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Measuring the 2011 financial winners and losers in MLB

Major League BaseballHow well did MLB teams spend their money this season? Here’s a look at how well or how poorly teams did with their payrolls this season in an attempt to translate dollars into wins — and why the Houston Astros, even with a low payroll, overpaid their players this season.

With the 2011 season completed, it’s time to look at how well MLB did in translating payroll to win. Despite what many fans think, there’s not necessarily a correlation between payroll and winning: as any Chicago Cubs fans knows, spending money doesn’t guarantee a winning percentage. The more important measure is how efficiently a team managed their resources: coaxing the most wins for the least amount of money.

A very crude measure of this is cost per win. The formula is simple: divide the payroll by the number of victories. The payroll information comes from USA Today; playoff teams are in bold.

  TEAM PAYROLL WINS COST/WIN
1 Tampa Bay Rays 41,053,571 91 451,138
2 Kansas City Royals 36,126,000 71 508,817
3 Arizona Diamondbacks 53,639,833 94 570,637
4 Cleveland Indians 49,190,566 80 614,882
5 Pittsburgh Pirates 45,047,000 72 625,653
6 San Diego Padres 45,869,140 71 646,044
7 Toronto Blue Jays 62,567,800 81 772,442
8 Florida Marlins 56,944,000 72 790,889
9 Washington Nationals 63,856,928 80 798,212
10 Milwaukee Brewers 85,497,333 96 890,597
11 Oakland Athletics 66,536,500 74 899,142
12 Cincinnati Reds 75,947,134 79 961,356
13 Texas Rangers 92,299,264 96 961,451
14 Atlanta Braves 87,002,692 89 977,558
15 Detroit Tigers 105,700,231 95 1,112,634
16 St. Louis Cardinals 105,433,572 90 1,171,484
17 Colorado Rockies 88,148,071 73 1,207,508
18 Baltimore Orioles 85,394,938 69 1,237,608
19 Houston Astros 70,694,000 56 1,262,393
20 Los Angeles Dodgers 104,188,999 82 1,270,598
21 Seattle Mariners 86,524,600 67 1,291,412
22 San Francisco Giants 118,198,333 86 1,374,399
23 New York Mets 118,847,309 77 1,543,472
24 Los Angeles Angels 138,543,166 86 1,610,967
25 Chicago White Sox 127,789,000 79 1,617,582
26 Philadelphia Phillies 172,976,379 102 1,695,847
27 Chicago Cubs 125,047,329 72 1,736,768
28 Minnesota Twins 112,737,000 63 1,789,476
29 Boston Red Sox 161,762,475 90 1,797,361
30 New York Yankees 202,689,028 97 2,089,578

No surprise that Tampa Bay would top this list; the team is notable for combining a low payroll with a winning record, thanks to a shrewd front office, a posse of young stars (Evan Longoria, David Price) and the managerial skill of Joe Maddon. And no surprise that both Arizona and Milwaukee would rank in the top 10: both teams are built around youth and inexpensive pitching. It’s also no surprise that the Yankees and the Phillies would be in the top five: both teams invested heavily in payroll and compiled the most wins in baseball this season.

As a measure of success and failure, though, this ranking is less useful than you’d think. If you think about it, the ranking above is also a measure of market size, with smaller-market teams spending less than big-market teams. Here’s your tautology for the day: Small-market teams spend less because they have less to spend. Large-market teams with robust revenue resources are always going to spend more because they can — or, more importantly, because their fans expect them to spend big bucks on players. We saw that in Minnesota, where the Twins spent a lot of money on Tsuyoshi Nishioka; in recent Metrodome days the Twins front office simply didn’t the resources to sign a big-buck free agent. The positioning for next season already started: witness the large number of Chicago Cubs fans assuming Tom Ricketts will spend huge money to sign both Prince Fielder and Albert Pujols.

So what makes for a more useful measure? The late Doug Pappas put together a formula to measure Marginal Dollars per Marginal Win. The assumption is that a terrible team in baseball, made up entirely of minimum-wage players, would still manage to win a third of their games, so the true measure of success is how efficiently a team spent to procure wins past that minimum. In short, a successful team would spend the fewest marginal dollars to procure the most marginal wins; conversely, an unsuccessful team would overspend to procure a relatively few number of wins. They wasted their money.

We’ve applied this formula to this year’s teams, using the same payroll numbers from USA Today. In the following table, we have winning percentages, MW (marginal wins: winning percentage * .3), MP (marginal payroll; the amount a team spends beyond the MLB minimum of $414,000 per player on a 25-man roster), and CPMW (cost per marginal win: marginal payroll divided by marginal wins). In this ranking, the poorest-performing teams are at the top; the better-performing teams are at the bottom.

