2010 Payroll per Victory Nerderies

I do not expect that Baseball Feelings will degenerate into nonsense interwebmetrics too often, as the spirit of this place seems to be spirit, not 0s and 1s. Nonetheless, I have for a few years busted out my calculator at the end of another long ass season to see just where teams stacked up in regards to how much payroll they shelled out per victory during the regular and post-season. This is not so much an exercise in some sort of metric system to evaluate how well a team performs per dollar, although you could certainly take it that way. Mostly I do it because it’s fairly ridiculous how much actual fake American money is spent per actual baseball field 9-inning (or more) victory achieved. Ridiculous. So indulge me a stroll through the 2010 season’s teams listed in the order of who paid the least amount of payroll per victory = total payroll on opening day divided by (regular season wins plus postseason wins where applicable). So yeah.
#1: SAN DIEGO PADRES – $419,992.22 per win. Just barely missed out on winning NL West due to end-of-season collapse. #2: TEXAS RANGERS - $563,781.07 per win. Won the AL West due to Nolan Ryan threatening to send underperformers to “the glue factory” and knocked off both the allegedly upstart Rays and ominously omnipresent Yankees in the playoffs before succumbing to the Giants in the World Series that time forgot. #3: PITTSBURGH PIRATES - $613,943.00 per win. Pirates never spend much, but still win some games, making me think that if you didn’t even pay players and just took volunteers, you could still win 35 games in the Major Leagues. #4: OAKLAND ATHLETICS - $637,714.81 per win. The birthplace of cybermetrics, so you would expect them to show well in anything involving calculators. #5: FLORIDA MARLINS - $695,518.75 per win. I’ve done this type of list for nearly a decade, and the Marlins have never been lower than the top 5 as far as I can remember, even winning a couple World Series in the process. What does this say? I don’t know. They don’t have a definitive fanbase in Miami, and they don’t exactly consistently make the playoffs, though they do always remain competitive beyond what one would expect from looking at them on paper. If the goal is to win titles, then perhaps this is the method to go, as they have done that, more than many older franchises (lulz to you Cubs and Indians). But as a successful business model, it doesn’t work. Then again, as we go through this list, I find it hard to believe more than like four of these teams are an actual successful business model. Baseball should just stop pretending to turn a profit and get owners who are just rich fuckers who want to be dicks to the world and blow money to win $1 bets with their 33rd Degree Freemason ski lodge cronies in upstate New Hampshire.
#6: TAMPA RAYS - $733,912.97 per win. Won the AL East, but then crumbled at the hands of the Rangers in the wild card round of the playoffs. The Rays are another team that operated on the Marlins gameplan for a while, full of young talent and always having someone to step in place of whoever disappeared. But in recent years they’ve made the switch towards saying, “We are a respectable team; we have everything we need now; so we will keep our players, pay far more money to people than we have been, and will still be successful. We have turned the corner.” Usually it seems when teams with fickle fanbases do this, it takes a couple of years before they are complete shit and destroyed financially for the next decade. It’s kind of like a regular person buying all their Christmas presents by maxing out a credit card, thinking, “Well, I’ve been steadily employed for a while now, everything should be solid, and I’ll be able to pay all this back.” You won’t. You’re fucked. #7: TORONTO BLUE JAYS - $737,521.85 per win. I did not translate dollar values to Canadian sheckles or give’rs or whatever they get paid up there, so we will assume it’s the same as American money for the sake of me not having to figure that shit out. #8: CINCINNATI REDS - $795,456.53 per win. Actually won the NL Central this past season, to shake a long stretch of ineptitude. Of course, winning the NL Central, when the Cardinals are in a down year, is not a large hurdle to clear. #9: CLEVELAND INDIANS - $887,014.01 per win. The easy thing to do would be to make a Major League the movie reference, except that just reminds me of how racist Hollywood is. Wesley Snipes is abandoned, framed on tax evasion, and has to go to jail. Meanwhile Charlie Sheen is fucking porn chicks and that nazi tattooed girl that the biker beard Sandra Bullock wore for a while was shagging as well, and getting drunk in Vegas and generally being a perverted nuisance to normal society, yet no one cares. #10: WASHINGTON NATIONALS - $890,217.39 per win. The Nationals are my home team so to speak, that I adopted for my personal loyalties when they moved to D.C. from Montreal. This has not brought me much pleasure in life thus far, beyond reading futuristic predictions from the year 2017, but hey, that’s baseball.
