Cincinnati Reds' Days as a Bargain About to End

Every good baseball team needs a few breaks along the way to become a great team, one that can win a pennant.

And the Cincinnati Reds certainly got their share of good luck during the 2010 season, in which the team won the National League Central Division: Almost every player on the roster had a better year than the experts had predicted. Some by huge margins.

Joey Votto as Most Valuable Player? Drew Stubbs as a 20-home run, 20-steals guy? Travis Wood as the go-to lefthanded starter? The oft-injured Scott Rolen as an automatic, every day player? Jonny Gomes as ... wait, who the heck had even heard of Jonny Gomes?

The Reds 2010 payroll was near the bottom in Major League Baseball. At about $70 million, the Reds spend a third as much as the New York Yankees, who have a $206 million payroll.

So let’s live the dream, Cincinnati, because dreams never last.

Thanks to all of these remarkable performances, the Reds players are now worth a combined $180 million on the open market, according to the baseball statistical website Fangraphs.com.

Fangraphs runs formulas based on average player salaries, recent performance, age and position to come up with a value.

Votto is now worth about $30 million a year. His salary now? $550,000. Jay Bruce is paid $440,000. He’s worth $15.6 million. Stubbs is paid the league minimum of $400,000. He’d fetch $10.7 million a year.

Bruce, Gomes ,Votto and pitchers Johnny Cueto and Edinson Volquez are all eligible for arbitration in the offseason. They won’t get nearly what they could as free agents, but their pay will skyrocket.

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