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BFR: Follow the Money!
2006-01-13 14:14
by Mark T.R. Donohue

There's an amusing story on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer site (aside: what exactly is an "intelligencer?") regarding a discrepancy between the Mariners' reported 2005 payroll and that listed in the AP story many of you may have viewed labelled "2005 Baseball Final Payrolls." The M's did indeed spend just a hair short of one hundred million dollars when you take into account all of the the guys they traded or released but still had to pay.

Art Thiel writes that Seattle management was "sufficiently aggravated that Tuesday it reluctantly released the club's complete player payroll." One look at these figures and you can see why they were hesitant. The '05 Mariners paid Bret Boone $9.107 million, Adrian Beltre $10 million, and Joel Pineiro $4.2 million. For their trouble they received VORPs from those guys of 4.4, 15.1, and 4.4. And those were the guys that played! How about $3.35 mil to buy out Scott Spiezio's contract? And $3.59 mil to pay Jeff Cirillo to play for the Padres? Tack on another $3.4 million for this perfecta of released players: Aaron Sele, Pat Borders, and Wiki Gonzalez. Wowzers.

Comments
2006-01-13 16:43:42
1.   Bob Timmermann
Wasn't Cirillo on Milwaukee last year? Or were the Mariners still paying his salary there too?
2006-01-13 20:07:30
2.   Mark T.R. Donohue
Cirillo was released by the Padres in August 2004 with a year remaining on a 4-year, $29 million deal. The Brewers gave him a minor league deal last year, so the Padres and M's were still on the hook for $7 million minus the veterans' minimum. Interesting note: One of the guys the Rockies got from Seattle when they traded Cirillo there in 2001 was Brian Fuentes.
2006-01-14 13:06:24
3.   Rowdy
An "intelligencer" is a public paper, a newspaper, a messager, or something (or someone) that spreads intelligence.

I guess it's been a while since newspapers obviously existed for that reason mainly.

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