Kansas City Royals
American League · American League Central · Kauffman Stadium
Umpire favor
+4.1 net runs over 134 graded games — the zone was kind to the club on balance.
Biggest swings: +2.0 vs NYM · +1.8 vs CLE
The season ahead
28 games left on the schedule — what’s next, then the road to the finish. Times are in your own clock.
On deck
at Toronto Blue Jays (65–69)
Thu, Aug 27
Probables: Noah Cameron vs Spencer Arrighetti
On the radar
| What the market sees | What the engine sees | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Player | Pos | Age | Results | Sample | Board | Signal |
| Bobby Witt Jr.★ | SS | 26 | OPS .824 | 115 G | BREAKOUT | EV95 110.9 |
| Michael Wacha★ | P | 35 | ERA 3.49 | 162.2 IP | INDEX | — |
Left of the rule is the league’s own line on the player — his results, not our numbers, and never an input to any FVR signal. Right of it is what the engine measures.
The Card Pulse
What the collector market pays for this roster — movers first. A rising price is demand, not our read on the player. The full board →
What they pay
A market fact, not an engine read — and the club’s own row from the payroll board, computed once so the two pages cannot disagree.
- Cash payroll
- $144.7M
- Tax payroll
- $187.4M
- vs the tax line
- +$56.6Munder
- MP/MW
- $5.85M20 of 30 — 1 is cheapest
The five biggest commitments this season
- Seth Lugo$21.5M
- Michael Wacha$18.0M
- Bobby Witt Jr.$14.1M
- Salvador Perez$10.4M
- Carlos Estévez$10.1M
Cash is what the club pays out; the tax payroll is average annual values under the CBA’s own rulebook. Two answers to one question, never subtracted from one another. Figures from Cot’s, as of .
A second set of books
The numbers above are Cot’s. These are MLB Spreadsheets’s, and they answer two questions Cot’s cannot: what this payroll is made of, and where it has moved since Opening Day. We keep both sources rather than merging them, because the only thing that catches an error in one is the other.
Where the two sources disagree
- On cash payroll, Cot’s reads $144.7M and MLB Spreadsheets reads $149.6M — $4.8M apart, with 1 day between the two sheets.
Both are reputable and neither is wrong on its own terms. A gap on sheets a month apart is one source catching up; a gap on sheets a few days apart is a real disagreement about what a club is paying, and nobody prints those. We do not average them, and every figure on this site says which source it came from.
- Cash payroll
- $145.2M → $149.6M +$4.4M
- Tax payroll
- $182.8M → $187.2M +$4.4M
A move is not a verdict. Adding payroll is not virtue and cutting it is not vice, so nothing here is colored — the sign is the whole fact. And a move in dollars is not a payroll in dollars: we never compare one to the other.
Cash payroll
$149.6M
Tax payroll
$187.2M
The bar divides the $188.2M this club pays out. It takes $1.0M back in — adjustments and credits — which is what brings the tax payroll to $187.2M.
| Line | Cash | Tax |
|---|---|---|
| Players on the rosterSalary to the men actually playing, majors and minors. | $134.8M | $162.9M |
| Major-league salary | $133.0M | $161.2M |
| Minor-league salary | $1.8M | $1.8M |
| Players who are goneSalary buying this club no player at all. | $3.6M | $3.6M |
| Termination pay | $2.2M | $2.2M |
| Outright assignments | $1.4M | $1.4M |
| BonusesSigning bonuses charged against this season, buyouts of options declined, and bonuses already earned. | $11.1M | $1.4M |
| Signing bonuses (prorated) | $5.1M | — |
| Option buyouts | $4.5M | — |
| Performance and award bonuses | $1.4M | $1.4M |
| Cash in tradesMoney sent out with a player traded away, or taken in — a negative figure — to absorb someone else's contract. | $0.2M | $0.2M |
| League chargesThe same for all thirty clubs — no front office decided to spend this. | — | $20.1M |
| Benefits | — | $18.4M |
| Pre-arb bonus pool | — | $1.7M |
| Adjustments and creditsBookkeeping between the club and the league office. | — | −$1.0M |
| Total | $149.6M | $187.2M |
An em dash in one column and a figure in the other is not a missing number — it is the two rulebooks sorting the same money differently. A prorated signing bonus is in the cash figure and already inside the average annual value the tax is assessed on; league charges are the reverse. That is why the two totals differ, and why they are never subtracted from one another.
Composition and Opening Day figures from Ethan Hullihen (@EthanHullihen, MLBSpreadsheets), from a workbook whose oldest relevant sheet is dated . The workbook carries a different date on every tab, so this is the oldest of the ones we read rather than the file’s own. Every line above was checked to sum to the club’s stated total before it was printed.
On the record
- C0014 — Bobby Witt Jr. · open
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