On the 2012-2017 payroll obligations there’s a lot of names there that WILL be on the team for a long time.

Jaso
Smoak
Wells
Wilhelmsen
Beavan
Carp
Furbush
Montero
Noesi
Ruffin
Seager

That’s 11 right there, an easy extra 4-5 million we have to add to payroll. And if you look at last year, several “other” players were used for significant periods of time. Some for injury replacement, some for veterans-who-suck replacement, some to get their feet wet. I didn’t include guys like Robles, Cesar Jimenez, Chavez, Delabar, Luetge, or Medina (~2.5 million there) because I don’t expect them to see significant playing time, though a couple might. But then you have Chris Gimenez, Saunders, Moore, Liddi, Peguero, Robinson, and Mike WIlson (~3.1 million here) who all saw at least some or significant playing time last season for whatever reason. Halman, of course, is left off for obvious tragic reasons.

There’s also other possibilities, players who could mature and end up on the big club. Say the team is sour on Peguero or Wilson and wont bring them up again. There are others, though, such as Catricala, Franklin, Triunfel, etc who could get purchased and added to the 40 man and then 25 man during the course of a season. Lots of relief arm choices, as well.

Even if they aren’t part of the payroll as of RIGHT NOW, I think we have to take into account an amount of money to cover these players. We’re saying we have ~$18-23 million to spend if we base the current payroll at ~$72 million and a perceived $90-95 million budget. That’s not accurate. So maybe I was a bit high with the 10 million mark, but that was a lazy estimation. It’s probably closer to around 8 million, but that’s still a significant chunk of change unaccounted for.