What do you think it might be? He makes a pretty compelling case that it's *something* (e.g. they have no incentive to artificially inflate that number, just the opposite), and his educated guess makes some sense to me. Add a dozen well paid people, a few more coaches/instructors, whatever they're paying Bloomberg for that MLB system, fitting all the minor league parks for live video and maintaining that infrastructure, the annual commitments for the Dominican academy and Mesa renovation, etc. That might not be $40 million but it's probably a chunk of change. The other potential contributor that makes sense to me is IFA and/or draft spending. Those player salary values look pretty light to my eyes, to the point where it seems almost impossible that they're including bonuses(and penalties) to Top 10 picks and IFA. That wouldn't be 40 million either(IFA isn't so big and the Cubs weren't draft cheapskates before), but I could see a combo of that and front office scaffolding being the biggest part of that increase. The "combination" explanation seems a lot more plausible.