from Amazon
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Competing On Payroll
Assume that each extra 2 million$ spent adds 1 expected win to your team. This is how many wins each team is expected to win, given their opening day 2006 payroll:
140 New York Yankees
102 Boston Red Sox
94 Los Angeles Angels
94 Chicago White Sox
93 New York Mets
91 Los Angeles Dodgers
89 Chicago Cubs
88 Houston Astros
87 Atlanta Braves
87 San Francisco Giants
87 St. Louis Cardinals
86 Philadelphia Phillies
86 Seattle Mariners
84 Detroit Tigers
79 Baltimore Orioles
78 Toronto Blue Jays
77 San Diego Padres
76 Texas Rangers
74 Minnesota Twins
74 Washington Nationals
73 Oakland Athletics
73 Cincinnati Reds
72 Arizona Diamondbacks
71 Milwaukee Brewers
70 Cleveland Indians
66 Kansas City Royals
66 Pittsburgh Pirates
63 Colorado Rockies
60 Tampa Bay Devil Rays
50 Florida Marlins
As you can see, the Yankees overspend tremendously. We know they won’t win 140 games, but they give themselves such a huge margin of error, that they can’t not win. The Redsox however are paying players hoping to average 102 wins. They are likely overpaying as well. At the bottom, the Marlins are paying for only 50 wins, and anything above that is a bonus.
Of course, part of the over/under payment is that Marlins under pay because the market depresses the salaries of non-free agents. If all players were made free agents, the salaries that the current Marlins players could command would catapult them way above those levels. And similarly, the Yankee players’ non-Yankee salaries would not be anything close to what they are currently earning.
In any case, this is how many wins they are spending for.
I’ve always believed that sports should realign based on market size. Four divisions of 6,7,8,9 teams. The top 2 of each division makes it. You put the Yanks, Mets, Redsox in the first division. The Florida teams, Royals, Pirates in the bottom division. If the Divison 1 teams want to outspend each other, let them. Only two will make it out of there. Having 9 teams in the bottom divison, we hope, assures some quality to get out of there.
When the NHL expanded 40 years ago, they put the original 6 teams in one division, and the 6 expansion teams in another division. This assured that some expansion team will make it to the playoffs.