Braves Payoll Reductions Have Not Resulted in More Budget Space

Sep 5, 2015; Gainesville, FL, USA; Florida Gators hold up a money down sign on the sidelines on third down against the New Mexico State Aggies during the second half at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

It is a case of the Mysteriously Missing Money. The Bodacious Budget Balancing act.

Starting in 2014, the Atlanta Braves have been making a concerted effort to clear payroll off of their books by any and all means necessary, particularly longer-term commitments to payroll. Included has been the following:

As of this morning, recently signings and trades have positioned the Braves to a projected Opening Day payroll of just over $81 million. Here’s the latest run-down of the details that brings us to that number:

Credit: TomahawkTake.com. Click for the details.

The question, though, isn’t so much the size of that $81 million number: it’s more like “why are we being told that the Braves only have about ~$13 million left to spend” (and after Bonifacio, that drops to no more than $12 m)?

Rewind just two months ago: we’re at the end of the regular season, and the various Braves’ executives are having their traditional ‘post mortum’ sessions with the media. At that time, David O’Brien reported this based on conversations with John Hart:

The Braves will likely increase their payroll some in 2016, but the bigger jump will come in 2017 when they move into a new Cobb County Ballpark. They won’t give specific figures now and Hart said they haven’t set a firm payroll for 2016, but it’s believed the Braves will have about $25 million to $30 million to spend this winter on 2016 salary additions.

All right. Sounds useful. Something to work with.

So they they go out – after non-tendering Minor, trading Maybin, and then later trading Miller – and somewhere in the process of all that we hear “it’s only $13-15 million”. What happened?

The answer is “opportunity”… though it’s an opportunity that won’t blossom for another 5-7 years.

Once again, David O’Brien has the story:

“Braves general manager John Coppolella and president of baseball operations John Hart said payroll was affected by the increased spending or planned spending on foreign free agents and the June 2016 draft, when the Braves have the third overall pick — much higher than they picked in recent years and thus a higher signing bonus. …“We’ve had the ability to spend money,” Hart said. “We’re certainly not going to give away what our payroll number (2016 limit) is; we don’t want clubs and agents and everybody to know what’s going on out there. But we don’t feel we’re restricted. When we look at our payroll there’s an overall bucket that you look at, and part of it is other things – we’re going to have a number of early draft picks; we traded for one and we have the 3-hole pick. We want to be able to be big players internationally.”

Well, I do think the cat is out of that bag insofar as your budget limitation, but we did need to know why they change has occurred.

That International Market Thing

It’s a crazy situation: a part of the world where the rules are much different from American culture, where future players go to high school, finish up, make college plans, and wait to see if they are drafted. At that point, they are 17-18 years old and have had reasonable competition – often in showcase or ‘area code’ tournaments so that scouts can readily gauge one against another. As risky as all prospects are, this is about as good as it gets for finding teen-aged talent.

Internationally? It’s a whole ‘nother crap shoot.

Spare Change? Finn Jacobs of Vancouver, WA plays the guitar in front of Providence Park to raise travel money. Mandatory Credit: Jaime Valdez-USA TODAY Sports

I’m not going to presume to write about how that ‘market’ works. New Braves employee Kiley McDaniel has written extensively about it (examples: here, here, and here). Likewise, BaseballAmerica’s Ben Badler has fascinating looks at this bizarre way of doing business here and especially here. They are the experts here: If you want to learn about how the business of baseball is currently conducted in the Caribbean basin, then do read their work.

The upshot is this: the Braves have been linked to Kevin Maitan, a 15-year-old shortstop with as much upside as anybody seems to be able to remember. When I say “linked”, I say that there seems to be a “wink-wink” agreement in place that will make Kevin a very rich young Brave come next July 2nd. Stranger things have happened that might change this, but that’s the active rumor.

Given the cash that changes hands to sign the top international prospects (which could be in the neighborhood of $4.25 million for Maitan), that number presents a problem… but not a problem without a solution. In 2015, the third-highest International spending pool… the slot the Braves will occupy next July when they can start signing 16-year-olds… was a total of 4,586,600. In other words, there’s a decent chance that the Braves could blow the whole pool on one player.

Except that it seems they have no intention on ‘settling’ for one player alone – even one of Maitan’s apparent ability. The way the rules are written, if you’re probably gonna exceed the spending cap by $1… you may as well exceed it by $10 million and load up with high-upside players in the process. The Yankees did that 2 years ago, spending over $10 million. They are also forbidden from playing in this pool through this next signing season (2-year ban on signing anyone for more than $300K). The Cubs and Rangers have also abused this loophole, and so have the Dodgers, Diamondbacks, and a couple of other clubs.

Now it’s the Braves’ turn, which should be a little easier with most of those “big wallet” teams forced to sit on the sidelines. They will be able to spend more and get more for the money.

The only problem is a short-term one for 2016: they are robbing the payroll budget for the major league club to give Kiley, George Blakeley, Roy Clark, and the rest of the scouts a huge checkbook to snag as much as they can – while they can (for the Braves will then end up in the penalty box themselves for two years… assuming there is no International Draft started up in the meantime). For 2017? plenty of cash to spend… if they can find somebody worth giving it to.

How Much Will They Spend?

That’s not been revealed, but I can guess at roughly how much they are making available.

The 2014 OD payroll was $112 million, with close to $115m being spent overall. 2015 opened at $97 million, but much more was spent along the way (think Trevor Cahill and Bronson Arroyo). Payroll was said to be raised a bit for 2016 before the change in strategy (see quotes above), so that probably translates to roughly $120 million at maximum.

As was stand today, with the projections of $81.2 million for the major league club, we’re told there is still about $12 million remaining (after Bonifacio). Add that up and throw in a bit of “buffer space” and you get $81.2m + $12m + $4m and I’m around $96 million.

If that $96 million is subjected from this hypothetical $120 million ceiling, that suggests an International spending pot of at least $20 million… an staggering, unprecedented number that could buy the Braves an entire team of age-group All-Stars from Latin America. Will they actually spend all of that? We likely will not be told – we may have to simply add the figures after the fact, but the numbers support a Latin-signing budget of that ilk… though some could go into upgrading the facilities at their Dominican baseball academy as well.

Is that the intent? Is that the plan? If so, it will set up the Latin pipeline for quite literally the next decade.

Yes – a payroll reduction is painful in so many ways… but that’s why we’re digging about in the fog in search for silver linings. This is a big one. Keep thinking of this while the Braves are in the process of losing 95-100 games again in 2016.

But it will get better. Hopefully this week’s trade was only a preview of coming attractions.