<\/p>\n
The powers that be in baseball have long rung the bell of anti-competitiveness w\/r\/t payroll and success.\u00a0 In fact, its the salient driving early topic of\u00a0Michael Lewis<\/strong>‘s seminal book\u00a0Moneyball<\/em>\u00a0….<\/strong><\/p>\n Tangent.\u00a0 Moneyball has its faults, don’t get me wrong.\u00a0 I may have gone on this rant before, but having recently re-read the book, I was reminded of these issues:<\/p>\n I digress.<\/p>\n As pointed in Moneyball … during MLB’s investigation a pesky economist kept asking questions like, “If there’s a direct correlation between payroll and success, then\u00a0 how does Oakland keep winning with these low payrolls?”\u00a0 And nobody had a good answer. It got me thinking, in the wake of Washington’s well-funded World Series victory in 2019, what exactly was the history of payrolls to WS wins.\u00a0 Well, here it is in tabular format.<\/p>\n\n Some thoughts looking at 2019 and going backwards:<\/p>\n So, does this data tell us anything?\u00a0 \u00a0Is it correlation or causation?\u00a0 Or coincidence?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The powers that be in baseball have long rung the bell of anti-competitiveness w\/r\/t payroll and success.\u00a0 In fact, its the salient driving early topic of\u00a0Michael Lewis‘s seminal book\u00a0Moneyball\u00a0…. Tangent.\u00a0 Moneyball has its faults, don’t get me wrong.\u00a0 I may have gone on this rant before, but having recently re-read the book, I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2036],"tags":[209,212,788,4285,216,213,210,215,789,4284,214,219],"class_list":["post-16267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonnatsbaseball","category-post-season","tag-barry-zito","tag-billy-beane","tag-brad-pitt","tag-eric-chavez","tag-jeremy-brown","tag-joe-blanton","tag-mark-mulder","tag-mark-teahen","tag-michael-lewis","tag-miguel-tejada","tag-nick-swisher","tag-tim-hudson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16267"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16271,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16267\/revisions\/16271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n\n
\n\t \nYear<\/th> team<\/th> payroll<\/th> high<\/th> low<\/th> median<\/th> payroll rank<\/th> notes<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n \n\t 2019<\/td> Washington<\/td> 197<\/td> 236<\/td> 60<\/td> 126<\/td> 4<\/td> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2018<\/td> Boston<\/td> 233<\/td> 233<\/td> 65<\/td> 134<\/td> 1<\/td> 33m more than #2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2017<\/td> Houston<\/td> 124m<\/td> 241<\/td> 63<\/td> 139<\/td> 17<\/td> Result of bottoming out strategy in 2013<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2016<\/td> Chicago Cubs<\/td> 171m<\/td> 250<\/td> 63<\/td> 131<\/td> 6<\/td> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2015<\/td> Kansas City<\/td> 112m<\/td> 282<\/td> 69<\/td> 118<\/td> 17<\/td> LA = 282; just crazy<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2014<\/td> San Francisco<\/td> 149m<\/td> 236<\/td> 45<\/td> 107<\/td> 7<\/td> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2013<\/td> Boston<\/td> 150m<\/td> 229<\/td> 26<\/td> 93<\/td> 4<\/td> Houston = 26m<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2012<\/td> San Francisco<\/td> 131m<\/td> 213<\/td> 51<\/td> 94<\/td> 6<\/td> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2011<\/td> St. Louis<\/td> 109m<\/td> 207<\/td> 39<\/td> 92<\/td> 10<\/td> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2010<\/td> San Francisco<\/td> 97m<\/td> 212<\/td> 37<\/td> 84<\/td> 11<\/td> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2009<\/td> New York Yankees<\/td> 203m<\/td> 203<\/td> 37<\/td> 81<\/td> 1<\/td> 50M more than #2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2008<\/td> Philadelphia<\/td> 96m<\/td> 213<\/td> 25<\/td> 78<\/td> 13<\/td> Miami = 25<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2007<\/td> Boston<\/td> 147m<\/td> 195<\/td> 25<\/td> 87<\/td> 2<\/td> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2006<\/td> St. Louis<\/td> 89m<\/td> 201<\/td> 16<\/td> 83<\/td> 11<\/td> Miami = 16<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2005<\/td> Chicago White Sox<\/td> 75m<\/td> 209<\/td> 30<\/td> 67<\/td> 13<\/td> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2004<\/td> Boston<\/td> 128m<\/td> 185<\/td> 27<\/td> 63<\/td> 2<\/td> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2003<\/td> Florida<\/td> 47m<\/td> 153<\/td> 19<\/td> 69<\/td> 25<\/td> TB = 19<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2002<\/td> Anaheim<\/td> 61m<\/td> 126<\/td> 34<\/td> 61<\/td> 15<\/td> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2001<\/td> Arizona<\/td> 85m<\/td> 111<\/td> 23<\/td> 64<\/td> 8<\/td> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 2000<\/td> New York Yankees<\/td> 92m<\/td> 92<\/td> 16<\/td> 58<\/td> 1<\/td> 5m more than #2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 1999<\/td> New York Yankees<\/td> 91m<\/td> <\/td> <\/td> <\/td> 1<\/td> 11m more than #2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 1998<\/td> New York Yankees<\/td> 73m<\/td> <\/td> <\/td> <\/td> 2<\/td> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 1997<\/td> Florida<\/td> 52m<\/td> <\/td> <\/td> <\/td> 5<\/td> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 1996<\/td> New York Yankees<\/td> 61m<\/td> <\/td> <\/td> <\/td> 1<\/td> 6m more than #2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t 1995<\/td> Atlanta<\/td> 47m<\/td> <\/td> <\/td> <\/td> 4<\/td> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n \n