stone: Baseball price-performanceMarc points us towards a "nice graphic on
how teams are performing relative to their payroll." It is a nice graphic, but it's certainly not perfect. What would be more interesting to me is a graph showing marginal payroll vs. marginal wins for 2005.
... a major league team could probably win 40 games by only spending around $7.5 million (25 roster spots times $300,000). Dividing the numbers, this would only cost about $187,000 a win ... How much did major league teams pay for each win above replacement-level wins? About $1.5 million each.
-Dave Studeman
So, here are the six AL playoff contenders, ranked by cost per marginal win.
Cleveland -- $650,766
Oakland -- $946,600
ChiSox -- $1,142,177
Anaheim -- $1,743,072
Boston -- $2,103,034
Yankees -- $3,916,836
The Indians, A's and White Sox are all outperforming the $1.5M cost per marginal win while the Angels, Red Sox and Yankees are all spending too much. (Big surprise there!) I wonder if anyone in the history of baseball has ever overpaid for wins as eggregiously as the Yankees.. Does anyone know?