It must be nice to be the general manager of the New York Yankees or the Los Angeles Dodgers.
If your club is struggling, if you need another couple of stars to compete for a world title, you can easily go out and get them. Simply gather a wheelbarrow of cash from your bountiful treasury — or deal a couple of prospects from your well-lubricated farm system — and you can obtain almost any player you might desire.
This system worked flawlessly a century ago when the Yankees purchased Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox, and it was equally effective this summer when the Dodgers plucked Max Scherzer and Trea Turner from the Washington Nationals.
It’s no wonder that the Yankees and Dodgers are perpetually successful, that New York is heading for its 29th consecutive season above .500 (by far the longest such streak in the majors) and the Dodgers are in line for their ninth straight playoff spot (ditto).
Don’t make the mistake of believing that these successful runs are entirely merited. The Yankees and Dodgers are respectively the dominant big-league franchises in North America’s two largest and richest markets. They’re able to generate enormous profits without much effort, and they use those earnings to assemble high-priced and high-powered rosters.
So it came as no surprise the other day when USA Today reported that only two major-league clubs boast 2021 payrolls in excess of $200 million, based on private data obtained by the newspaper.
You guessed it. The Yankees and the Dodgers.
Los Angeles is actually in the lead, paying its players a total of $261 million this season. New York is a comfortable runner-up at nearly $204 million. The average payroll for the other 28 franchises is roughly $127 million per club — less than half of the Dodgers’ outlay — and the salary totals for 10 of those teams are less than $100 million.
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The National Football League learned long ago that financial parity translates to competitive excitement, which is why it requires its local payrolls to be kept in equilibrium.
Bert Bell, the NFL’s commissioner from 1946 to 1959, established the communal philosophy that governs the league to this day. “I’ve always had a theory that pro football is like a chain,’’ he once said. “The league is no stronger than its weakest link.”
Baseball, needless to say, has never absorbed this lesson, which is why the Dodgers’ current payroll is larger than the combined 2021 expenditures by the Indians, Marlins, Orioles, and Pirates. It’s also why Los Angeles appears to be playoff-bound again, while Cleveland, Miami, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh are a collective 105 games below .500.
I’m not saying that large payrolls automatically guarantee success, nor that favorable demographics ensure a bright destiny. Counterexamples are close at hand: The New York Mets are spending $196 million this year for yet another mediocre record, and the Los Angeles Angels ($183 million) never seem able to get over the hump.
But there is no denying the general correlation between money and success. Let’s line up the 30 big-league clubs from the highest to the lowest payroll, then slice the list into three groups of equal size. Here are the results:
The 10 biggest spenders have an average payroll of $193 million. The collective 2021 record for these affluent clubs (as of August 30) is 83 games above .500.
The 10 teams in the middle of the pack are paying their players an average of $134 million, an outlay that is 31% below the top echelon. Their on-field mark is slightly positive, sitting 29 games on the sunny side of .500.
The 10 clubs with the lowest expenditures carry an average payroll of $74 million, submerging them 62% under the corresponding figure for the highest group. They’re currently 112 games below .500.
If the playoffs began today, five of the 10 participants would be clubs with payrolls greater than $160 million. These gold-plated contenders include the Dodgers and Yankees, of course, along with the Boston Red Sox, Houston Astros, and San Francisco Giants.
Three other prospective playoff teams — the Atlanta Braves, Chicago White Sox, and Cincinnati Reds — pay in the range of $130 million to $150 million. Those aren’t exorbitant sums in this day and age, yet they still exceed the average expenditures for all 28 clubs besides the Dodgers and Yankees.
Only two of 2021’s playoff frontrunners can truly be called frugal. The Milwaukee Brewers have fashioned a 79-52 record despite a payroll of just $105 million. And the ever-amazing Tampa Bay Rays have done even better on the field (82-48) despite spending even less ($77 million).
It’s amusing to note that the tightfisted Brewers and Rays hold comfortable leads in their divisions. The free-spending Dodgers and Yankees, on the other hand, would have to settle for wild-card berths if the season ended today.
It turns out, I guess, that money can only buy you so much.