Dodgers added about $10 million in salary with their trade deadline deals

Now that the trade deadline is behind us, we can take stock on how the Dodgers additions and subtractions affected the roster, and more specifically, the payroll.

The Dodgers made four trades, adding five players, and also sent two players from the 40-man roster elsewhere. In all, they added roughly $10 million to the payroll.

The bulk of the salary added comes from the Lance Lynn/Joe Kelly deal with the White Sox. That trade was made on Friday afternoon, with the Dodgers responsible for salaries of Lynn and Kelly from Saturday through the end of the season. That’s 65 days of a 186-day season, so of Lynn’s $18.5-million salary, the Dodgers are paying about $6.47 million, and they are paying the $3.15 million left of Kelly’s $9-million deal.

But with Trayce Thompson and his $1.45 million going to Chicago, that’s $506,720 that the Dodgers are no longer paying.

Kiké Hernández is making $10 million this season, and with 68 days remaining in the season at the time of the trade was due $3.66 million more. The Red Sox sent $2.5 million to the Dodgers as part of the deal.

The trade of Noah Syndergaard for Amed Rosario was cash neutral for the Dodgers, with Los Angeles sending $1.87 million to Cleveland to offset the difference in salaries between the two players. For the Dodgers, they are functionally still paying $13 million for the entire season of Syndergaard’s roster spot, only now they gave Rosario, someone they will actually use.

There’s also the active roster spots these new players are taking to consider. Jonny DeLuca was placed on the injured list for Hernández, Yonny Hernández was optioned for Rosario, Tyson Miller was optioned for Lynn, and Phil Bickford was designated for assignment to make room for Kelly. Bickford was traded to the Mets on Tuesday for cash considerations. The move to activate Tuesday addition Ryan Yarbrough will come later his week.

Bickford is making $740,000 this season. Trading him Tuesday leaves 61 days for the Mets and not the Dodgers to pay, or about $242,688. DeLuca is making the minimum of $720,000 while in the majors and he’s still getting paid while on the injured list, but will likely be optioned once his IL stint is through. I’m unsure of the exact salaries of Hernández and Miller, but they are likely close to the minimum. So we’re basically looking at five nearly-minimum-salary spots the Dodgers are no longer paying (save for DeLuca’s time on the IL), which I estimated at $1.1 million.

Three players were designated for assignment as part of the trade with the White Sox. All three were traded for cash considerations on Tuesday — Bickford to the Mets, Justin Bruihl to the Rockies, and Eddys Leonard to the Tigers. Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman wouldn’t say specifically how much the Dodgers received in each trade, but said that the general range for such deals is between $1 and $100,000.

Starting the year, the Dodgers had an estimated CBT payroll of $247 million, and have since likely added at least $2-3 million just in the roster spots filling in for players placed on the injured list since the start of the season. David Peralta has already earned an extra $1 million for being on the active roster for 120 days, and will earn another $500,000 for 150 days (August 26).

All things considered in these trades, the Dodgers added about $10.1 million in salary. That puts them in the roughly $260-262 million range in CBT payroll for the season, which is over the second tax threshold. As a tax payer for the third year in a row, the Dodgers will pay a 50-percent tax on the first $20 million over the initial $233-million threshold, then 62.5 percent for the amount over $253 million.

Going over $273 million would result in a 95-percent tax rate, but also would drop the Dodgers’ first draft pick 10 spots in 2024, which they’ve done in each of the last two drafts.