[blumj]

FYI, I noticed something recently that causes me to wonder if the figures for total payroll that a lot of people have been using lately to make these comparisons are really TOTAL payroll or if they are opening day payroll. Because it's very obvious to me that the figure consistently being cited as the Red Sox 2009 total payroll is not even close. And the only reason it's so obvious is because the Red Sox happened to hand out an unusually large number of incentive laden contracts with minimal guaranteed money last offseason and made several trades that added a significant amount of payroll during 2009, and none of it is reflected in the "total" being used, it's the same amount from opening day.