Not too shabby, huh? Via FanGraphs (and via Awful Announcing), we find that the Astros will receive $77.93m in television revenue in 2013.
This also tells us that the Astros have the largest gap between television revenue in 2013 and 2013 payroll - a difference of $53.6m. They're one of three franchises whose television revenue exceeds their payroll. The Marlins are $10.6m in the black, while the Padres are $6.2m in the black.
Add the $5m per team dividend from MLBAM (the militant wing of MLB that enforces the blackout restrictions on MLB.tv and Extra Innings) and the Astros will have a surplus of almost $59m over their payroll, just in television revenue alone.
Once the new national television deal kicks in next season, the Astros have a projected television revenue of $106.5m.
Note: This takes into account the $60m the team is supposed to get from CSN Houston. If the network isn't on 60% of Houston-area televisions (much less the rest of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, etc.), I haven't been able to get a handle on how that affects what the Astros will actually receive from CSN Houston.
Payroll likely won't go up much next season, either. Using 2014 television revenues compared to 2013's payroll, the Astros will have a projected gap of almost $82.2m. But once that new deal kicks in, instead of three teams in the black there is a projected 12 teams whose television revenue will exceed their payroll expenditures.
Of course payroll is fluid, and we can't project what the Astros will do the rest of this year, much less their 2013 off-season moves, so you can count on this changing in some way. Either way, that's a lot of scratch for Jim Crane to ideally invest in the farm system/development, and more likely to pay down the debt of purchasing the team in the first place
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
