Quote:
Originally Posted by UteChief
|
Probably is that it uses luxury tax payrolls.
Which is akin to using a team's Salary Cap figure as a proxy for Cash Spending.
And for many (if not most) ballclubs, those aren't even reasonable proxies because a luxury tax payroll uses AAV whereas the actual payroll spent is cash spending.
Look at the Cardinals, for example. That infographic says they had a $212 million payroll. They weren't even CLOSE.
They were, on the high side of the range, around $180 million in payroll spending this year. On the lower side, you'll see figures at around $150 million when accounting for things like retained payments from other clubs.
I suspect the $180 million is the more accurate figure, but even using that figure, the figure they use is inflated by almost 20%.
The difference comes from backloaded deals and deferrals. A team like the Dodgers has a staggering $46 million 'tax payroll' for Ohtani but only paid him $2 million this year.
The Royals have an ever bigger gap because they get drilled for Witt's full AAV on their tax bill but only paid him $2.7 million this year. His luxury tax percentage, OTOH, was $26.2 million. So they get 'credit' for $24 million in spending they didn't actually do. So their 'luxury tax total' was a little over $160 million. Their adjusted payroll total was about $122 million. Then their cash total (because of signing bonuses) was about in the middle of that.
I'd probably say your best bet is to try to find your cash spending totals for most of these teams. That's gonna give you the best guess about the 'commitment level' each team has.