The LEB Sports
Dallas Sports News & Opinions2007 MLB Cost Effectiveness (or lack there of)
One of the things that the members of this organization are constantly forced to face is the thought of doing what’s “best” for the company.Working in the corporate world, you sit in your cubicle only to look up and there’s Bill Lumberg asking you “is this good for the company?”We’re forced to run all of our decisions through that grid.
Having been inspired by the addition to our writing staff of MRH, I thought that I would take a look at the most “economic” team in Major League Baseball.My first thought was to take a look at the current season but with the Rangers recent string of victories I thought that might inflate the numbers a bit and we might actually think that Jon Daniels actually knows what he’s doing.I’m excited to hear MRH’s thoughts on the success/failure of Jon Daniels, but that’s not the subject of this entry.So the data in the charts below comes from the 2007 MLB season.To find out the most economical team I simply took the total payroll for each team and divided that by the number of wins that team had.This tells us the amount of money each team spent per win.Here are my findings:
| Yellow | Missed playoffs |
| Red | Division Series |
| Blue | League Championship Series |
| Green | World Series |
| Tampa Bay Rays | 66 | $24,123,500 | $365,508 | 1 |
| Florida Marlins | 71 | $30,507,000 | $429,676 | 2 |
| Washington Nationals | 73 | $37,347,500 | $511,610 | 3 |
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 68 | $38,537,833 | $566,733 | 4 |
| Arizona Diamondbacks | 90 | $52,067,546 | $578,528 | 5 |
| Colorado Rockies | 90 | $54,424,000 | $604,711 | 6 |
| Cleveland Indians | 96 | $61,673,267 | $642,430 | 7 |
| San Diego Padres | 89 | $58,110,567 | $652,928 | 8 |
| Milwaukee Brewers | 83 | $70,986,500 | $855,259 | 9 |
| Minnesota Twins | 79 | $71,439,500 | $904,297 | 10 |
| Texas Rangers | 75 | $68,318,675 | $910,916 | 11 |
| Cincinnati Reds | 72 | $68,904,980 | $957,014 | 12 |
| Kansas City Royals | 69 | $67,116,500 | $972,703 | 13 |
| Toronto Blue Jays | 83 | $81,942,800 | $987,263 | 14 |
| Philadelphia Phillies | 89 | $89,428,213 | $1,004,811 | 15 |
| Atlanta Braves | 84 | $87,290,833 | $1,039,177 | 16 |
| Oakland Athletics | 76 | $79,366,940 | $1,044,302 | 17 |
| Detroit Tigers | 88 | $95,180,369 | $1,081,595 | 18 |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 78 | $90,286,823 | $1,157,523 | 19 |
| Los Angeles Angels | 94 | $109,251,333 | $1,162,248 | 20 |
| Chicago Cubs | 85 | $99,670,332 | $1,172,592 | 21 |
| Houston Astros | 73 | $87,759,000 | $1,202,178 | 22 |
| Seattle Mariners | 88 | $106,460,833 | $1,209,782 | 23 |
| San Francisco Giants | 71 | $90,219,056 | $1,270,691 | 24 |
| New York Mets | 88 | $115,231,663 | $1,309,451 | 25 |
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 82 | $108,454,524 | $1,322,616 | 26 |
| Baltimore Orioles | 69 | $93,554,808 | $1,355,867 | 27 |
| Boston Red Sox | 96 | $143,026,214 | $1,489,856 | 28 |
| Chicago White Sox | 72 | $108,671,833 | $1,509,331 | 29 |
| New York Yankees | 94 | $189,639,045 | $2,017,437 | 30 |
The teams in yellow are teams that did not make the playoffs, while the red indicates teams that lost in the divisional round, blue indicates teams losing in the League Championship Series, and the green indicates the 2 World Series participants in Boston and Colorado.
I thought the easiest way to determine the Top “Economical” Team in Major League Baseball was to require a team in contention for the award to make the playoffs.It would be easy to crown the Tampa Bay “Double A’s” Devil Rays champion but who wants to watch the junk that they put out on the field day in and day out.We want winners.Having said that, here’s my top 8:
- Colorado Rockies - made it to the World Series with only five teams spending less than the $52,424,000 they spent in total payroll.
- Boston Red Sox - who cares how much you spend, winning it all would be worth every penny
- Arizona Diamondbacks - lost to the Rockies in the NLCS and in the bottom 5 of lowest payroll.The only teams that spent less money are the usual bottom dwellers, the Pittsburgh Pirates, Washington Nationals, Florida Marlins, and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
- Cleveland Indians - Like the Diamondbacks, lost in the LCS round while spending only $61 million in total payroll ($642K per win)
- Philadelphia Phillies - lost in divisional round
- Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Orange County in Southern California Just North of Mexico in the Western Hemisphere of Earth - lost in divisional round
- Chicago Cubs - lost in divisional round
- New York Yankees - while spending almost $190 million (just over $2 million per win) they could also be given the “most underachieving title”, but hey, they made the playoffs.That’s more than 22 other teams can say.
It seems that arguable the toughest division in baseball last season, the NL West, has the smartest, most cost-effective, determination of talent.The 3rd place team, San Diego, finished 1 game out of the Wild Card, behind Arizona and ranked 8th in Dollars spent per win.
In the future, what I’d like to do would be to take 10 year period and rank the organizations over that period, however, the “Man” that we all work for doesn’t allow me that type of time.Maybe that’ll be a work in progress.
However, the next “Weekend” edition will feature a look at the Most Cost-Effective NFL team.That’ll be next week, if I remember to do it.
MRH said on Tuesday, May 27, 2008, 10:44
Enjoyed the blog….thought it was very well done. Like the tie in of corporate America as that is one of the things that sparked this blog. Be careful calling the Rays “junk” as they have had good development in the minors for the past few years. They have been stockpiling their system with outfielders (Crawford, Baldelli, Delmon Young) They just inked Evan Longoria to a long term deal and have gotten fine pitching perfomances from their young pitchers this year. Josh Hamilton was their big fish that got away(he was their #1 pick overall in the 1999 draft). You saw Kazmir mow down the texas lineup last night. I will go out on a limb and predict that Tampa finishes 2nd in the division.
If you were going to do the best economical team over the last 10 years, I can tell you without a doubt it would be Oakland. Billy Beane has been crowned the master at Moneyball.
mpp1 said on Tuesday, May 27, 2008, 20:06
well, this was based on the 2007 season, not this years teams…..