Bang for the Buck

[Banedon]

ESPN ranks the teams by payroll vs victories. Cubs are ranked 2nd to last, beating only the Yankees.

 

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=hruby/110126_mlb_payrolls&sportCat=mlb

 

Enough with the mythology. The Cubs aren't crummy because of Steve Bartman or because the chortling baseball gods demand it or because of some long-dead goat. They're lousy because they're dumb. Consistently. Over the past decade, Chicago has spent more money than all but four other MLB clubs. The Cubs have three playoff appearances to show for it. Translation? Give the Cubs free cars, and they'll somehow come home from Oprah's studio with a handful of magic beans. Consider Chicago's 2010 roster: $18 million for one-dimensional Alfonso Soriano, $18.88 million for roller-coaster Carlos Zambrano, $14 million for he's-not-so-bad Kosuke Fukudome. Add those players up, and that's a cool $50.88 million in salary -- about $13 million more than San Diego paid for its entire team. In baseball circles, the technical term for this is fail.

 

 

 

Pound-foolish: Aramis Ramirez was better than his slow start -- batting below .200 in April and May -- but hardly worth his $16.75 million salary.

[javy knows my name]

I've been waiting for someone to do this. Maybe the "but Hendry made the playoffs a few times this decade and the Cubs NEVER do that" crowd will finally shut the [expletive] up

[Guest]

Man, I wish we could crack the top 5 like the Pirates.

[Banedon]

Man, I wish we could crack the top 5 like the Pirates.

 

Yeah...obviously their ultra low payroll skews things, which the author of the article admits to. Just like it's not bad to be the Yankees at the bottom of the list with the number of wins they get.

 

But the ones that stand out are the winning, low payroll teams, and the losing high payroll teams. Obviously it's better to have a high payroll. Just gotta be smart about it. No big revelation there.

[fiver]

Hey, in Hendry's defense, who knew Soriano's production would decline so rapidly given his technique and skillset, right?

[davell]

Considering what Ricketts' has said publicly about Hendry, I have a feeling that Hendry has taken the "they made me do it" approach that the Trib told him to spend that kind of money all at once and has convinced Ricketts of it as well.

 

So, either Hendry HAS adapted his thinking on how to do things now hopefully or he was forced to do things that he didn't agree with by the Trib? It has to be one or the other, right? Because Ricketts' isn't dumb enough to just fall for complete BS from Hendry, right?

[Backtobanks]

Obviously it's skewed against any team with a large payroll just by using simple math.

[chopsx9]

MY problem with this, unless I am reading it wrong, is that it values all victories the same.

 

I'm in a rush so I'm probably going to botch this but....

 

Every team is going to win 40 games (or pick whatever number you want). My argument would be that your 80th victory is much harder to attain and is thus worth more than your 40th and therefore is going to cost more. Your 90th win is going to be exponentially more than your 80th.

 

You could spend league mininmum on every player and you still going to win some games.

[NewUserName]

I think this is a pretty bad way to judge bang for buck.....but I think it is hard to defend the Cubs product for what they are spending.

[DiamondMind]

I stopped reading when the first two were Padres-Pirates. Are you serious? Even with our (numerous) mistakes, THAT'S who we should aspire to be?

[bhogg]

thought this would have been about Charlie Sheen's "girlfriends"

[Northside Blues]

I've been waiting for someone to do this. Maybe the "but Hendry made the playoffs a few times this decade and the Cubs NEVER do that" crowd will finally shut the [expletive] up

 

 

This statement and the original article are pointless. They couldn't be more off base. Aramis Ramirez and Carlos Zambrano have performed better than their contracts. Ted Lilly, Ryan Dempster and several other players have performed better than their contracts. The only two players who haven't are Soriano and Fukudome. Boston, for example, and all of their success have done no better job at getting fair value on the open market. They have Julio Lugo, Daisuke Matsuzaka and others. The problem with the Cubs has been getting production out of players with fewer than five years experience. The Red Sox had/have Lester, Youkilis, Pedroia, Buchholz, and Papelbon.

 

The simple fact is that Jim Hendry's bone head mistakes on the free agent market haven't been the cause of the poor performance.

[d_money]

MY problem with this, unless I am reading it wrong, is that it values all victories the same.

 

I'm in a rush so I'm probably going to botch this but....

 

Every team is going to win 40 games (or pick whatever number you want). My argument would be that your 80th victory is much harder to attain and is thus worth more than your 40th and therefore is going to cost more. Your 90th win is going to be exponentially more than your 80th.

 

You could spend league mininmum on every player and you still going to win some games.

 

Its actually win 60/lose 60. The other 40 determine your season.

