For those continuing to think that Liberty Media doesn’t spend enough on the Atlanta Braves, please read on.
Despite lower revenues in 2015 and 2016, the Atlanta Braves have embarked on a plan to completely re-energize the franchise from the ground up. Obviously, there’s been a lot of pain along the way, but we’re starting to see some lights at the end of this multi-year-long tunnel.
A substantial portion of the battery power for these lights has been supplied by 2015 and 2016 player acquisitions… and especially what we’ve witnessed in the past month.
We’ve covered the Rule 4 North American player draft and the International signings weekend – if you need a catch-up, then check out these reports here and here.
What we haven’t spent a lot of time on is the money spent by the organization to land these players.
Draft Hauling
In the draft’s 40 rounds, the Braves selected 42 players. 33 of them have signed with the club.
We don’t have public knowledge on the bonuses paid to all of these new draftees, but those we do have add up to $14,368,000.
Now the Braves bonus pool limit for 2016 was $13,224,100. The bonuses paid that were subject to this limitation added up to $13,883,000… just short of the 5% overage limit that allows Atlanta to merely pay a fine for that indiscretion.
This $658,900 overage is subject to a 75% fine, so when you add up the bonuses paid and the fine accrued, it comes to $14,862,175.
There are 15 bonuses that have not been disclosed or otherwise reported to the media. If I can assign a somewhat-arbitrary estimate of $10,000 each, then there’s another $150,000 that was spent.
Therefore, the 2016 draft has cost the Braves something in the immediate neighborhood of $15,000,000.
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