Moving forward, what are your expectations for payroll in comparison to the rest of the league?

[foxfield]

21 minutes ago, ThisIsBirdland said:

If comparing strictly to our current +/- $100m payroll, keep in mind that the 2027 payroll won't have Burnes ($15.7m), Kimbrel ($12m), Santander ($11.7m), Mullins ($6.3m), Hays ($6.3m), Mountcastle ($4.1m), McCann ($4m), and Means ($3.3m). Add in that we have $14m on the books for Davis and Cobb which will be lower (about $5m by 2027), and that's an offset of about $72m against the $89m Frobby listed above. So if I'm looking at this right (and someone please let me know if not), we're only looking at roughly $15m-$20m more to spend on that core 10 players in 2027 than we're looking at paying our current top 10 player salaries now.

Of course we'll have many more additional commitments, but I would anticipate many of them will be lower value or pre-arb players.

Yes. I think we are headed to the equivalent of about 150-160 in today’s dollars. New ownership may find this run is quite profitable and will sustain higher. That is possible. 

[Just Regular]

46 minutes ago, Frobby said:

For what it's worth, here's a chart I made summarizing the estimated cost of our top 10 young players from 2024-27:

Player	2024	2025	2026	2027
Rutschman	1	7	13	19
Henderson	1	1	7	13
Bradish	1	4	7	13
Rodriguez	1	1	4	7
Kremer	1	3	6	9

And....with this nudge I add Dean Kremer to the Cedric Mullins/Austin Hays mental list of guys who may well go to camp with some other Club 2 years hence.

Many of Povich, McDermott, Johnson, Baumeister and De Leon will be well on their way to whatever they are going to become by 2026.

I don't expect Elias to ever buy long on a SP aside from maybe Bradish/Grayson, but I do think we've seen enough to figure most years a 1-year veteran will be in his mix as well.    Tougher still if Adley's Orioles becomes a rich enough life experience for Corbin Burnes to think about staying.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, SemperFi said:

Boy does Oakland get hosed-costed as the SF market but really gets little or no value from over the bridges.

What we see in Oakland is the same thing in Tampa - dumping stars and playing  in a terrible stadium. people are going to go root for the Giants or the beach instead of paying to watch an anonymous team average 87 wins in a crap hole.

 

there’s a lot of room to spend between doing dumb contracts and dumping players that keep fans emotionally tied to the franchise

Edited February 7 by brooooksy

[Orioles West]

Great topic, but I don’t know enough about the new ownership group yet to set my expectations.

I have hopes that ownership is competitive — that winning will be as important versus simply growing their investment. And that hope doesn’t mean spend like the Dodgers, it means being smart and then spending a bit more in those years a championship is in reach. If we outspend our market to just above league average, St. Louis Cardinals range, it will exceed my current new owner daydreams.

[forphase1]

6 hours ago, Bemorewins said:

We actually do have the spending advantage in this division if the new owners decide to deploy it. They are worth more (net worth) than every other owner in this division including NYY. 

But I don't want to draw this point out any longer because it appears that you have made up your mind that the owner's net worth is less of a significant factor than whatever mean's are used to draw up market size.

Yet SD spends more in a "smaller market", resigns stars, and signs other stars in FA, and has one of the top attendance figures in the sport. They drew over 3 million people last year with their "small market". I believe that they are an example of what can be done in a given market if you engage your fans in a way that communicates we are invested and doing all we can to win. 

I'm afraid you are setting yourself up to be disappointed.  I expect payroll to increase, but to think the billionaires will out spend the revenue isn't likely.   We aren't a small market necessarily but nor are we a large market,  not with the Nationals here.   Most reasonable metrics seem to have us close to average in market size,  though the one that really matters is lower than that.   

Point being is that most rich folks got rich by not running their investments at a loss, at least not long term.   Now unlike the current ownership,  I don't expect them to have to fleece the Os to put food on the table.  I expect they will be content to run close to even eventually, maybe a bit higher for a stretch and maybe a bit lower for a stretch as the team personnel changes.  But I doubt they constantly try to have a payroll that outpaces the revenue just because they are ultra wealthy and can afford it.  We should never be in the bottom 5 in payroll again,  but nor do I expect us to always be in the top 10 either.  

Edited February 7 by forphase1
Spelling

[Warehouse]

I think the relevant comparison is payroll as percent of revenue, which I’m hoping to be a bit north of 50% (maybe even high 50s) as a long term average.  

I also expect our revenue to increase due to multiple factors: increased club competitiveness, T Rowe Price park and other new sponsorships such as uniform patch and gaming, stadium upgrades to drive premium seat revenue, increasing central fund revenue, resetting of MASN rights for next term*, and broader professionalization/optimization of club revenue activities under Rubinstein.

