Opening Day Payroll

by AZRon

As I did last year, for those who want to play GM, I am presenting the current opening day team payroll. I’m dealing only with the “active” roster; but the O’s will have pay obligations for players on the 40 man roster.

In 2016, few posters anticipated the significant increase that Dan Duquette engineered. This year’s opening day payroll exceeded that of last year by 12.1%, about $18M.

And, please, let’s dispense with the squabbling over the “accounting” for salary deferrals.

All of the latest transactions are included. Salaries are displayed as rounded to the nearest $10k, but the total is accurate to 2 decimal places. Projections for those under contract are from the Cots Baseball Prospectus Compensation Website. The MLB minimum salary is $535,000 in 2017.

I provide this information so that we can make accurate and useful comparisons to the opening day payrolls of the Orioles in previous years, other MLB teams and the totals for Major League Baseball. As with virtually all team opening day payroll tabulations on the web, my total payroll figure does not reflect any deductions for deferred salaries or additions for set-asides for deferrals from previous years (as required by Article XVI of the CBA). However, I have noted the 2017 contract deferrals in the right-most column of the below chart.

The roster, as shown here, lists the opening day active roster plus players on the disabled list.  Craig Gentry’s salary is estimated.