Reds payroll commitments

One project that I've been fiddling with 20 minutes at a time over the past few weeks is an accounting for the Reds' payroll commitments moving forward. To this end, I've created a google spreadsheet that I will (try to) keep updated and current whenever the Reds make a transaction.

Here's a figure showing the team's payroll commitments as of now (note: unfortunately, the list of player names reads in the opposite direction of bars on the graph. So, Affeldt's the bottom blue bar in 2008, Arroyo's the red bar on top of the blue bar, etc. That's what I get for using google spreadsheet, I guess):
The Reds have already committed ~$50 million toward the 2009 season, and ~$37 million toward the 2010 season. That's not to say that this is inappropriate; no analysis here, I'm just reporting the numbers. :)

Keep in mind that this spreadsheet only includes commitments. That means that future one-year contracts, like automatic renewals or future arbitration years, are not accounted for in this spreadsheet. This is why total team payroll commitments decline over time--I am not forecasting that payroll will decline, I'm just trying to track what the team has actually committed to date via contracts. Always assume that the actual team salary will be greater than what I report!

Also, in the case of option years, I'm just listing the team buyout of the option, as that's what's actually been committed to the player. I'll adjust this if/when the Reds pick up people's options.

In the case of Phillips' and Belisle's '08 salaries, I've just marked down what the Reds offered, as that's the minimum that they will pay. In the event that Phillips or Belisle win--or that they negotiate a settlement, I will, of course, update the spreadsheet. I'll also update things when the Reds start renewing contracts for all of their players with less than 3 years service time this spring.

On the spreadsheet, I've noted the rate at which I think players will be moving up the service time hierarchy. Let me know if you see any errors, as I'm ballparking this progression mostly just on elapsed time since a player's MLB debut rather than actual service time (though I've made adjustments here and there).

Credit to DMZ of the U.S.S Mariner for the graph idea.