Where Does Minnesota Twins Payroll Actually Stand Right Now?

On X/Twitter last week, BrooksGate, a popular account that posts a lot of interesting tidbits and stats of questionable legitimacy, tweeted a graphic detailing year-over-year changes between the payrolls of MLB teams, comparing teams’ current payrolls to last year’s. Strikingly, the graphic showed that the Minnesota Twins have cut their payroll this offseason by nearly $27 million from where it stood in 2024.

Among the hundreds of people who responded to the post was Jon Becker of FanGraphs, who pointed out that Spotrac, the source of the figures, does not factor in pre-arbitration salaries (i.e., minimum-salary players who fill out the rest of the roster), only counting the guaranteed salaries.

Our own Matthew Trueblood also pointed out that the two sets of numbers described different types of data: competitive balance tax totals (CBT; which include penalties for spending above certain thresholds) and 40-man roster payroll, making a comparison foolish. Apples and oranges.

Coincidentally, a few hours before these tweets, the Twins Daily Slack channel was trying to answer exactly where the Twins’ payroll figure stood after the team’s 11 arbitration settlements. It’s a pretty important figure for the discussion and narratives this offseason. A difference of a couple of million dollars might be the difference between the Twins adding any outside talent or … no outside talent at all by edict of ownership. And it seems every source that lists a payroll total gives a different number.

As a reminder, here’s the information we’ve been working with this offseason. After slashing payroll ahead of the 2024 season for reasons you might personally find justifiable or egregious, depending on your persuasion, Minnesota's Opening Day payroll was somewhere around $130 million. After the 2024 season, one of the first bits of news about the 2025 season was that the team would not be further reducing payroll.

So we’ve collectively, as a fanbase, been using $130 million as our rough estimate for what payroll will be next year. The problem for the Twins is that their estimated Opening Day payroll for 2025 was somewhere between $130 and $140 million on the day the season ended. Although they shed the salaries of players like Max Kepler and Carlos Santana, veterans Pablo Lopez, Chris Paddack, Carlos Correa, and Randy Dobnak were each due guaranteed raises in their contracts, and 13 other Twins were due raises in arbitration.

There has never been a declarative statement as to what payroll figure the team is looking for, and last week, newly minted General Manager Jeremy Zoll indicated that the Twins do not need to shed salary before Opening Day. However, early-offseason suspicions and subsequent inactivity (I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but the Twins haven’t added an MLB player this offseason) have converged to suggest that they don’t have much room to work with.

Now, “they don’t have much room to work with” might be enough for some people, but the most pedantic among us crave a little bit more information. There are estimates of where the Twins payroll sits, which helps us daydream clearer if we know the official number. However, as mentioned, there are several different sources of this information, each providing a slightly different number — sometimes within the same source.

So why do these numbers vary from site to site? Well, different people find different calculations valuable and meaningful. For example, competitive balance tax totals are important to some teams but meaningless for a team like the Twins. They don’t spend enough to care about those totals. It’s not worthwhile for a Twins fan to check those.

Let’s start with Spotrac, preferred by many for their easy-to-use and aesthetically pleasing user interface. They provide two figures: current payroll allocations ($127,486,190) and projected total allocations ($137,766,190). Neither figure is what we’d typically call an Opening Day payroll.

To calculate current payroll allocations, Spotrac first adds up the guaranteed contracts for players signed through at least 2025 (remember this includes Randy Dobnak). This is a total of 18 players now that the Twins have settled with their arbitration-eligible players. They also add in signing bonuses, which total about $2 million owed to Correa, Buxton, and Lopez. These bonuses are given toward the start of the contract (i.e., they’ve already been paid and aren’t a money factor this year) but on these books they are evenly spread across the whole contract for accounting purposes (mostly for CBT purposes, so it really doesn’t matter for the Twins). They also include contract buyouts in this figure, which is $450,000 to Kyle Farmer and Jay Jackson this year, but buyout money is typically counted the year the contract is signed, so that money also shouldn’t count toward next year’s payroll. You can run over to the Twins Daily payroll blueprint tool to see the slight variation after excluding signing bonuses and buyouts.

