I’m sure most of you remember my stellar, well-thought out projections for the 2009 Major League Season (baseball is the only sport that can call their season by one year. Sure, football’s regular season all takes place in the same year, but the Super Bowl for that season takes place in a different year). For those that can’t quite remember whether I ranked the Blue Jays or the Red Sox higher,
here’s the linkSadly, my predictions weren’t accurate AT ALL! Shocking, since, as Ryan pointed out, I wrote them pretty much in reverse order of what all the other experts predicted.
In fact, I daresay that the only division that completely surprised me—and most of baseball—is the AL-Central, but we’ve covered that enough. The Yankees, for all their overspending, actually overspent on the right players this year. They were a well-oiled machine, so there’s really not much more to say. In many ways, they deserved their victory: they had, for the most part, the best players at every position. It’s not a guaranteed win, but it helps a whole lot when you don’t have weak players—either offensively or defensively—at a few positions.
But I’m going to get back to numbers, because I love them:
Here are the top ten spenders in baseball for the
2009 season*:
YankeesMets (23 games back)
Cubs(7.5 GB)
Red Sox (WC, 8 GB)Tigers (1 GB)
AngelsPhilliesAstros (17 GB)
DodgersMariners (12 GB)
Five of the top ten spenders didn’t make it to the playoffs.
Analyzing these stats, it’s fairly clear that to be one of the top ten spenders, you have a 50% chance of making it to the playoffs, and a 40% chance of winning your division. If you fall in the middle ten, you’ve got a 20% chance of making playoffs—but only a 10% chance of winning your division. (The Rockies would’ve come in 18th in salary; the Cardinals 17th.) Whereas if you’re in the bottom ten teams in salaries, you have a 10% chance of winning your division, but no shot at the Wild Card (the Twins came in 23rd in salary).
This is called “Small Sample Size”. Looking at one year is not the way to analyze statistics. We’d need years of statistical analysis to get a good idea of the trend. I’m sure that we’d find plenty of outliers to the graph (teams that didn’t follow trends), but I’m equally sure that the trend would point to the fact that spending money can create wins, It is just as important to note that money is not a guaranteed win (money must be spent wisely, which is harder to analyze).
Simply spending money won’t get you anywhere. Part of it is spending the money in the right place—and sometimes it’s luck. The Mets were second only to the Yankees in spending, and came in 23 games back. The Athletics spent significantly less money (in fact, $87,063,987 less—which is more than 18 teams paid in salaries—in fact, if the Mets had paid as much as the Athletics in salary, they could’ve used the leftover money to pay for the entire salaries of the bottom two teams and they’d still have had $6,495,787 left). The Mets, however, had points in the season where not a single member of their starting line-up was on the field, due to injuries or poor play.
I’m not completely in favor of spending caps (they have their own issues), but I’d like some changes for the “luxury tax” and revenue sharing. For example, teams who built a new stadium get discounts on their luxury tax, so even though the Yankees outstripped all other teams in spending—both on their team AND on their stadium—they still were able to discount a significant portion of their luxury tax (according to an article I found, and lost the link, they were able to discount $84 million from their luxury tax, based on their new stadium). It’s really a once in a lifetime occurrence, I’m not sure anything really needs to be done about the stadium clause. I do think that the luxury tax money should go to the teams that spend less, and a certain percentage either spent on players, or put into savings for future player salaries. (For example, if a team has a young player/rookie they’re confident will become great, they can put aside the salary to pay him in the future, and the money could be put aside for that player’s future salaries.) There should be a cap on the number of years it can be saved, however (I’ll give it five).
But, anyway, congrats to the Yankees. As much as it pains me to admit it, you did deserve to win. You were the best team in baseball this year. Even if you had to buy it.
*Note: I found conflicting data on the payrolls of teams. Here’s ESPN’s version:
2009 MLB SalariesTimberwolves update: After last week’s great post wherein the Timberwolves had a 100% winning percentage, they’ve dropped. They’re now at 1-4, or a 20% winning percentage. While I don’t follow the Timberwolves, from my Twitter updates, it seems as if they’ve been playing well.
My question about basketball is how Utah is considered the NORTHwest, and Miami is considered the SouthWEST. I know, sometimes dividing the teams doesn’t work equally, but you have to admit that it’s still funny.
Wild Update: The Wild are improving, winning their first game in regulation last Friday—because I was there and Gaby was injured—and winning their first road game (also in regulation) on Saturday against the defending Stanley Cup winners. Their record is 5-9-0, for a 35.7% winning percentage.Labels: G-g-g-girl, MLb, money
