40-Man Review: Primer

Today, I'm starting a series of posts reviewing the state of the Mariners' 40-man Roster with a look at the roster as it stands and a look at our salary commitments in 2015.

The Mariners seem to have a little wiggle room to spend on free agents or contract extensions this offseason. The team spent $106.7 million on player salaries in 2014 according to team president Kevin Mather. That number should rise if we're to believe the comments both Mather and GM Jack Zduriencik have made in the past few weeks. According to the data I've compiled and some conservative guess work, the Mariners have around $95 million in committed money next year (that includes a guess at arbitration salaries, team options, buyouts, etc.). That leaves $11 million in unallocated salary plus whatever increase ownership deems necessary to put this team over the edge into playoff contention.

The table below lists all 42 players listed on the 40-man roster (Willie Bloomquist (60-day DL) and Franklin Gutierrez (restricted list) don't count towards the total). All salary information comes via Cots Baseball Contracts.

Notes:

• The difference in total salary in 2014 between the table above and the stated figure from the front office is just 3%, well within acceptable error rates.
• Pre-arbitration contracts are a bit difficult to figure out. They're based on the major league minimum salary ($500,000 in 2014) plus raises for performance and service time. Each team is responsible for setting these raises -- it's not a standardized scale.
• The Mariners have seven players headed to arbitration this year, Charlie Furbush, Tom Wilhelmsen, Logan Morrison, Kyle Seager, Dustin Ackley, Austin Jackson, and Michael Saunders.
• The $69 million total in the table above includes all players under contract in 2015 plus all players signed to pre-arbitration contracts with a little bit of inflation due to service time raises. The $95 million total stated in the lede includes my own guestimate for arbitration contracts, plus Iwakuma's team option, minus Smoak's option with his contract buyout.

Tomorrow, I'll take a look at the three catchers on our roster, give a recap of how 2014 went for that position group and look ahead to 2015 using Steamer projections from FanGraphs. What else would you like to see in this series? Potential free agents? Minor league players likely to earn major league playing time? Let me know in the comments.