[Westheim]

Payroll table time. Be assured this ain’t pretty. The following is our payroll structure on the eve of the 1997 season. As usual, players on the minimum are omitted. Players that either have more than six years of service time or have less than 1 1/2 years of service time are omitted from the appendix.

1B/2B David Brewer - $1.5M ($6.2M through 2000)
SP Kisho Saito - $1M ($2M through 1998)
OF Neil Reece - $950k ($4.2M through 2000)
INF Jorge Salazar - $945k (will be free agent) #
3B/1B Ben O’Morrissey - $900k ($6.2M through 2002)
-
OF Royce Green - $821k (will be free agent) #
LF Vern Kinnear - $550k (will be free agent) #
SP Miguel Lopez - $480k (will be arbitration eligible) *
C David Vinson - $450k (will be free agent) #
1B Liam Wedemeyer - $380k (will be arbitration eligible) *
-
MR Andres Otero - $350k (will be free agent) #
INF Marvin Ingall - $300k (will be arbitration eligible) *
CL Tzu-jao Ban - $270k (will be free agent) #
SP Scott Wade - $270k ($550k through 1998)
MR Gabriel De La Rosa - $210k (will be arbitration eligible) *
-
MR Daniel Miller - $200k ($1M through 2000)
MR Jose Ramos - $164k (will be free agent) #
C Nori Kondo - $159k (will be arbitration eligible) *

* Service times (y.d): Ban (5.153), Ramos (5.077), Green (5.019), Kinnear (5.008), Lopez (4.073), Wedemeyer (3.118), Kondo (3.076), De La Rosa (3.008), Ingall (2.163)

In addition to that, the following players will be (or could be under the super 2 clause) arbitration eligible: Salcido (1.153), Newton (1.116 – unlikely)

We will have 17 players on a minimum contract. Total payroll amounts to approximately $11.8M (plus $1.8M for staff), which is too much for a $16.4M budget to remain competitive in the “soft” areas of scouting and development. I will have $2.9M in those and we are still overbudget.

Hard year ahead, and don’t even get me started on the flock of players that will stretch their open hands out to me once fall kicks in.