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For my last meeting of the day, I called in our accounting team to join me and Daniel Rodriguez in my office for the next matter of business. We have a $200,000,000 budget ranked 23rd in the UBL, and a player payroll of $158,510,000 projected for 2025, ranked 21st. Add in staff, scouting, draft, player development, and international free agent expenses, and we have a total expense bill of $182,250,000. This puts our projected profit/loss before revenue and luxury sharing at around -$10,000,000. To me, this is where the issues begin. We have a lot of money tied up into players that aren’t playing up to their contract. Additionally, our roster is aging, and salaries are projected to increase, with the 2027 projection to be at $189.5 million.
One of my goals for the organization is to start building from within, and our player development budgets are too low for that. While we do have the 4th best minor league system in the UBL, it is not that deep behind #3 Francisco Rubio. Besides him and the aforementioned Martinella, our top 100 prospects include #61 starter Chris Apple (22, 2* current/2.5* potential) who spent 2024 in short A sporting a 124 ERA+, and #70 Omar Garcia (20, 1.5*/4*) who played 63 underwhelming games in A ball. We have some other decent potential players that have been drafted in the past 2 years, and they fill out spots 103, 106, 137, 177, 194, and 197 on the prospects list. Our player development budget is currently $7.7 million, draft budget at $2.73 million, and international free agency budget at $1.99 million. This is far too low.
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