The Yankees spend the most money every year and this year they outspent the Twins 3 to 1. It’s not shocking that they are better than the Twins. In fact, the surprising thing is that they don’t win more often. Spending big bucks is no guarantee of post-season success or even success during the regular season (ask the Cubs, Mets and Tigers), but it certainly increases your chances. Of the teams in the top 10 payrolls, 5 made the playoffs. Of the teams in the bottom 10 only one team, the Twins, made the playoffs. Basically, the only way a team in the lower half of payrolls makes the playoffs and does well is a kind of Perfect Storm where everything comes together. The Devil Rays last year were an example of this. A lot of young, low salaried players all coming together with a couple of veterans and everything “clicking”. But as this year’s Rays team shows, it’s a flash in the pan, one shot only situation. The high payroll teams can shrug off a bad signing that would cripple other teams. For example, the Yankees signed Carl Pavano to a 4 year $40 million contract. Mr. Pavano was beset by a host of injuries during his time with the Yankees and only started 26 games total in those 4 years (a starting pitcher who stays healthy will start around 35 games per year). For the Yankees, $10 million per year is only slightly above their average player salary of around $7 million per year. For teams in the bottom half of payrolls $10 million is a sizable investment. The Twins, for example, have an average salary this year of about $2.5 million and only have 3 players that make over $10 million per year.
So what happens is that the best players in the league from all 30 teams eventually become free agents and migrate to the high payroll teams where they will make more money and have a better chance to go to the playoffs every year. For the most part, the best free agents will wind up in New York, Los Angeles or Chicago. Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia and Houston also spend over $100 million per year and spend large sums on free agents most years. The top 10 payroll teams spent a combined $1.2 billion on payroll this year. The other 20 teams spent $1.4 billion. It’s not hard to see that the “haves” spend almost twice as much as the “have-nots”, $120 million average per team vs. $70 million per team.
I love baseball, but the disparity between the haves and the have-nots is pretty bad and getting worse.