As for the comparison, I get that. I mentioned that in my original piece for 2018. So much work was put in to be as detailed as possible, you can’t really open Spotrac, Cotts, USA Today, or anywhere else and get an apples to apples comparison. Looking them over, there are positives and negatives to all of them. None of them include the whole 40-man roster, which is problematic. Spotrac includes draft picks, which aren’t included in any way for Luxury Tax purposes. USA Today is the only one that includes pro-rated buyouts as signing bonuses, but that seems to only have started this season. In total, it’s the really fine tuned details–Jose Contreras’ Retention Bonus, Year-end Incentives, Andrew McCutchen’s buyout credit, 91 days of Marte credit and not 80–that are being missed, and I can’t say I blame outlets for missing these things. I literally combed through two CBA’s, an official MLB rules book, Joint Drug Agreement, then day-by-day transactions logs from Fall 2011 to now compiling every single move the club made. You can’t really expect these sources to do that for 30 teams, but it also doesn’t mean they are exactly right either.

So can you open one of these sources and compare what I have? Technically not, but the numbers aren’t going to be materially off. It may seem weird to you and me, but when big companies are dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars, a couple hundred of thousands–or even millions–truly aren’t cared about.

If you have any questions about any of the detail anywhere, I’d be happy to offer any assistance or answer any question I can.