Dollars Equal Wins

Why do we even bother with baseball? Did you read my predictions back in April. Not to say “I told you so”, but I told you so! The top two positions in each of the six divisions is almost exactly the way I said it would be. Predicting Major League Baseball regular season standings is as easy as predicting the Brewer pitching is going to hit the wall in June and July.

For those of you who don’t know (and you probably do because baseball fans get really annoyed with me), I base my standings predictions in April on how much team payrolls are. The higher the payroll, the higher in the standings you finish. And wouldn’t you know it. The standings are pretty much in order of how much teams spend.

And yet there are still fans who say team payroll has nothing to do with it. Are you serious? Do you honestly think that?

If so, I guess there is nothing else I can do but review the standings with you:

AL East-1st place Yankees, 2nd place Red Sox. Highest payroll Yankees, 2nd highest payroll Red Sox

AL Central-1st place Tigers, 2nd place White Sox. Highest payroll Tigers, 2nd highest payroll White Sox

AL West-1st place Angels, 2nd place Rangers, Highest payroll Angels, 2nd highest payroll Rangers.

Are you seeing a theme here?

NL East-1st place Phillies, 2nd place Braves. Highest payroll Mets, 2nd highest payroll Braves. 3rd highest payroll Phillies. The Mets have had serious injury issues this year. Enough said.

NL Central-1st place Cardinals, 2nd place Cubs. Highest payroll Cubs. 2nd highest payroll Cardinals.

NL West-1st place Dodgers, 2nd place Giants. Highest payroll Dodgers. 2nd highest payroll Giants.

Money buys you victories. Plain and simple. Are there other components? Of course there are. You need smart people running your organization. That is why the Twins do so well year after year and why the A’s used to do well. But the window of opportunity is small. They need everything to go right like the Rays last year. They are not going to be perennial World Series contenders. In fact, how many championships have those three teams won this decade? Zero. There you go.

And yes, you need to draft smart. The Yankee fans always say that they drafted Jeter and Pasada. And if other teams drafted this well, they would be just as good. I guarantee you that if Jeter and Pasada had been drafted by the Brewers and Pirates, they would still be in New York. There is no way those organizations could have kept those guys financially when they first became free agents.

Finally, yes I know. The MLB playoffs is the great equalizer. I have always found it fascinating that this sport has a 162-game season where the cream inevitably rises to the top. But then you enter a best of 5 playoff series where if you have three bad days or encounter two hot pitchers, you’re done. This is why Florida has won two championships. They took advantage of their small window of opportunity the year they spent money and had good players and then they got hot at the right time. And this is why conversely why the Yankees have not won a championship in a decade. They make the playoffs every year but they have found themselves matching up against a red hot team that finds a way to win three or four games in a playoff series against them.

My vote is to contract all but the Yankees, Mets, Angels, Dodgers, Cubs, White Sox and Red Sox. Let those four cities have baseball and they can enjoy it in their own little worlds. Meanwhile the rest of the country can enjoy a true sports league like the NFL. Yankee and Red Sox fans can then walk around with that big trophy and the rest of us will say, “Who cares. When is the NFL draft?”