[Sammy Sofa]

The only two players who haven't are Soriano and Fukudome.

 

Not true.

[chopsx9]

MY problem with this, unless I am reading it wrong, is that it values all victories the same.

 

I'm in a rush so I'm probably going to botch this but....

 

Every team is going to win 40 games (or pick whatever number you want). My argument would be that your 80th victory is much harder to attain and is thus worth more than your 40th and therefore is going to cost more. Your 90th win is going to be exponentially more than your 80th.

 

You could spend league mininmum on every player and you still going to win some games.

 

Its actually win 60/lose 60. The other 40 determine your season.

 

I know I just wanted to choose a number that wouldn't result in someone pointing out some team that only won 59 games...the irony.

[Northside Blues]

The only two players who haven't are Soriano and Fukudome.

 

Not true.

 

According to fangraphs he has been worth 24.0m, he's gotten 33.5m. Even if you are correct it only further validates my point.

[Northside Blues]

MY problem with this, unless I am reading it wrong, is that it values all victories the same.

 

I'm in a rush so I'm probably going to botch this but....

 

Every team is going to win 40 games (or pick whatever number you want). My argument would be that your 80th victory is much harder to attain and is thus worth more than your 40th and therefore is going to cost more. Your 90th win is going to be exponentially more than your 80th.

 

You could spend league mininmum on every player and you still going to win some games.

 

this is true. also, a player who is worth 6 wins is worth more than 2 players worth 3 wins a piece. this kind of analysis ignores that. it's pointless. each win a player adds costs and is worth more than the previous one.

[MWV]

Bored/procrastinating: 20 MLB teams have played 47 162 game seasons. Over those 940 individual seasons, teams averaged 81 wins. Assuming a normal distribution produces a standard deviation of 11 wins (not a terrible assumption in this case, ~70% of teams fall within 1 stdev), leaving about 95% of those seasons at or above the 60 win mark referred to above.

Doing the same for 2010 payroll numbers (a dicier proposition statistically speaking, but what the hell) produces $91.0 million \pm $38.3 million. These figures produce relative efficiency measures as follows:

 

$ = ((avg. payroll)-(team payroll)/(38.3 million)

wins =((team wins)-(avg. wins))/(11)

 

Adding the two together produces a measure of payroll allocation and wins (not a simple $/wins metric, but a relative scale):

 

TEAM  Effic.  $/1E6  Wins
SDP	 2.21    37.8	90
TB	  1.86	 71.9	96
TEX	 1.75	 55.3	90
CIN	 1.40	 72.4	91
TOR	 1.10	 62.7	85
ATL	 1.08	 84.4	91
OAK	 1.03	 51.7	81
MIN	 1.01	 97.6	94
FLA	 0.83	 55.6	80
SFG	 0.82	 97.8	92
STL	 0.39	 93.5	86
COL	 0.36	 84.2	83
CHW	 0.19	108.3	88
PHI	 0.12	141.9	97
MIL	-0.10	 81.1	77
LAD	-0.19	 94.9	80
CLE	-0.31	 61.2	69
WSN	-0.32	 61.4	69
ANA	-0.46	 105.0  80
HOU	-0.49	 92.4	76
ARI	-0.66	 60.7	65
PIT	-0.72	 34.9	57
KCR	-0.78	 72.3	67
DET	-0.83	 122.9  81
BAL	-1.12	 81.6	66
BOS	-1.15	162.7	89
NYM	-1.27	132.7	79
NYY	-1.74	206.3	95
CHC	-2.00	146.9	75
SEA	-2.01	 98.4	61

 

Cubs are 29th, but that shouldn't shock anyone. Pittsburgh is 22, which seems a little more reasonable to me. A team that achieves little else except its own continued existence at minimal cost can only be considered efficient in a purely biological sense of the word.

Anyway, I really didn't put a ton of thought into this, and I'm not a statistician. I welcome the criticisms of those that are.

[Northside Blues]

unless I am mistaken the standard distribution around a teams "true talent" is about six wins. Granted for the entire league around 81 wins it will be higher. The standard deviation for a team around its specific true win total should be around six, ie a league average team should win 87 games about 17 percent of the time and 90 around 8 percent of the time.

 

And in other words, on average atleast one team (and a half) should win 12 MORE games than they should a season.

[Soul]

I know this is an interesting study, but from my perspective I want playoff appearances, because they = shot at a title.

 

Non playoff teams are no fun to be a fan of, regardless of how much bang for the buck they're getting.

 

I'd rather be the Yankees than the Pirates any day. I don't care if they're inefficient. And nor should I.