Two major questions: Will the Lerners consider the deferred money separate from the active payroll? How much AAV can the Nationals add and still keep up with the young players future arbitration earnings?
Finngann, Garcia, Gore, and Gray are the only players going into arbitration next season that will get any substantial amount of money. Finnegan is probably 8 million. Garcia will double his, so maybe 4 million? I can't imgaine Gore and Gray getting more than 3 million each.
Say you bring back Rainey, Law, and Vargas at 2 million each. Don't bring back Weems. Riley Adams shouldn't cost you more than a million dollars. Same for Mason Thompson, given he's simply recovering from TJS. That's pretty much it.
Figure all the pre-arb guys cost you roughly 15 million. Puts payroll around 51 million.
Are they counting Strasburg's re-structured contract to be part of this active payroll? We know the Lerners didn't get the insurance. THe original contract deferred 26.6 a year to the three years after his deal ended (2027, 2028, 2029). It was reported that it was further restructured with more deferrals as part of his retirement, but no definitive number given. The Nationals also have deferral payments to Max Scherzer (15 million in 2025, 2026, and 2027) and Corbin (10 million in 2025). For estimation purposes, we'll say that Strasburg's contract was restructured to 20 million a year through the 2030 season. I also think that it's fair to assume that Max and Corbin's deferred amounts were put into escrow somewhere, but I'm going to assume that, at best, the Nationals only put the original 80 million deferred, so that 20 million a year is probably coming out of the current revenue stream.
So my rough estimate is that active payroll that has to be paid by an existing revenue stream is about 75 million. Nationals revenue has been 350+ million this year and the previous two. They garnered 322 million in 2021. This revenue stream seems more than sufficient to support an increase in payroll. But I think the thing to remember is that all of our young core will be in be in 2nd and 3rd arbitration in 2027 and 2028. That kind of payroll alone would eclipse 100 million rather quickly.
