There are a lot of different ways to tabulate Major League Baseball payrolls.

Nobody in our corner of the baseball world does that more diligently than Ethan Hollahan.

And his total for payroll money that was actually spent, we'll get to that after the intro.

Good morning to you.

Friday morning, I'm Dan Kovachievich of D.K. Pittsburgh Sports.

This is Daily Shot of Pirates.

It 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. Ethan's total for the year, 2024, is $87,303,855.

Say it again, basically $87.3 million.

Now, before getting into what that means, I'm first going to point out and remind, if you're a long-time reader or listener,

that I have only ever utilized end of season payrolls because opening day payrolls,

which is the ones that most people curiously cite, don't mean a thing. All that is is the addition of all 26 salaries on the opening

day roster plus anybody who might be on the IAL or whatever. But rosters can and do change.

Sometimes those payrolls most often go up. Sometimes it's way, way up. In the Pirates case, it actually

ended up down about a half a million dollars. Without getting too technical, that was basically

within the Martin Perez trade, which the pirates adamantly insisted was made so that they could acquire

a coveted Latin American prospect.

But that's it.

It's 87.3.

What I have heard, and by this I mean, what I, me, myself have heard directly is that

this payroll figure is going to be a hundred

million next year. And while that might sound like, whoa, big doings for the Buccoes, it's really

not like at all. On one hand, I'll remind that the pirates hit $100 million,

...