We Don't Need No Salary Cap

I've argued to friends before that, unlike other sports, I don't think baseball needs a salary cap. Unfortunately, I've never had much to go on other than my personal beliefs and the recent success of the Rays. But today, I made this nifty discovery. That's right, a chart that plots win-loss record against payroll. And oh, would you look at that - as of this morning's standings, the 8 projected playoff teams (Yankees/Rays/Twins/Phils/Padres/Braves/Reds/Rangers, along with the Giants, which had an identical record to the Rangers) have an average payroll of $108.2 million - or about $3 million higher than that of the White Sox. And I don't hear anybody railing against the White Sox for having a ridiculously high payroll (despite them, admittedly, having the 7th-highest in the MLB). Take out the Yankees, who have a payroll a ridiculous 27% higher than the second-deepest-pocketed team (the Red Sox), and the average drops to $94.2 million, or a payroll $700,000 more than the Cardinals, who have the 9th-highest. But again, I don't hear anybody whining about the Cardinals throwing money around. Additionally, according to this chart, 14 teams are getting more or the same number of wins relative to the rest of the league than their payroll would seemingly indicate - most notably, every single one of the eight current playoff teams. Even then, only the Yankees and Phils are getting the same relative number of wins.

But why stop there? Let's take it one step further. Let's look at how many dollars each team had to spend to get one win, going in order of record from best to worst.

Yankees - $2,344,697.60
Rays - $826,706.56
Twins - $1,134,408.91
Phillies - $1,669,745.64
Padres - $460,967.07
Braves - $1,017,152.60
Reds - $875,140.76
Giants - $1,217,794.24
Rangers - $682,105.48
Red Sox - $2,030,591.67
White Sox - $1,335,822.79
Rockies - $1,066,164.56
Cardinals - $1,264,064.20
Marlins - $781,297.52
Blue Jays - $852,520.55
A's - $717,429.17
Tigers - $1,706,457.33
Mets - $1,866,985.31
Dodgers - $1,343,070.65
Angels - $1,499,483.80
Astros - $1,319,364.29
Brewers - $1,228,913.30
Cubs - $2,290,765.63
Nationals - $1,006,557.38
Indians - $1,037,355.36
Royals - $1,210,257.80
Diamondbacks - $1,046,864.93
Orioles - $1,431,798.25
Mariners - $1,572,909.09
Pirates - $727,979.17

After crunching the numbers, the average amount of dollars spent per win for all of the MLB was about $1,173,917. The average amount of dollars spent per win for the top 8 payrolls was close to $1,843,068 - but the average amount spent by the playoff teams was only about $1,126,365. WHICH, I might add, despite the inclusion of the Yankees, is STILL lower than the MLB-wide average.

Now okay, I will concede that just because a team makes it to the playoffs doesn't mean they all have equal chances of winning the World Series. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that only the Yankees, Rays, Twins, Phils, and Rangers* have a better-than-50% chance at winning the championship. But the important thing to note is that even though the Reds, Padres, and Braves (the other playoff teams if the season ended yesterday) have a less-than-stellar chance at winning the Series, they still have a far better chance than the Red Sox (*sigh*), Cubs, Mets, Tigers, White Sox and Angels - #s 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8 in payroll. They'll be on the outside looking in as the Rays (#21), Rangers (#29) and Padres (#31) laugh and compete for a world championship.

*Only if Cliff Lee returns to "I'm Cliff Lee and watch me paint the very edges of the black while you stare helplessly at my 91-mph fastball" form*