Is the Mariners' Offseason Spending Finished?

Yeah, probably.

I hate to say it, but yes, the Mariners are probably almost completely done spending this offseason.  They'll likely go to Spring Training with the current, flawed roster, or something very similar.

Why?  Didn't an enormous amount of salary come off the books this season??

Yes.  But they've spent a good deal of money already, and to sign even one more free agent - or take on large salary via trade (e.g. David Price or Matt Kemp) - would mean a significant departure from the recent past's budget/spending decisions.

Now, they definitely should be spending a lot more money than the recent past.  I'll get to that in a moment when I discuss their new cable TV deal.  (That topic will really get you fired up.)

But for now, let's look at the existing numbers.

The Mariners' current roster and payroll is above.  With this roster, you're looking at a range of $82-89mm in 2014 payroll, depending on how many incentive bonus are achieved. Let's split the difference and use round numbers - let's call it $85mm. 

(By the way, to make this table, I had to make some assumptions, but none of them move the needle more than a couple million dollars up or down.)

Okay, so the Mariners' 2014 payroll is $85mm, as it stands today.

How does this compare to historical numbers?  Funny you should ask.  At the bottom of this post is a table with the historical payrolls by year (source: link).

You can see that over the past five years, the team's average payroll was $90.8mm.  Over the past three years, it was $87.9mm on average.

So, the current payroll is already within 5% of the payroll of recent years.

Now, wanna play "what-if"?

The team's maximum payroll historically, was around $117mm.  If we went back to those levels, that means we'd have $32mm available right now ($117mm minus $85mm).  That very likely gets you Shin-Shoo Choo, plus you could afford to take on David Price's salary.  Those two players put you in playoff contention.  You're probably even the AL West favorite, at that point.

And here's what's really frustrating - the team should be spending $117mm in 2014.  Actually, they should be spending an even higher number.  Get ready to be annoyed.

The team's current cable TV deal pays them $450mm spread over 10 years.  In April 2013, the team announced they will soon have a new deal, beginning in 2014, and paying them around $2bn over 17 years, or around $118mm per year.

So the new TV deal is resulting in an increase in revenue of $72mm per season!  They could easily spend $32mm additional - less than half of that total - and make themselves the AL West favorite. 

They're either (a) not committed enough, (b) scared or (c) don't understand numbers.  In any case, they aren't qualified to be running the show, in my opinion.

Year	Payroll
2013	$84,199,643
2012	$84,928,100
2011	$94,623,191
2010	$91,143,333
2009	$98,904,166
2008	$117,666,482
2007	$106,460,833
2006	$87,959,833
2005	$87,754,334
2004	$81,515,834
2003	$86,959,167
2002	$80,282,668
2001	$74,720,833
2000	$59,200,000