Oh That Mets Payroll

I bet you've wondered to yourself lately, "what exactly is the Mets payroll?"

Let's try to answer that question thanks to some friends of ours at Cot's Baseball Contracts. You can also look at last year's salaries over at ESPN.

First we'll take our guaranteed contracts and put them in descending order according to value:

Johan Santana - $20,000,000
Carlos Beltran - $18,500,000
Carlos Delgado - $12,000,000
Billy Wagner - $10,500,000
Francisco Rodriguez - $8,500,000
David Wright- $7,500,000
Luis Castillo - $6,000,000
Jose Reyes - $5,750,000
J.J. Putz - $5,000,000
Brian Schneider - $4,900,000
Ramon Castro - $2,500,000
Tim Redding - $2,250,000
Alex Cora - $2,000,000
Fernando Tatis - $1,700,000
Mike Pelfrey - $1,312,500
Marlon Anderson - $1,150,000
Sean Green - $405,000
Daniel Murphy - $400,000
Jonathon Niese - $400,000

The Mets also have several players that filed for arbitration:

Ryan Church
Pedro Feliciano
Duaner Sanchez
John Maine
Jeremy Reed

While it's impossible to say for certain while they will make, the tea leaves say it will be between $8M and $9M, so let's use $8.5M as our factor.

And don't forget we still owe Scott Schoeneweis $1,600,000 as part of the trade deal.

So with everything added together, the Mets current payroll comes in at just under $124M. This represents a drop off of $14M from last year's payroll of $138M.

Now as a businessman myself, I use 4% as my wage growth factor each year. People work hard, they want more money, they get promoted, and inflation and cost of living adjustmens must be made.

If we factor in that same 4% for the Mets, their 2009 payroll should be $143.5M. This still places the Mets well under the luxury tax threshold of $162M.

So at $124M now, the Mets can add Oliver Perez at $11M per year and still be under last year's payroll by a few million. If they were to also add Adam Dunn, it would put them just over last year's payroll if you include a COLA and inflation adjustment.

Just something to ponder.