Astros increase their payroll by 93% in three years

The Astros payroll is rising, no more penny-pinching with McLane.

There was a running joke in 2013 that Alex Rodriguez had a higher salary than the Astros team payroll. It was correct, Rodriguez’s salary was $28 million that year while the Astros payroll was a little over $22 million via Steve the Ump. The Astros had stripped down the payroll by trading off any major league players as part of the process. GM Jeff Luhnow told fans to be patient as they went through a period of losing. The 2013 team was the last team to lose 100 games.

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The 2013 Astros were competing against teams that had $200 million dollar salaries. There was not much winning that season, but you started to see some of the current core of players start to rise. I take that back, only four players who played in 2013 remains with the team. They are Jose Altuve, Dallas Keuchel, Marwin Gonzalez, and Brad Peacock. You can say Max Stassi and Kevin Chapman, but they have yet to earn an extended stay with the team.

The rise!

The next year is when things started to go right for the Houston Astros. The 2014 season saw the rise of Keuchel and Collin McHugh, while George Springer finally made his highly anticipated debut. Luhnow started making some minor moves to rebuild this team through trades, free agency, and the farm system. According to Moury Brown, the final luxury tax payroll in 2014 was $64,319,960. Brown says the final 2013 payroll was actually $39,210,733, more than the $22 million that it started with.

Brown also reported that the Astros finished the 2016 season with a luxury tax payroll of $124,363,133. Most people believe that the actual team payroll was around $99 million at the end of 2016. Why the difference, the luxury tax salary could include minor league players or players who were on the team at some point.