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St. Louis City SC may still be mired near the bottom of the Major League Soccer standings, but it is continuing to move up the league payroll list.

City SC, which had been at the bottom of the league in payroll at the start of 2024 before jumping to 21st after last summer’s spending spree, has moved up even higher, climbing to 13th in salaries, according to figures released Wednesday by the Major League Soccer Players Association. The club’s payroll of $18,106,711 is a 16.94% increase over the payroll at the end of 2024. That’s the sixth-largest increase in the league since the previous set of salaries was released in October.

The increase of $2,622,376 doesn’t reflect a major investment in one high-priced player but mostly comes from signing three players. Defender Timo Baumgartl was the highest-paid acquisition in the winter window at $643,333, followed by forward Xande Silva, who joined the team April 23 just as the transfer window closed, at $629,250, but they rank ninth and 10th on the team’s payroll list. Conrad Wallem is the next-highest-paid newcomer at $499,875.

Many returning players also had salary increases, including a $300,000 boost for Henry Kessler and a $250,000 jump for Cedric Teuchert.

The numbers released by the MLSPA reflect annual guaranteed compensation, which is a player’s base salary plus any guaranteed bonuses spread over the life of the contract.

Marcel Hartel, one of City SC’s two designated players, remains the club’s highest-paid player at $2,183,113, followed by Roman Burki at $1,707,469 and Eduard Lowen at $1,394,250. The team’s other designated player is Klauss at $1,370,284. The team’s highest-paid domestic player is Kessler at $1,333,333.

Hartel may be City SC’s highest-paid player, but he’s well down the list in the league, with 45 players making more money. Burki remains the league’s highest-paid goalkeeper, making almost $500,000 more than the next-highest-paid keeper, Pedro Gallese of Orlando at $1.249 million

The MLS salary cap for 2025 is $5,950,000, but every team exceeds that by $5 million or more. Teams are allowed to spend as much as they can on up to three players, the so-called designated players, who count against the cap at the league maximum salary of $743,750. That’s where the big spreads in team payrolls occur. Teams can also use allocation money provided by the league to buy a player’s salary down to the league’s maximum.

City SC’s payroll is nowhere close to the league’s biggest spender, Inter Miami, whose payroll is almost $47 million, headed by Lionel Messi’s league-high guaranteed compensation of $20.4 million, higher than City SC’s entire payroll. Miami has three of the eight highest-paid players in the league. The second-highest payroll belongs to Toronto at $34.1 million, which has the league’s second-highest-paid player, Lorenzo Insigne.

The league’s lowest payroll belongs to Montreal at just under $12 million, just below Philadelphia at $13.3 million. But the extremes of the league show how smart spending is more important than big spending. Inter Miami, though only 10th in the overall MLS standings, has advanced out of group play at the Club World Cup, while Philadelphia, with a payroll $34 million less, has the most points in the league. Meanwhile, big-spending Toronto and low-spending Montreal are 28th and 29th respectively in the overall standings. City SC is 27th.

Expansion team San Diego has the 10th-largest payroll in the league, having given the league’s fifth-largest contract to former Mexican national team forward Chucky Lozano.

City SC has two players making the league supplemental minimum salary of $80,622 — goalkeeper Christian Olivares and Michael Wentzel — while four players (Jayden Reid, Akil Watts, Tyson Pearce and Miguel Perez) got raises from at or near the supplemental minimum salary last season to the senior minimum of $104,000.