from Amazon
Friday, February 19, 2010
Salaries lost by team, 2002-2009
Fantastic stuff.
Dear Rob Neyer:
You have pull with the media. You know the media loves one-line sound bites. You love to highlight the great work from the young guys. Well, Jeff Zimmerman used the data of Josh Hermsmeyer to tell us that of the $18.6 billion in salaries paid out from 2002-09, that $2.9 billion went to guys on the disabled list, which is 15.5% of the payroll. Blare that out in a headline, please.
Thanks, Tom
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Jeff: can you split that up into number of days that exceeded 30 days on the DL for a stint? The reason is because insurance only pays on day #31 and later. The rest is considered short-term disability and is not covered, as best as I can tell.
***
Remember what I said about how teams insure contracts? Let’s presume that of the 15.5% lost to DL, only a quarter of that was picked up by insurance (because only days 31+ are covered). That’s about 4%. If I read the above article correctly, it seems that premiums cost about 5% of team payroll. Insurance companies profit from the difference.
So, prima facie, it seems that everything adds up pretty nice. In any case, it’s nice to finally know. Thanks Jeff and Josh.