there is a buyout on the option. When applicable the buyouts are listed at the bottom of the chart.
  • All contract and option information is taken from Cot's.

The chart (unembedded version) (Updated: 1/15/2015):