3 replies to this topic

[BSLChrisStoner]

The Ringer: Baseball’s Biggest Spenders Couldn’t Buy Tickets to October

[jamesdean]

I have mixed feelings about it.  In one sense, I love it that all these filthy rich organizations that think they can buy rings, still have to perform on the field, proving once again that what you see on paper doesn't guarantee it's going to translate in the win column. I especially enjoyed watching the Yankees, Red Sox and Padres stink it up.  On the other hand, it's not good because you know Angelos is thinking to himself, "man, I hardly spent any money on payroll and we won 101 games while those other teams were epic failures."  I hope it doesn't pour even more cement into his hard head that spending money on the best players doesn't mean much at the end of the day. 

[dude]

I have mixed feelings about it.  

 

You don't have to have mixed feelings about it because this article/information has no bearing on the Orioles approach.

 

The Orioles spending approach isn't about the Team on the field.

[dude]

Since they provided the correlation, I'm not going to check it although, intuitively, I'm actually surprised it's a positive number.

 

The analysis of the [factual numbers] is grossly lacking.

 

The bigger problem is statements like

But for payroll to have almost no relationship to results, a lot of wacky stuff has to go wrong—or right, depending on one’s perspective.

 

...an average correlation of .4 doesn't suggest there's much correlation to results ANYTIME so while anyone can provide perspective on whatever variance there is year-to-year, the fact is that payroll is NEVER the answer.

 

I'll also continue to point out (let's do this work, Ben or anyone) that when you're trying to correlate wins with spending and you have teams (fewer this year, but 5-8 many years) that AREN'T SPENDING because they AREN"T MAKING AN EFFORT TO WIN (ie rebuilding) that the only well correlated data in the set (what would be the lower left quad of both spending and wins) isn't focused on the notion of WINS.

 

TAKE ALL OF THAT DATA OUT and the correlation is worse than the barely modest correlation.