The free-agent season officially opened Tuesday, which means Angels fans can officially start salivating over Gerrit Cole and any number of other players who they believe can help stop the team’s four-year streak of finishing with a losing record.

But first, it’s important to understand the Angels’ payroll. So, here’s the definitive explainer of how to do the math.

For starters, the Angels insist their payroll is always based on their revenues, not the luxury tax. So it’s not right to view the luxury-tax threshold as their payroll limit. This isn’t the NFL or NBA where the salary cap is at a point at which every team is expected to hit it. In baseball, only a few teams each year get to the luxury-tax threshold. Still, we’ll get to that.

The Angels’ actual payroll, which is what they have budgeted in terms of actual cash flow, is normally around $170 million to $180 million. Arte Moreno said this year it would go up, but he didn’t say how much. It could be $5 million or it could be $30 million. We don’t know.

Regardless, here’s the math of what they’ve already spent.

The Angels have five players with guaranteed salaries for 2020: Mike Trout ($36 million), Albert Pujols ($29 million), Justin Upton ($21 million), Andrelton Simmons ($15 million) and Zack Cozart ($12.75 million). That’s $113.75 million.

They also have nine remaining arbitration-eligible players, after they let go of Justin Bour, Luís García and Nick Tropeano. MLB Trade Rumors has arbitration estimates for them that look like this: Andrew Heaney ($5 million), Hansel Robles ($4 million), Tommy La Stella ($2.9 million), Cam Bedrosian ($2.8 million), Brian Goodwin ($2.1 million), Kevan Smith ($1.3 million), Noé Ramírez ($1 million), Max Stassi ($800,000) and Keynan Middleton ($800,000).

That’s $21.7 million worth of arbitration salaries.

So far that’s only 14 players, though. The Angels will have 26 active players at all times. So they need 12 other spots, plus accounting for the fact that there will be players on the disabled list or in Triple-A getting paid big-league salaries. So, estimating around $600,000 average for about 18 spots, that’s about another $10 million.

Add those three numbers, and you get $146.25 million toward what has been a limit of around $175 million. Moreno said it would be higher this year, though, so it’s anyone’s guess how high it goes.

The luxury-tax threshold is a little different.

It uses the average annual value of multiyear contracts. In the cases of Trout, Upton and Cozart, their 2020 salaries are about the same as their averages, but Simmons has an AAV of $8.3 million and Pujols has an AAV of $24 million. Both are significantly lower than what they’re actually being paid in 2020.

Assuming all of the arbitration-eligible players sign one-year deals, their figures will all be the same, so the current total of salaries as it relates to the luxury tax is actually about $132 million. For the luxury tax, you also have to count bonuses and benefits, so that’s about another $14 million or so. Related Articles Freeway Series Photos: Will Smith hits go-ahead blast as Dodgers defeat Angels

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So, although it gets there in a different way, it’s also about $146 million. The luxury-tax threshold is $208 million.

If you want to figure what the Angels have to add to get there, remember the difference between actual salary and average salary. Say they sign Cole to a seven-year, $245-million deal. That would be an average of $35 million, but maybe in 2020 they pay him only $28 million. So it adds $28 million to the actual payroll, but $35 million to the luxury-tax payroll.

Now that you’ve got all of that, you can dream away about what the Angels should, or can, do this winter.

ALSO

The Angels on Tuesday lost infielder Kean Wong on waivers to the San Francisco Giants. Wong was just claimed on waivers from the Tampa Bay Rays in the final week of the regular season.