from Amazon
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Payroll v Wins, in the Moneyball era (2002-2011)
The chart below shows the total team payroll over the ten year period of 2002-2011, in millions of dollars, from the Yankees’ 1.875 billion dollars to the Rays 393 million dollars. It is plotted against the total number of wins in that time period, from the Royals’ 668 wins to the Yankees 975 wins.
The data shows an r=0.70 correlation, signifying that there’s a great deal of relationship between payroll and wins.
This is particularly strong, considering that service time is not included as a variable. As any baseball fan would know, the performance from Evan Longoria’s first four years generated as much win impact as Chase Utley in 2008-2011. But the cost for Longoria was just a fraction of what Utley earned, due to MLB’s salary being heavily tied to a player’s service time. If we include service time as a variable, then the correlation would naturally increase.
The teams noted below were the three teams that got the most bang for their buck. The Moneyball A’s were #1, followed closely by the Twins and Cardinals. The teams that got the least for their buck was a two-team race “won” by the Orioles over the Royals. The Mets came in third worst.
Someone asked me to index the data. It works out to the same thing, as it turns out:
