Mets Payroll Update After Arbitration Settlements

In the past two days the Mets have settled six of their possible seven arbitration cases.  The deals are as follows:

Daniel Murphy: 1yr/$5.7 million
Bobby Parnell: 1yr/$3.7 million
Dillon Gee:  1yr/$3.625 million
Ike Davis: 1yr/$3.5 million
Eric Young Jr: 1yr/$1.85 million
Ruben Tejada: 1yr/$1.1 million

Those deals will join these already guaranteed deals for 2014:

David Wright: $20 million
Curtis Granderson: $13 million
Bartolo Colon: $9 million
Chris Young:  $7.25 million
Jon Niese: $5 million

From there we can only project at this point.  Lucas Duda is the lone remaining potential arbitration case that hasn't been settled.  Multiple outlets have projected that he will be awarded a $1.8 million dollar deal, so that is the number that we use in his case.  Assuming no other moves, the roster will be rounded out by thirteen other players who will be making at, or just above, league minimum.  Therefore we will use an estimated salary of $500K for those players.  Finally, there is a guaranteed $500K that will be paid to Matt Harvey despite the fact that he will spend the season on the disabled list.

That nets a current projected opening day payroll of just $82.525 million dollars.

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Its worth noting that this is an opening day projection and only includes the guaranteed money that the Mets will spend this season.  Other projection, namely that of ESPN's Adam Rubin, includes additional money that the Mets will pay to other players upon injuries and other issues to this starting twenty-five.  Rubin uses a number of $4.25 million to estimate this additional payroll (which includes the $500K I've already allotted to Matt Harvey.  If I were to include the remaining $3.75 million from that estimation, the overall adjusted payroll for the New York Mets in 2014 would be $86.275 million.  This still represents a nearly $5 million dollar decrease from the adjust payroll of just under $91 million in 2013.