Nine teams entered the 2012 Major League Baseball season with payrolls in excess of $100 million.
Courtesy of the USA Today, here's a list of those nine teams from lowest to highest: St. Louis Cardinals ($110.3 million), San Francisco Giants ($117.6 million), Miami Marlins ($118 million), Texas Rangers ($120.5 million), Detroit Tigers ($132.3 million), Los Angeles Angels ($154.5 million), Boston Red Sox ($173.2 million), Philadelphia Phillies ($174.5 million), New York Yankees ($198 million).
At the moment, two of those teams are division leaders, as the Rangers are on top of the AL West and the Cardinals are on top of the NL Central. Five of them—the Phillies, Giants, Angels, Red Sox and Yankees—wouldn't qualify for the playoffs if the season ended today, even with the extra wild card.
The Phillies, Angels, Red Sox and Yankees are all in either last place or tied for last place in their respective divisions.
Clearly, this is not a banner year for the big-spending model of success made famous by the Yankees and Red Sox. Come to think of it, that model seems to be getting its comeuppance in 2012.
No doubt this reality brings a smile to many a baseball fan out there, some of whom probably even root for the big-spenders who have struggled so mightily to get off the ground this season. If there's one thing all of us want to believe when it comes to baseball, it's that money can't buy championships.
This is a notion that, thankfully, has been gaining more and more traction in recent years, and the evidence is there to support it. All you have to do is take a look back at recent World Series history.
2011
The St. Louis Cardinals, ranked 11th in MLB in team payroll, win the World Series in seven games over the Texas Rangers. Home-grown superstar Albert Pujols hits three home runs in Game 3, and home-grown star David Freese wins the World Series MVP thanks to a .348 average and seven RBI in the seven games. His heroics in Game 6 saved the Cardinals from elimination.
The Texas Rangers, ranked 13th in MLB in payroll, come within a strike of winning it all. It was, however, their second straight World Series appearance.
2010
The San Francisco Giants, ranked ninth in MLB in payroll, win the World Series thanks primarily to their home-grown pitching staff. Barry Zito, the most expensive player on their payroll, was left off the postseason roster.
The Rangers, then ranked 27th in MLB in payroll, make it to the World Series thanks largely to their home-grown and highly powerful offense. AL MVP Josh Hamilton was acquired in a trade a few years earlier.
2009
The New York Yankees, ranked first in the MLB in payroll, win the World Series with help from high-priced free agents CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira and A.J. Burnett.
The Philadelphia Phillies, ranked seventh in MLB in payroll, lose the World Series a year after winning it. Midseason trade acquisition Cliff Lee got the victories in the only two games the Phillies won in the series.
2008
The Phillies, then ranked 12th in MLB in payroll, win the World Series with help from home-grown stars like Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins and Cole Hamels.
The Tampa Bay Rays, ranked 29th in MLB in payroll, make it to the first World Series in franchise history with a roster full of home-grown talent.
Okay, we can stop here. You probably get the gist.
In the last four years, we've seen one mega-spender win the World Series, and that was the Yankees in 2009. Their victory came as a relief for Yankees fans, and as a crushingly depressing turn of events for all other baseball fans, for the Yankees proved that year that a team with a bloated payroll and a roster stuffed with high-priced free agents can win the World Series.
The bright side is that that Yankees team is the exception, not the rule.
Recent history very clearly suggests that it's a better idea to build a World Series contender from scratch than it is to buy one. Money can obviously help, but teams like the Rays, Phillies, Rangers and Giants all got as far as they did by drafting and developing first, and spending second.
Despite the fact we associate the Yankees and Red Sox with bloated payrolls that don't get the job done, they too had success using the model used by the teams listed above.
The Yankees acquired stars from other teams during their dynasty years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but the core of that team was comprised of home-grown stars like Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera, and they had a knack for getting players like Scott Brosius and Shane Spencer to overachieve.
Granted, the Red Sox team that snapped the Curse of the Bambino in 2004 featured a core of stars that came from outside the organization, but the Red Sox team that won it all in 2007 was arguably a better team, and it featured plenty of home-grown talent. Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis and Jonathan Papelbon starred for the Red Sox during the regular season, and Jon Lester and Jacoby Ellsbury came through in a big way in the World Series.
When the Yankees' dynasty was alive and well in the late 90s and early 2000s, they were the class of baseball. When the Red Sox won it all again in 2007, they were the class of baseball. They had money, to be sure, but they were also strong organizations who cultivated talented players down on the farm.
The mistake both teams made was to try to hold on to their respective dynasties by writing checks whenever problems arose. This is something the Yankees have done consistently over the last decade, and the Red Sox have seen more harm than good come from their signings of John Lackey and Carl Crawford. Both teams are loaded with bad contracts, so it's not exactly a surprise that they're both languishing in the cellar in the American League East.
Despite the warning signs that have emanated from these two franchises in recent years, a few select teams have decided to try their own hands at the big-spending model anyway.
The two that immediately spring to mind are the Detroit Tigers and the Los Angeles Angels. The Tigers have been spending pretty consistently since around 2007 or so, and they broke the bank by signing Prince Fielder to a massive contract this offseason. Despite their heavy payroll, they're under .500 and in third place in the AL Central.
The Angels are an even worse headache. They've developed a track record over the last couple years of carelessly throwing money around, and they too broke the bank this offseason by signing both C.J. Wilson and Albert Pujols. Neither of them has been worth the money, and the Angels currently sit in last place in the AL West.
Both the Tigers and Angels are guilty of making the exact same mistake the Yankees and Red Sox have been making for years now: They've tried to improve their odds of winning a championship by spending.
They've forgotten where they came from. The Angels ranked 15th in the league in payroll when they won it all in 2002, and the Tigers ranked 14th in payroll when they went to the World Series in 2006. Instead of trying to be like the Yankees and Red Sox, they should have just been themselves.
The Cardinals represent proof that patience can pay off. They had a payroll of just under $89 million when they won it all in 2006. When they won it all last year, their payroll was a little over $105 million. For a five-year span, that's not a huge increase in payroll.
To put that in perspective, the Tigers have increased their payroll by about $50 million since losing the World Series to the Cardinals in 2006. The Cardinals have upped their payroll by about $20 million, and they're the better team at this point in time.
The different paths taken by these two teams since 2006 goes to show that it's better for a team to be smart with its money rather than, for lack of a better word, reckless.
Fortunately, there are only a handful of teams in Major League Baseball that have enough money to be reckless with. The teams that do have money to throw around would be wise to heed a very simple mantra:
Just because you can spend doesn't mean you should. There are better ways to win it all.
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