The Dodgers Spending Spree Continues

In what seemed like an unthinkable long shot 24 hours ago the Red Sox and Dodgers are now on the verge of completing a 9 player blockbuster deal. The deal is to send Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford, Nick Punto, and $12 million from the Red Sox in exchange to the Dodgers for James Loney, Rubby De La Rosa, Jerry Sands, Allen Webster, and Ivan DeJesus.  The deal is so big there’s no good place to even begin breaking it down, but let’s start with just the cash.

The combine total of cash coming onto the Dodgers payroll is around a whopping $270 million and the Red Sox are only picking up $12 million, only 4.4% of the total value! The $12 million the Red Sox are including is about the same amount of money their ex-players-to-be for the 2012 season are owed take or give a couple bucks here or there. From the Dodger standpoint they’ve just about doubled their salary cap from 2012 to 2013. Coming into the 2012 season they were on the books for $105 million with the additions of Ramirez, Crawford, Gonzalez, Beckett, and Punto their now looking at the looks of around $181 million just with the additions above. However with contract increases from a majority of their current players on the roster as well as arbitration cases, and maybe even free agency (why stop now?!) the Dodgers are easily looking at a salary cap around $200 million if not more.  

It may be tough to imagine, but the Dodgers could have a higher payroll than the Yankees next year. The Yankees came into 2012 with a payroll of $210 million but they’re going to be taking a large chunk of contracts off the books as well due to the contracts of Rivera, Swisher, Kuroda, Martin, and friends are coming off the books. They currently have around $135 million locked up into next year, with arbitration cases, some resignings here and free agency signs there, and maybe even a trade or two, they’ll likely be somewhere around $180-200 million. So don’t be surprised come April next year and the Yankees are the #2 salary in all of baseball.

Now from the Red Sox standpoint this is not only a massive salary dump but they’re also getting a good chunk of young and controlled cost talent. Coming into the season the Red Sox had $175 million on the books, but now with some of the big names off the books essentially cut their cap in half and are looking at around $81 million committed to 2013, with an offseason’s deal of work I’d imagine they’ll probably end up somewhere between $100-130 million depending on how creative they get. From a financial standpoint the dump in salary alone makes this deal worth it due to the product being less than lacking on the field.

All stats and values are from Cot's Contracts, FanGraphs, and Baseball Reference.

Tune in tomorrow for a breakdown of the Red Sox newest Valentines!