  Team Payroll Win % MW MP CPMW
1 Houston Astros 70,694,000 0.346 7.5 60,344,000 8,097,692
2 Minnesota Twins 112,737,000 0.389 14.4 102,387,000 7,101,332
3 Chicago Cubs 125,047,329 0.438 22.4 114,697,329 5,130,494
4 Seattle Mariners 86,524,600 0.414 18.5 76,174,600 4,124,681
5 New York Yankees 202,689,028 0.599 48.4 192,339,028 3,970,829
6 Chicago White Sox 127,789,000 0.488 30.5 117,439,000 3,856,022
7 New York Mets 118,847,309 0.475 28.4 108,497,309 3,827,066
8 Baltimore Orioles 85,394,938 0.426 20.4 75,044,938 3,676,511
9 Boston Red Sox 161,762,475 0.556 41.5 151,412,475 3,650,957
10 Los Angeles Angels 138,543,166 0.531 37.4 128,193,166 3,425,610
11 Colorado Rockies 88,148,071 0.451 24.5 77,798,071 3,180,364
12 Philadelphia Phillies 172,976,379 0.630 53.5 162,626,379 3,042,020
13 San Francisco Giants 118,198,333 0.531 37.4 107,848,333 2,881,950
14 Los Angeles Dodgers 104,188,999 0.509 33.9 93,838,999 2,771,546
15 St. Louis Cardinals 105,433,572 0.556 41.5 95,083,572 2,292,717
16 Oakland Athletics 66,536,500 0.457 25.4 56,186,500 2,209,110
17 Cincinnati Reds 75,947,134 0.488 30.5 65,597,134 2,153,833
18 Detroit Tigers 105,700,231 0.586 46.3 95,350,231 2,057,978
19 Florida Marlins 56,944,000 0.444 23.3 46,594,000 1,997,342
20 Atlanta Braves 87,002,692 0.549 40.3 76,652,692 1,900,260
21 Texas Rangers 92,299,264 0.593 47.5 81,949,264 1,726,483
22 Washington Nationals 63,856,928 0.497 31.9 53,506,928 1,676,597
23 Toronto Blue Jays 62,567,800 0.500 32.4 52,217,800 1,611,660
24 San Diego Padres 45,869,140 0.438 22.4 35,519,140 1,588,797
25 Milwaukee Brewers 85,497,333 0.593 47.5 75,147,333 1,583,182
26 Pittsburgh Pirates 45,047,000 0.444 23.3 34,697,000 1,487,354
27 Cleveland Indians 49,190,566 0.494 31.4 38,840,566 1,235,859
28 Kansas City Royals 36,126,000 0.438 22.4 25,776,000 1,152,979
29 Arizona Diamondbacks 53,639,833 0.580 45.4 43,289,833 954,361
30 Tampa Bay Rays 41,053,571 0.562 42.4 30,703,571 723,390

There’s a general correlation between the rankings in each measure, but we’d argue that results are considerably more refined in the second, particularly when it comes to futile spending. No surprise Tampa Bay, Arizona and Milwaukee would be near the bottom: they’re low-payroll teams who were winners this season. And although Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Kansas City weren’t above .500 this season, you could argue they spent their money well, not overpaying for wins while still building a solid platform for the future.

It also places the Philadelphia Phillies in an interesting position: still in the top half of MLB teams in buying wins, but not excessively so, and certainly within what you’d expect for a large-market team. The Phillies raised a lot of eyebrows when they invested even more in payroll this season after signing Cliff Lee to a contract, but the increased payroll seems to have paid off with a season-long set of sellouts at Citizens Bank Park and a playoff appearance.

More telling, however: this list pretty clearly shows the teams that ended up spending inefficiently. Houston spent a whole lot of money to gain just seven wins above the baseline, while Minnesota suffered through a miserable season redeemed by three-million fans going through the turnstiles of Target Field. It also shows that a low payroll doesn’t equal success: Houston and Seattle both trimmed payroll and still managed to spend a lot per marginal win. Baltimore, too, went cheap and still paid a lot per marginal win. So while big spending doesn’t automatically success, lower payroll don’t automatically mean success, either.

Obviously there are limits to this kind of analysis. Payroll is a crude measure; just as important, we’d argue, is revenue, but MLB teams zealously guard revenue data, so we can’t throw it into the equation. In general, a large-market team will generate more revenue than a small-market team — duh! — but there are many shades between a New York Yankees and a Kansas City Royals when it comes to revenues, and there’s some fluidity in where a team ranks in revenue production among its peers (i.e., Minnesota going up the last two years and the Dodgers going down the last two years). Of course, that’s a whole other can of worms.

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