Jessica Fletcher - contributing reporter
If your money is green, then you have $185M to spend. If your money is every color of the rainbow, looking at you Canada, then do your own conversions. After paying off officials to get rid of the former New Orleans Old Fashioneds owner, some of you might have a little less. Budget carefully or you might be left with millions upon millions upon millions unspent. Kind of like Atlanta, Mexico City, Washington DC, and Minnesota last season. Will anyone top last year's $129M spent by New York on their payroll or the $40M spent on prospects by Augusta? Here's a look at the payrolls pre-arbitration (listed by budget remaining - pre trades, FA signings, extensions). Lots of available money out there, but I'd expect quite a few teams to contribute some towards international signings once they start appearing. Surprised to see our Commish didn't spend $185M on Tim Horton's donuts and coffee, maybe he's finally learning.
In an interesting note, prospect spending appears to be a will and will not. Only 9 of our 32 teams have anything other than Min/Max prospect budgets. With 11 each going $20M and 11 going $6M. We'll track spending as the season progresses.