The Baseline

Alright, we've just taken an exhaustive look at each position on the team to see what they did, with a slight nod to what we might be able to expect from each slot next year. There's reason for optimism at some of the spots -- third, right, etc -- and reasons for pessimism at others (read: Guzman, Cristian).

Before we go too much further, we need to figure out what we're locked into and what's probably going forward. Here's my best guess (and, yeah, I've done something like this a billion times before, but deal, dammit).

Starters:
Lopez, ~$7 million (arb, $3.9 last year)
Guzman, $4.2 million
Zimmerman, $.5 million (potential for a multi-year extension)
Young, $5 million
Kearns, $5 million
Pena, ~$4 million (arb, $1.9 last year)
Church, ~$.6 million (pre-arb)
Schneider, $4.9 million
TOTAL: $31.2 million

Reserves
2B, Belliard, $1.6 million
1B, Johnson, $5.5 million
C, Flores, $.4 million
OF, Logan/backup, ~$.5 million
MI, Jiminez/backup, ~$.5 million
TOTAL: $8.5 million

Starting Pitching:
Hill, $.5 million
Bergmann, $.5 million
Patterson, ~$1.5 million (arb, $.85 last year)
Redding, ~$1 million (arb, first time eligible -- non-tender candidate?)
Mystery Man...
TOTAL: $3.5 million, plus...

Relievers
Cordero, ~$6.5 million (arb, $4.15 last year)
Rauch, ~$1.5 million (arb, first time eligible)
Ayala, ~$1.5 million (arb, first time thru process, was $1.1)
Rivera, $.4 million
Colome, ~1 million (arb eligible, was $.6 -- non-tender candidate?)
Schroder, $.4 million
TOTAL: $11.3 million.

OFFENSE: $39.7 million
PITCHING: $14.8 million
GRAND TOTAL: $54.5 million

It's been claimed, most frequently by Svrulga at the Post, that the team is going to bump up payroll to about $70 million or so. That means that the team has about $15-20 million to upgrade what we've got.

Seems like the most obvious solution would be to upgrade the starting pitching, but it's not clear who to target, especially when mediocrities like Carlos Silva are going to make something like $50 million over 5 years.

I was going to recommend one particular name (and it's not Livan), but USS Mariner beat me to it -- and they made a better and more convincing argument than I'd be able to do anyway. I'll look at that a bit closer sometime later this week/month/year/millennium.

But I just wanted to get a baseline, to see how much of Uncle Teddy's money we'd be looking at spending as we head into the offseason.

Side note...

As one of the originators of the LERNER IS CHEAP!!111! storyline, that $70 million figure is THE example of what I was most afraid of with their plan from last year. Who can criticize them for nearly doubling the major league payroll? It's a sizable bump up that certainly should be applauded (assuming, of course, that it comes to fruition, and wasn't just the product of a beat writer's fertile imagination.)

But just $70 million? Seriously? With a cash cow of a stadium opening, a pleasure palace that was specifically designed with the fattest of cats in mind, with every conceivable device to suck every last nickel out of their wallets and their companies' expense accounts? They're going to make money hand over fist next year with revenues they couldn't have even dreamed of at RFK, and the entire league is awash in revenue like never before.

So, yeah, be grateful that $70 million is bigger than $40 million, or whatever the hell they ended up spending this year, but it's likely not what they could be spending given the revenues they're extracting from this nation's finest defense contractors and lobbyists.

I realize that it has to be a ramp-up. You can't simply decide to spend $50 million one offseason -- especially if there's not $50 million worth of junk to buy. But it's just something that, in general, concerns me, and something I'll be watching in the future.