Dodgers 2021 opening day payroll is $237 million

The Dodgers open defense of their World Series championship with the highest payroll in Major League Baseball. The 2021 payroll, counting all salaries and bonuses paid this year, checks in at $237 million on opening day.

Trevor Bauer was the biggest addition of the offseason, signing a three-year, $102 million contract, adding the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner to a Dodgers rotation that in 2020 ranked second in the majors in ERA (3.29), eighth in FIP (4.11), and ninth in K-BB% (17 percent). Bauer’s contract included a $10 million signing bonus and a $28 million first-year salary, so for our purposes he counts as $38 million for 2021. Justin Turner also returned to Los Angeles on a two-year, $34 million contract, of which $2 million of his signing bonus is paid this year in addition to his $8 million salary, putting his 2021 payroll number at $10 million.

This marks the Dodgers’ highest opening day payroll since tipping the financial scales at $266.1 million in 2015, and their fourth-highest ever, which includes the years well before I started tracking the team’s payroll in 2010.

Side note: holy cow, 2010? That’s a very long time.

For competitive balance tax purposes, with counts average annual value of multi-year contracts, the Dodgers payroll for 2021 is estimated at $256.9 million. That is past the third and highest threshold set by MLB, which will come with a penalty of $10.4 million plus 62.5 percent of anything above $250 million plus their first draft pick in 2022 dropping 10 spots.

“We run our payroll, looking at it every three, four, or five years, not at any one moment in time,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said on February 11.

“The moves and things we’ve done the last three years gave us a little more flexibility right now,” Friedman added the next week, after re-signing third baseman Justin Turner. “We know there are some added costs associated with it, which is not ideal, and it is a cost. But we feel like with where we are and the team we have, the reward outweighs that.”

The Dodgers haven’t paid a competitive balance tax since 2017.

The 2021 payroll for the Dodgers is a 7-percent increase over what their 2020 number would have been in a normal year.

Counting full-season salaries last year for everyone, including David Price, who opted out of the 2020 season, plus deferred payment to Scott Kazmir and the non-40-man salary of pitcher Yaisel Sierra, the Dodgers’ opening day payroll last year would have been about $221.6 million. But with Price opting out, and salaries pro-rated to a 60-game season, the total for the Dodgers active roster and injured list on opening day 2020 was just over $79 million.

This year’s payroll includes Sierra, who gets $7.5 million in the final year of a six-year, $30 million contract, as well as the final $563,500 sent to Minnesota to complete last year’s trade of Kenta Maeda. It also includes the first season of Mookie Betts’ 12-year, $365 million contract. His salary for 2021 is $17.5 million, but $8 million of that is deferred, so this year Betts receives $9.5 million plus $5 million of his $65 million signing bonus, for a total of $14.5 million this year. By comparison, Betts’ competitive balance tax payroll is just over $25.55 million, the average annual value of his contract after factoring in deferrals.

The Dodgers’ $218 million in payroll on their opening day active roster is their highest ever, surpassing the previous high mark of $195.9 million in 2015. The nearly $11 million on the injured list is their lowest since 2010.