How much money could Phillies players forfeit for not being vaccinated against COVID-19?
Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski told reporters in St. Louis that J.T. Realmuto, Alec Bohm, Aaron Nola and Kyle Gibson will not travel to Toronto for the upcoming series against the Blue Jays. All four players are not vaccinated against COVID-19 and are not permitted to cross the Canadian border. (A similar law applies to non-U.S. citizens looking to enter the United States.)
With the exception of Nola, all three players will be replaced on the roster at some point in the next few days. Per Matt Gelb of The Athletic, Gibson is eligible to be replaced on Wednesday. The Phillies are unable to replace Nola’s spot on the roster because he is scheduled to pitch Monday.
All four players will forfeit pay and service time, per a March agreement between MLB and the MLB Players Association.
For Realmuto, Nola and Gibson, the service time aspect won’t affect them in the short term because all three players have reached six years of service and will be eligible for free agency once their contracts are up. The only unlikely scenario where the lack of service time will affect them is if they are only a few days short of reaching 10 year of service time once their careers are over. In that case, a decision to not get vaccinated could cost them a fully-funded pension.
Bohm, who is not yet eligible for salary arbitration, could be impacted by missing two days of service time. He is relatively close, but unlikely to be in next year’s Super Two arbitration eligibility class even if he did travel with the team to Toronto. If Bohm was Super Two eligible, he could go from making a bit more than the $700,000 league minimum to seven figures in 2023.
All four players are leaving a ton of money on the table by not traveling to Canada. Some will lose more than others. Here’s an estimate (before taxes) on how much money each player will lose. The payroll salary figures are from FanGraphs’ Roster Resource. The lockout trimmed the length of the regular season from 187 to 182 days. Players are paid on a per day basis, not per game. Note that these are estimates and not exact figures.
| Player | 2022 Payroll Salary | Salary Lost |
| J.T. Realmuto | $23,875,000 | $262,362.64 |
| Aaron Nola | $15,500,000 | $170,329.67 |
| Kyle Gibson | $7,666,667 | $84,249.09 |
| Alec Bohm | $715,000 | $7,857.14 |
| TOTAL | $524,798.54 |
It’s unclear if the absence of Realmuto, Nola and Gibson in particular could slightly trim the Phillies’ luxury tax bill. Luxury tax payroll is calculated using the average annual value of each contract, which differs from payroll salary. For example, Nola was scheduled to make $15,500,000 this season, but his AAV, the number that counts towards the luxury tax, is $11,250,000. The Phillies still have to pay players who were added to the roster. Most of those players, such as Rafael Marchan, are making close to the league minimum.
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