World Series history/observations

[kenobi65]

Spending a lot of money reasonably well can give a team excellent odds of making the playoffs (and that's what the Yankees, and, to a lesser extent, the Red Sox have been doing). But there's too much randomness in baseball -- winning 60% of your games (that's 97 games) will almost guarantee a division title, and winning 70% (113) is almost unheard of; compare to the NFL, where division winners routinely win 75% of their games, or the NBA, where a division champ that wins 70% of their games (57) is pretty typical, despite far more mechanisms in place to keep the talent levels even -- to guarantee success once you're actually in the playoffs. Especially in the best-of-5 first round.

I don't know if it's randomness so much as the effect of playing more games (which tends to make the vast majority of teams settle closer to .500)...baseball plays twice as many regular-season games as hockey or basketball (162 compared to 82), and ten times as many as in football (162 vs. 16).

Also, a smaller percentage of teams making it into the playoffs in baseball, compared to the other sports, which gives fewer opportunities to a "just good enough" team to go on a lucky tear and advance deep into the playoffs, knocking off the favorites in the process.

 

[BOZ]

The Yankees need to enter a streak of losing and let other teams win some WS.

they have been, for a few years now.

2001 Diamondbacks
2002 Angels
2003 Marlins
2004 Red Sox
2005 White Sox
2006 Tigers or Cardinals

that's a start at least...

 

[Infiniti2000]

An interesting bit of tangential info: the 2006 Team Payrolls, as reprinted from this site:

http://www.onestopbaseball.com/TeamPayroll.asp

Rank  	Team  	Total Payroll
1 	New York Yankees 	$194,663,079
2 	Boston Red Sox 		$120,099,824
3 	Los Angeles Angels 	$103,472,000
4 	Chicago White Sox 	$102,750,667
5 	New York Mets 		$101,084,963
6 	Los Angeles Dodgers 	$98,447,187
7 	Chicago Cubs 		$94,424,499
8 	Houston Astros 		$92,551,503
9 	Atlanta Braves 		$90,156,876
10 	San Francisco Giants 	$90,056,419
11 	St. Louis Cardinals 	$88,891,371
12 	Philadelphia Phillies 	$88,273,333
13 	Seattle Mariners 	$87,959,833
14 	Detroit Tigers 		$82,612,866
15 	Baltimore Orioles 	$72,585,582
16 	Toronto Blue Jays 	$71,915,000
17 	San Diego Padres 	$69,896,141
18 	Texas Rangers 		$68,228,662
19 	Minnesota Twins 	$63,396,006
20 	Washington Nationals 	$63,143,000
21 	Oakland Athletics 	$62,243,079
22 	Cincinnati Reds 	$60,909,519
23 	Arizona Diamondbacks 	$59,684,226
24 	Milwaukee Brewers 	$57,568,333
25 	Cleveland Indians 	$56,031,500
26 	Kansas City Royals 	$47,294,000
27 	Pittsburgh Pirates 	$46,717,750
28 	Colorado Rockies 	$41,233,000
29 	Tampa Bay Devil Rays 	$35,417,967
30 	Florida Marlins 	$14,998,500

 

[BOZ]

heh, the cardinals are #11 and the tigers are #14... if the amount of money spent equated to winning, neither of them should have had a chance in hell.

 

[drothgery]

heh, the cardinals are #11 and the tigers are #14... if the amount of money spent equated to winning, neither of them should have had a chance in hell.

Eh. If we throw out the Yankees and Red Sox as outliers, they spent about 80% of what the top teams did. Which ought to give them a pretty good shot.

 

[kenobi65]

heh, the cardinals are #11 and the tigers are #14... if the amount of money spent equated to winning, neither of them should have had a chance in hell.

Salary is actually a reasonably predictive measure of performance; it just doesn't have a correlation of 1.0.

- Looking at the top 14 teams in salary, only 3 of them (Cubs, Giants, Mariners) were out of playoff contention by mid-August.

- Only one playoff team (the A's, which have made a big deal out of their "Moneyball" approach to selecting players) was in the bottom half of the salary scale.

- Of the lowest 7 teams in salaries, 5 of them (Brewers, Royals, Pirates, Rockies, Devil Rays) have been weak most, if not all, of the time over the past 15 years or so.

The lesson: sure, it's possible to field a successful MLB team without having a (relatively) high salary base, but it's difficult.

 

[BOZ]

true, spending more cash to get the better players helps, but as we've seen it guarantees nothing. by all rights, the yankees should never have lost to a team that spent only 42% of what they spent on salary - but they did, and badly.

 

[kenobi65]

true, spending more cash to get the better players helps, but as we've seen it guarantees nothing.

Certainly. Salary alone isn't a pure predictor of success.

- Up-and-coming stars are usually relatively low-paid (see the success of Cleveland in 2005, or the Marlins this year, with bottom-tier salaries). If a team is full of young stars, they can succeed with low salaries for a time; as those players become due for new contracts, either the team's salary rises as they pay to retain those players, or the players chase contracts elsewhere, and the team's performance predictably declines (see the Expos of the early '90s).

- All too frequently, players with big salaries are fundamentally being retroactively compensated for past performance -- i.e., you put up a few good seasons, you strike it rich on your next contract. This is particularly true of high-paid players in their mid-30s or older...while some still perform at a high level, many do see their skills diminish. (This seems to be the problem that plagued the Yankees through the '80s, btw...overspending on free agents who were past their prime).

- One of the big factors in a successful season is avoiding injuries...and a lot of of that is pure luck. Some high-salary teams may have a big chunk of that salary base tied up in players who aren't contributing (see Cubs).

by all rights, the yankees should never have lost to a team that spent only 42% of what they spent on salary - but they did, and badly.

Bwah-hah-hah-hah!

 

[dragonhead]

Or you can get lower payed people like weaver for the cards and his performence increases.

 

[BOZ]

i think a good mix of skilled veterans and hot up-and-comers is a good key to success. each one keeps the others on their toes.