Red Sox Payroll

It should be noted that the Boston Red Sox payroll for 2009 should be about $5 million less than 2008. According to Cott's Baseball Contracts 2008 payroll was $133,390,035 while this year it looks like the payroll will wind up about $128 million.

Some of the money that came off the books:

- Manny Ramirez $20 million
- Curt Schilling $8 million
- Coco Crisp $5 million
- Jason Varitek $5 million (2009 contract half of last year's $10 mil)
- Mike Timlin $3 million
- Alex Cora $2 million
- Sean Casey $800,000

Money that was added to payroll:

- Jason Bay $7.5 million
- Jonathan Papelbon $5.5 mil increase via arbitration
- John Smoltz $5.5 million
- Brad Penny $5 million
- Kevin Youkilis $3 million increase via new deal
- Takashi Saito $2.5 million
- Josh Bard $1.6 million
- Dustin Pedroia $1 mil increase over 2008 (big money comes in later years)
- Rocco Baldelli $500,000

The Red Sox have increased the depth of the starter position, put together one of the best bullpens in baseball and made the team younger overall than the 2008 edition - all while shedding some payroll. It is easy to point to the loss of Manny and Schilling as the reason the team is saving but instead of just pocketing that money the Red Sox used it wisely.