*I recall from some of the MASN dispute briefs that the club was forced to use prospective (ex ante) P&L forecasts to determine the rights fees despite actual economics coming in lower than expected due to cord cuttting.

 

[owknows]

I'd like to see them win it all for 3 years in a row, with the lowest payroll in baseball.

(yeah I know... I'm a weirdo)

[Frobby]

1 minute ago, owknows said:

I'd like to see them win it all for 3 years in a row, with the lowest payroll in baseball.

(yeah I know... I'm a weirdo)

If they win it all three years in a row, they can have any payroll they want and I won’t complain.

[geschinger]

7 hours ago, Bemorewins said:

Yet SD spends more in a "smaller market", resigns stars, and signs other stars in FA, and has one of the top attendance figures in the sport. They drew over 3 million people last year with their "small market". I believe that they are an example of what can be done in a given market if you engage your fans in a way that communicates we are invested and doing all we can to win. 

I'm not sure the Padres are a great example.  They've had to dump ~50m in payroll this offseason to get in line with MLB's debt service rules.

[EdwinRip]

Tampa has made more World Series appearances than the Yankees in the last 20 years so I don’t really get the spending argument. You need a team built to be in contention every year.  The playoffs are a crapshoot in baseball. 

[SilverRocket]

I'm a lot less optimistic than a lot of you are about the ownership change affecting this. I think there's likely to be some improvement but not up to league average. The grass isn't always greener... I'll believe the spending when I see it.

[Can_of_corn]

6 minutes ago, geschinger said:

I'm not sure the Padres are a great example.  They've had to dump ~50m in payroll this offseason to get in line with MLB's debt service rules.

They also had their owner die.

[geschinger]

1 minute ago, Can_of_corn said:

They also had their owner die.

His death was not the trigger for the payroll dump and running afoul of the debt service requirements.  Although his health was almost certainly why they went all-in as much as they did.    

I don't think they are a good example of what can be done in a given market if you engage your fans in a way that communicates we are invested and doing all we can to win.  The revenue from the attendance increase didn't come anywhere close to covering their increased spending.

[sportsfan8703]

We get Bautista back for next year. Keller could hit the traded market along with Luzardo and Cease. Elias has us set up to pull off a Burnes type trade next season as well. We won’t need Kimbrel. So the payroll could stay the same, but we’d be a similar team next year. Similar as the 4th betting favorite behind the Dodgers and Braves. We could spend $200 million and not be favored over those two. 

[Bemorewins]

**Long post** - Last thing I have to say about this.

I have no idea what the payroll will be going forward with the ownership transfer. I don’t believe it can get any lower or worse from the side of lack of competitive interest and ownership support to the baseball ops.

I have hope that the new ownership will support Elias and company in a much more respectable way. 

If we can even get to a mid-tier level payroll, that is so much higher than where we are now and where we have been since 2018. That gives me some hope that we can resign some of our homegrown stars and have some faces of the franchise to build around, succeed with, and market for the longer term.

As a resident of this market place, my desire is for the franchise to succeed on the field (ultimate win at least World Series in my lifetime) AND to be relevant in this community/metro area. 

This is the first year since entering the ‘98 season (before the Ravens became a real thing) that we have this level of buzz about the team heading into Spring Training/the season. That’s what I want for this team. And that’s what I believe is necessary (along with the results on the field) that will grow our fanbase within this market.

The Orioles don’t need to be the Dodgers (heck the Dodgers don’t need to spend like they do because of how great their baseball ops are). We don’t need to spend at the top of the heap like the Yanks either. But right now we are something like 27th in payroll with no stars locked up longterm. That is not what I want to continue to see.

In 15 or so years we should have numbers like 2, I guess 35 (though it was Mussina’s before Rutschman’s lol), and whatever number Holliday will take, out there with 5, 8, 20, 27, etc.

It’s frankly embarrassing for an organization with this type of historic pedigree to not have had a single HOF player in almost 2 generations. And the only one we produced we allowed to get away.

When I take my kids to Ravens games and they look up at all the great players and names in their ring of honor they can clearly see the long lineage of greatness. And their is a sense of pride (maybe because I was born and raised in this city?) that I get from that.

When I take them to O’s games and even more importantly hopefully when they have their own families and take their children to O’s games, they will see something similar and have the same sense of pride of having witnessed something special.

That is why I have no interest in being run like the Rays. What is that legacy? - We were good and cheap, but never good enough. Where are their banners? Where are their Hall of Famers? What parades have they ever had?

At the end of the day, as a sports fan of any team most seasons end in disappointment (as I explained to my 7 year old after the Ravens lost the other week). However, on the rare occasions at the end of the season when your team (our O’s) are hoisting up the trophy in triumph, it makes all of those disappointments and heartbreaks worth it.