#11: ATLANTA BRAVES - $917,648.55 per win. Won the NL wild card berth into the playoffs, where they losted to the Giants. A consistently restocked franchise for nearly two decades now, featuring occasional purges of traditional talent, which is usually followed up by a blossoming of fresh, young talent. I have always hated the Braves, because my dad was a Braves fan and my dad was an unemployable abusive drunk. But I cannot deny when it comes to grooming new talent, they are one of the better franchises at such things. #12: ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS - $934,125.65 per win. I’m not sure I could name one player on the Diamondbacks at this point. #13: SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS - $949,794.50 per win. Won the NL West, beat the Braves then upset the Phillies in the NL Playoffs, and then beat down the Rangers to be World Series champions. When I was 8 years old, my first baseball team was called the Giants and I was like the shittiest bad kid on the team, meaning I played CF and wasn’t one of the kids that played the 2 inning minimum. But in my little naïve mind, if I played good and learned the game, there was a direct line from my minor league Farmville, Virginia, Giants team at a private school organization that didn’t allow black kids to play (seriously, this was in like 1981 too, not some ancient black-and-white days, but there was no alternative league), so they were always my favorite team for most of my life. I was there those awesome years with Kevin Mitchell and Will Clark making baseball’s most Odd Couple, and they always came up short, or got edged out by the Braves. I stuck with them during the Barry Bonds days, but grew tired of the bullshit in regards to Bonds. Plus, I live in fucking Virginia, how do I follow a goddamn team from California? Baseball is boring as fuck to watch on TV, more than acceptable live in person, and completely doable on radio, so when the Expos moved to D.C. and the local AM station carried Nats games, they became my team. What this all means is last year when the Giants made their run, I was caught up in it, feeling like a bandwagon fan or at least fair-weather one, and not being able to truly enjoy the successes without feeling like a chump. And then they won the World Series. It was kinda like a longtime ex-girlfriend getting elected Queen of Polynesia or something – I was happy I guess, but did not feel like it belonged to me anymore, so I was left feeling kinda weird. #14: COLORADO ROCKIES - $1,014,783.13 per win. The Rockies are the first team to cross the million dollar per victory barrier. Sadly enough, we will also cross the two million dollar per victory barrier before we are done. #15: MINNESOTA TWINS - $1,037,863.48 per win. They won the AL Central, but got punked by the Yankees in the wild card round of the playoffs, yet again. What can you do? They’ve locked down their supposed superstar talent, but what’s left to try and get to the next level? I guess they just keep plugging along and hope they stay afloat.
#16: MILWAUKEE BREWERS - $1,053,354.27 per win. Honestly, I think Bud Selig is a huge asshole and a general negative swirl of energetic influences over baseball, and being he secretly still owns the Brewers, fuck the Brewers. Also, they got Greinke from the Royals, and I was hoping he’d come to D.C. #17: KANSAS CITY ROYALS - $1,078,622.54 per win. For calling themselves a small market team, their still shelling out over a million per victory. The Nationals, Marlins, Pirates, etc. show that it’s hard to not at least win a few games. So somehow the Royals are a financially unstable mix of blowing money and blowing games. Those powder blue throwbacks are tight though. #18: ST. LOUIS CARDINALS - $1,087,683.17 per win. I usually associate supreme baseball nerdery with the northeast, which is easy to dismiss as a vast sprawling wasteland of idiocy. However, St. Louis proves that wrong, because there’s crazy baseball nerdery swirling around the St. Louis franchise, that goes back to the days of ticker tape parades using actual ticker tape because banks had that type of machinery in use. This upsets my geographical stereotypes of the world around me, which is upsetting, thus I can’t stand the Cardinals. They are truly the favorite baseball team of college professors. #19: LOS ANGELES DODGERS - $1,186,818.96 per win. It would be awesome if in the McCourt divorce, they both got like half of the team, so like maybe the wife got the pitchers and catchers and the dude got the rest of the field, and she sold her part to some crazy Japanese demented baseball genius, so that the Dodgers ended up being a team with really shitty hitting and fielding, but like this insane pitching rotation of guys who were never that great before who all pitch gyroballs and wacky Jap shit and like they cloned three Fernando Valenzuelas – one white, one black, and one Mexican – who come out the bullpen and shut shit down, rolling their eyes up to the sky, all pudgy and loveable and brining the great Los Angeles area together in racial unity through mad science. That’s what I wish would happen. #20: HOUSTON ASTROS - $1,215,203.95 per win. Until the world admits those rainbow uniforms as wore by J.R. Richard while having strokes on the field are awesome, there will be no peace.
