{"id":10401,"date":"2015-04-07T11:05:53","date_gmt":"2015-04-07T15:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=10401"},"modified":"2015-04-07T11:05:53","modified_gmt":"2015-04-07T15:05:53","slug":"opening-day-payroll-attendance-starters-other-cool-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=10401","title":{"rendered":"Opening Day Payroll, Attendance, Starters &#038; other cool stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_10407\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Harper-hairflip-openingday-2015-via-natsenquirer.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-10407\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10407\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Harper-hairflip-openingday-2015-via-natsenquirer-300x157.png\" alt=\"Harper's homer and subsequent hair flip was the highlight of the Nats opening day: photo via natsenquirer.com\" width=\"300\" height=\"157\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Harper-hairflip-openingday-2015-via-natsenquirer-300x157.png 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Harper-hairflip-openingday-2015-via-natsenquirer.png 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-10407\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Harper&#8217;s homer and subsequent hair flip was the highlight of the Nats opening day: photo via natsenquirer.com<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Every year I try to attend Nats Opening Day.\u00a0 Since giving up our season tickets, we&#8217;ve had to pay (handsomely) for the opportunity, and yesterday was no exception.\u00a0 For nostalga purposes, we bought into our old section (131) for the home opener and had a great time in the sun.\u00a0 Too bad <strong>Ian Desmond<\/strong> had money on the game and enabled three unearned runs to score.\u00a0 Oh and our first pinch hitter off the bench?\u00a0 The powerful and feared <strong>Matt den Dekker<\/strong>.\u00a0 So yeah, this team looks like it may struggle offensively for a bit.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s some fun stuff that I have been tracking for years inre opening day.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Opening Day Payroll; Nats<\/span><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Counting payroll is always a tough one.\u00a0 I have a <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/1MvL09Hm3d6mP2HWPlM1rC2DiqNaJ35o7W2-bfd6AJGE\/edit?usp=sharing\">payroll tracking worksheet<\/a> (now updated for our last three NRI additions and our opening day roster) where I have been trying to estimate the Nats payroll.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>My estimate: $163,314,559<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseballprospectus.com\/compensation\/cots\/national-league\/washington-nationals\/\">Cot&#8217;s estimate<\/a>: $162,014,559<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/sports\/mlb\/salaries\/2015\/team\/all\/\">USA Today&#8217;s estimate<\/a>: $174,510,977<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Why the discrepancies?\u00a0\u00a0 I can&#8217;t quite figure out how my and Cot&#8217;s estimates are off: I&#8217;m counting the $2M option year buyout to <strong>Adam LaRoche<\/strong>, while Cots does not.\u00a0 Taking that out, i&#8217;d still be off by about the same amount, only to the wrong side.\u00a0 My guess is that Cots is missing a min-salary guy somewhere.\u00a0 Meanwhile USA Today&#8217;s estimate is counting the entirety of <strong>Dan Uggla<\/strong>&#8216;s 2015 salary of $13.5M towards Washington&#8217;s total; If you took that away except for the MLB min portion Washington is responsible for you&#8217;d be at $161,518,497 as their estimate.\u00a0 USA Today&#8217;s numbers also don&#8217;t take into account the nearly $40 million dollars (net) that the Dodgers are paying players who no longer play for them; their payroll (per USA Today&#8217;s estimates) should really be nearer the $270M range.<\/p>\n<p>You know what they say; a few million here, a few million there, and soon you&#8217;re talking about real money.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Opening Day Payroll; MLB<\/span><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/1FZ6Sc485_PZBpCmY-ewXqU1xCVt-yT_-pk9Kiv2jKQE\/edit?usp=sharing\">quickie little XLS<\/a> where I have the opening day payroll for all 30 teams going back 5 years.\u00a0 Caveat; I usually depend on the USAToday salary database for these numbers, which have proved to have some issues (as discussed above).<\/p>\n<p>USAToday has the Dodgers at $230M, but that&#8217;s before another $40M of payments to former players.\u00a0 Cots has the Dodgers at $271M, a more accurate figure.\u00a0 That&#8217;s first place by a significant margin.\u00a0 In second place is the Yankees: $213M-$217M for a team that many feel will come in last last place.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m going to update this XLS for Cot&#8217;s figures, since USAToday&#8217;s are just so bad.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Opening day Nats park attendance<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mlb.mlb.com\/mlb\/gameday\/index.jsp?gid=2015_04_06_nynmlb_wasmlb_1&amp;mode=box\">Attendance for yesterday&#8217;s game<\/a> was announced at 42,295.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s some attendance milestones for the franchise:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Nats park capacity for 2015 seems to be 41,456, an increase of 40 seats from last year<\/li>\n<li>2015&#8217;s opening day crowd wasn&#8217;t even close to 2013&#8217;s: 45,274.\u00a0 That remains the regular season record attendance.<\/li>\n<li>All time record attendance?\u00a0 The ill-fated 2012 NLDS game 5: 45,966.<\/li>\n<li>The first game in franchise history; 2005 in RFK: 45,596, which stood until the NLDS record-setting game.<\/li>\n<li>The long-running regular season attendance record was the great Fathers day 2006 game in RFK against the Yankees: 45,157.\u00a0 That record stood for more than 6 years.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Opening Day Starters<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s my <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/15yaEAi8opbXTGG0w3cu4bmlH3r39lN9uze9mGZQtUo4\/edit?usp=sharing\">opening day starters worksheet<\/a> in Google docs.\u00a0 Thanks to some turnover at the top of some of these rotations, the two active leaders in Opening Day starts (<strong>CC Sabathia<\/strong> and <strong>Mark Buehrle<\/strong>) did not extend their leads of 11 and 9 respectively.\u00a0 The names of note for opening day starts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Leader in Opening day starts who extended their total in 2015: <strong>Felix Hernandez<\/strong>, making his 8th.<\/li>\n<li>Leader in consecutive opening day starts: also Hernandez, making his 7th total (he missed one earlier in his career).<\/li>\n<li>Four pitchers now have 7 opening day starts on their resume: <strong>Bartolo Colon<\/strong>, <strong>Jered Weaver<\/strong>, <strong>James Shields<\/strong> and <strong>Justin Verlander<\/strong>.\u00a0 Verlander&#8217;s streak of 7 consecutive starts was broken when he was supplanted by <strong>David Price<\/strong> for 2015.\u00a0 Of these four, it seems likely only that Shields will continue.<\/li>\n<li>12 pitchers made their first opening day start in 2015, including our own <strong>Max Scherzer<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>The most ever?\u00a0 <strong>Tom Seaver<\/strong> with 16.\u00a0 The most consecutive?\u00a0 <strong>Jack Morris<\/strong> with 14.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>cool stuff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every year I try to attend Nats Opening Day.\u00a0 Since giving up our season tickets, we&#8217;ve had to pay (handsomely) for the opportunity, and yesterday was no exception.\u00a0 For nostalga purposes, we bought into our old section (131) for the home opener and had a great time in the sun.\u00a0 Too bad Ian Desmond had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[184,343,164,47,1005,223,407,114,575,49,406,339,2751,1037,1130],"class_list":["post-10401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonnatsbaseball","category-natsgeneral","tag-adam-laroche","tag-bartolo-colon","tag-bryce-harper","tag-cc-sabathia","tag-dan-uggla","tag-david-price","tag-felix-hernandez","tag-ian-desmond","tag-jack-morris","tag-james-shields","tag-jered-weaver","tag-mark-buehrle","tag-matt-den-dekker","tag-max-scherzer","tag-tom-seaver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10401"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10410,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10401\/revisions\/10410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}