If you look around at the various outlets, and there are a bunch of them now.

The track payroll, projected payroll, estimated arbitration, awards and that kind of thing,

you'll find not identical figures, but similar figures.

And those, as of the Gregory Soto signing, which became official yesterday, have your favorite

team projecting at the moment at 71 million. Good morning to you, good. Wednesday morning, I'm Dan Kovachovich of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports. This is Daily Shot of Pirates.

Presented by our good friends over at the North Shore Tavern. Comes your way bright and early. Every weekday, if you're into football and or hockey, I also offer daily shots of Steelers and Penguins in the same place that you found this.

The payroll this past season was $87 million, and that's the amount that's actually paid out.

That's the only number that ends up counting.

So 87 minus 71 is obviously $16 million, which is nowhere near any kind of comfort level to be doing some

unprecedented record breaking spend. And that lends some credibility to the reporting that I've

shared with you that the team is actually probably going to end up in the mid-90s.

And for anyone who still has a hard time with how this sort of thing works, meaning the reporting

thing, this is stuff that you hear and then you share it.

It's not my decision to make.

So if they change their minds, that's on them.

What I relay to you are the discussions that I hear from in there.

So let's say that it does go to, I don't know, 96.

And you've got a $25 million gap between where the team is now and where the team would be by the time it arrives to Bradenton.

Now, reiterate that there's some license that's been given to Ben Charington and that something

extraordinary comes along that would have an immediate and massive impact on the lineup that

he can go ahead all the way up to 110.

But that's only in that circumstance,

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