Cincinnati Reds owner Bob Castellini has said that the 2019 roster will have the highest payroll the franchise has ever had. That comment alone doesn’t mean much. From the article:
“We’ll have the highest payroll we’ve ever had,’’ Castellini pledged. The previous high was $115 million in 2015. This year it was $101 million.
“We’ve spent a lot of money on this team,’’ he said, citing front office additions, money spent to sign international players and adding another minor-league affiliate, a Rookie League team in Tennessee.
There are a few things to digest in the quoted section above. More than $115M of payroll. The league average payroll is $140M in 2018. 16 teams topped that mark and only two of the ten teams to make the playoffs were under that mark. Payroll isn’t everything, but it certainly plays a factor in how good your team can be. Will the Reds sniff a league average payroll? Or is the “highest payroll ever” going to be coming in around $120M and still well below-average? We’re all going to have to wait and find out on that one.
As for that second part, it just rings hollow. Every team is also out there spending money on front office hires and signing international players. The Reds did buy the Greeneville franchise for an undisclosed amount of money. But, it’s worth noting that it’s probably not like buying many other franchises, because they don’t own the stadium. That alone probably saved them millions and millions of dollars if you want to compare it to buying other minor league franchises. I’m sure there was some money spent for the franchise. But on the surface it probably sounds more expensive than it actually was once you take into account that they bought the name and territory – not a stadium and those things.
It’s easy to spend money that isn’t mine. But citing things that literally everyone else does as “we’re spending!” just rings hollow. Throughout the rebuild, it’s been said that when the time was right, the organization would boost payroll. As noted, the team at their heights of that 2012-2015 run was spending $110-115M a year. But it’s been cut quite a bit since. Simply getting a tiny bit above those numbers will look bad. People will ask where that “saved” money went. Especially since they’ve added a new television contract. Of course, since the Reds are literally the only team in baseball who won’t tell you what they get paid from that contract, we don’t know just what they added in that situation. Still, it’s more than they were getting in 2015. If the payroll isn’t at $130M+, any and all questions about “where’s the money” will be very valid.
You can’t force players to sign with you. So there’s something to be said about having money and wanting to spend it, but things didn’t work out. But right now the Cincinnati Reds payroll commitments for 2019 sits at roughly $100M. That could change slightly depending on exactly what guys like Scooter Gennett and Billy Hamilton get in arbitration.
That, of course, brings up another question: Will one or both of those guys even on the Reds in April? There are some legitimate reasons to believe that Billy Hamilton should be non-tendered a contract for 2019 by the Reds. While he has some value, and is probably worth his contract in true money/value terms, for the Cincinnati Reds, he probably isn’t. Obviously you try to trade him before you non-tender him if that’s the road you want to go down. Gennett will clearly be worth his raise in arbitration. The question is whether it makes sense to pay him $10-11M for that. Or if it makes more sense to move on, save the money, play Nick Senzel at second, and spend that money on pitching.
There’s a lot of moving parts that could come into play. The Cincinnati Reds have some very important decisions to make over the next two months. How much they spend on payroll is only one of those decisions. But, it’s one of the bigger ones. Unfortunately aside from “more than $115M”, we don’t know what that will be. Perhaps telling the world how much you’ve got to spend could hurt in negotiations. Still, having a better idea of what could be spent would give the people you were trying to reach with your statement a better feeling than the one that they seem to be having with just a big question mark.