#21: CHICAGO WHITE SOX - $1,230,377.24 per win. I will be honest – sometimes I outright get down on baseball and lack feelings beyond hatred for it. Not because of my team’s lack of success, but because I don’t get it. So boring and so statistical and so long-winded. But even when I get into those negative moods, there’s still about seven things I love about baseball. One of those seven is Ozzie Guillen. He is a national treasure, for wherever he is from. #22: BALTIMORE ORIOLES - $1,236,553.03 per win. Being Peter Angelos really screwed D.C. for years, and even squeezed a cut of their profits for himself with the stupid regional baseball TV thing, I do not like the Orioles. They cannot suck enough to appease my vengeance, which is really saying something, because they have really sucked for a long time. And they actually halfway spend money like they are still trying, but not really that hard. One time I was a wine-tasting room place in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, and I’m pretty sure Cal Ripken was there. But I didn’t care enough to go say “What’s up famous baseball player who I don’t know? How’s it going?” I mean, if it was Kevin Mitchell or Albert Belle or somebody awesome, I would’ve gone up and gave some daps, but it was just stupid uber-white Mr. Oriole Cal Ripken. #23: LOS ANGELES ANGELS OF ANAHEIM - $1,312,670.84 per win. Please just go back to being the California Angels. This is ridiculous. #24: PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES - $1,391,444.91 per win. The Phillies won the NL East, swept the Reds and then lost to the Giants in the NLCS. The Phillies are straight up going about things like the Yankees and Red Sox at this point, buying up free agents and rolling with it, to the point that anything less than a World Series title will be a disappointment. The thing in their favor is they’ve accumulated pitching and not sluggers, which is probably the better route towards success. That fucking rotation… man. #25: DETROIT TIGERS - $1,516,850.98 per win. The Tigers are a few years beyond that thing I spoke of in regards to the Rays, where you start to say, “Hey, we are now legit. Let’s spend money and be confident.” Whereas a decade ago, going 81-81 would’ve been seen as a decent year for the Tigers, there are expectations with a payroll of $122 million, and a perfect .500 does not answer those expectation.
#26: SEATTLE MARINERS - $1,612,732.24 per win. We are not getting into the most immensely fucked franchises when it comes to blowing money. And the Mariners are the only one in the bottom seven of this list who spent less than $100 million on opening day payroll, but all they could muster up was 61 wins last year, in the not entirely glorious AL West. #27: NEW YORK METS - $1,679,765.13 per win. The Mets, when you look at the amount of payroll they spend year after year, have to be the most disappointing franchise of the past ten years. They are consistently outperformed not only by other big payroll division rival the Phillies, but by the Marlins, who usually are spending about half what the Mets spend. Being someone who has listened to 660 the Fan on night time AM radio during long car trips, and hearing Mets fans talk, I have no problem with this trend whatsoever. #28: BOSTON RED SOX - $1,828,621.72 per win. Missed the playoffs last year, and Big Papi looked lost without steroids. Plus that little midget Pedro Martinez died last year, which I think was the final ending of their magical rebirth from the Curse of the Bambino. #29: CHICAGO CUBS - $1,958,120.00 per win. Really, the Cubs are one of those teams with a history – both long-term and recent – that you can’t even make fun of, because reality is worse and more hilarious than anything you could say. #30: NEW YORK YANKEES - $2,042,904.84 per win. Earned the AL Wild Card, swept the Twins, and then got knocked off by the Rangers. The Yankees define the financial excesses of Major League baseball, and really I try to ignore their existence. Seeing them fall every year is always something I am rooting for, but I can’t even watch them play. The fact they won over a hundred games (counting postseason) and still spent over $2 million dollars per victory is ridiculous. And the fact that a good portion of the rest of MLB is basically the Yankees quadruple-A farm team to develop talent for them to buy up, that’s frustrating as well. That’s my biggest problem with baseball is how awkward the money situations are. It’s not even like salary caps would fix it, because I’m not necessarily for that. You don’t want to stifle crazy billionaires who want to succeed. It’s just no one is really quite nearly as crazy as what George Steinbrenner put into place before his death. We need more crazy billionaires I guess.