This has come up a lot across the Gimenez discussion as he tacks on 19.4M in AAV across his 5 years despite his 10.6M salary this year.

His full breakdown is

• 2025 - 10.6M
• 2026 - 15.6M
• 2027 - 23.6M
• 2028 - 23.6M
• 2029 - 23.6M
• 2030 - 23M (team option, 2.5M buyout)

This is because for luxury tax purposes AAV is recalculated when a player is traded, so his earlier years of 1.6M and 5.5M can't be used to bring the AAV down.

In my opinion, AAV is only relevant in a couple of scenarios

1. When you are so far over the tax and are a repeat tax offender that your surcharge is very high. Think of the Mets, they are over the 3rd threshold and are a 3 time payer, that means for every dollar they add they are paying 110% of that in tax penalties. Teams that go in this category are Yankees, Mets, and Dodgers. Within this same space but not the same extreme are the Phillies and Braves who seem to sit 30-40M over the tax line

2. When you use the tax line as a soft cap and are unwilling to go over it, so you pay no taxes and don't get repeater amounts turned on. Cubs, Red Sox, Padres (when they aren't spending for push years)

The Jays don't fit either of these moulds, they don't spend enough to be a top tier spender, but they spend enough to be in the tax consistently (yes I know they've only done it once, but they would have in 2024 if the team was good and they are on track to being there in 2025).

So when looking at the Gimenez deal (its really hard to not naturally start his name with a J), look at the payroll value more than the AAV value as more that likely the Jays are operating from a total cost of payroll aspect rather than a we need to be at a certain total luxury tax value in order to meet budget.

We’ve selected the following players in the Minor League phase of today's Rule 5 Draft:

🔹RHP Richard Gallardo (Cubs) 🔹OF Jacob Wetzel (Cubs)

Additionally OF Garrett Spain was selected by the Brewers.

https://x.com/bluejays/status/1866939406998716708?s=46&t=ptDOBSbuMS0MMLvmnl0PRg