Do you see what I mean when I say this is complicated and not necessarily accurate? The buyout money and signing bonuses are counted in this total, but that’s not a factor in practice. Do you know what this number doesn’t include, though? The rest of the guys on the roster. This estimate accounts for the 18 guaranteed-salary players, but there are 26 players on a team. And one of those 18 is Randy Dobnak, so in reality the Twins would fill out the roster with nine additional minimum-salary players (approximately $800,000 to each). Those nine are not represented in the current payroll allocations figure.

If you think that the nine minimum salaried players explains the difference between current and projected payroll allocations, close, but no cigar. The difference between those two numbers is the equivalent of 12.85 minimum-salary players — about four more than you’d need to fill out a roster. Where do those guys come from? Well, players get injured. And when a player is on the injured list, he still gets paid. So if Correa misses a week, he continues to get paid, and a minor leaguer gets called up. Let’s just say it’s Michael Helman. If Correa misses 10 days, the Twins pay both his salary and Helman’s prorated minimum contract salary (about $47,000 for ten days). Those add up during the season, especially for a team as injury-prone as Minnesota. Spotrac assumes they’ll pay the equivalent of about four players’ worth of salary to players filling in for injuries.

And that’s where they get the larger $137,766,190 projected total allocations number. It includes the guaranteed money, the rest of the roster, a guess for how much time is lost to injury, and bonuses or buyouts that don’t actually count for this season’s total. It’s a mess.

Cot’s Contracts similarly projects year-end payroll. Their calculation uses the equivalent of seven additional players from the minors as injury replacements over the course of a year (i.e., an average of seven players on the injured list throughout the season), raising that total money a bit higher. Cot’s, though, also includes estimates for how much players on the 40-man roster will make while playing in the minors, totaling $2,604,000 in additional pay to account for. Cot’s also includes the signing bonuses (which were paid at least a year ago) in their year-end payroll projection total ($141,970,190).

Unlike Spotrac, Cot’s does include an Opening Day payroll figure, which comes in at $134,011,190. This number also starts with the guaranteed contracts, but it actually includes the rest of the roster, fixing that problem. The nine minimum-salary players make up most of the $7,959,000 difference here. However, it still also includes the already-paid signing bonuses, which isn’t helpful. Speaking of unhelpful, Cot’s also has a CBT projection that’s of no use to the Twins, at least until they double their payroll. Moving on!

Finally, let’s look at the figures that FanGraphs’ RosterResource's payroll figure: Estimated 2025 Payroll. For the Twins, that number is $140,181,190, not far removed from Cot’s. Two factors can explain the difference. First, FanGraphs, like Spotrac, includes buyouts, so $450,000 for Farmer and Jackson. Second, they factor in a little less time lost to injury—but still around seven players’ worth of time. There’s also CBT stuff at the bottom of the page, but once again that doesn’t matter for the Twins. Don’t look there. It’s not worth anyone’s time.

So that was a lot. What do we do with this? Well, first, it’s important to recognize that these books are wonky. There’s more than one way to skin a cat here, and we’re not even sure which number Twins decision-makers use as their own guide. There’s a difference between what payroll is on Opening Day and what it is at the end of the year, and that’s before considering midseason subtractions or additions via trade, waiver claim, or free agency.

Given the Twins’ current situation, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Opening Day payroll is what matters most right now. Rumors continue to swirl around a potential sale, and even if these hypothetical new owners, whoever they may be, don’t come down from the heavens ready to open up the pocketbook, that’s not really the current owners’ concern. If the sale is as imminent as we expect, allegedly before Opening Day by some rosy estimates, then Opening Day payroll is what we probably care about.

At the very least, we owe it to each other to discuss the team’s payroll on equal terms. If one person cites Spotrac’s $127,486,190 current payroll allocations and another cites Cot’s $141,970,190 year-end projection, you’re not having the same conversation. At 127 anyone would agree there’s immediate room to add at least a little something. At 142 no one is getting their hopes up. The true number that matters here probably lies somewhere in the middle, but closer to 130 than 140.

Again, we still don’t know on the outside what the magic limit is, but it’s worthwhile to talk about the same numbers as we argue with each other about what moves should be made.