The influence of money on baseball reared its ugly — or, depending on what MLB team you’re rooting for, beautiful — head in 2022.
The relationship between an MLB team’s payroll and the number of games it won reached a five-season high in 2022, and hit its second-highest level in a decade.
Relationships between factors — payroll and victories, for instance — can be reliably estimated using a mathematical process known as regression analysis. In regression analysis, a score of +1.0 equals a perfect relationship. A score of 0.0 indicates no relationship whatsoever, while a score of -1.0 equals a perfectly reverse relationship: the more money you spend the fewer games you win.
The latter, of course, isn’t an issue in baseball.
For the 2022 season, regression analysis pegs the relationship between money spent and victories at +0.61, which is a strong relationship indeed.
It’s also well above both the 10-year average of just 0.35, as well as the 2021 relationship, which was +0.40.
In fact the only higher relationship since 2012 — when MLB last changed its postseason structure — was during the 2016 season, when the relationship between money and wins reached its recent high of +0.62.
What happened in 2022 to drive the relationship between money and wins up so much just since last year?
There were some obvious factors. For one, average team spending rose significantly. Driven by the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers, the average team opening day payroll rose from $129 million in 2021 to more than $150 million this year.
And when competitive balance assessments are figured into the equation, Cot’s Contracts puts 2022 per-team spending at $168.1 million.
But the stronger relationship between money and wins is more than just a matter of willing spenders. Any drunken sailor can spend money. The richest teams not only spent more, but for once in 2022 they actually spent wisely.
The five teams with the largest opening day payrolls — the Dodgers, Mets, Yankees, Phillies, and Padres — all qualified for postseason play, as did two others among the 10 highest spenders (the Braves and Astros).
The only big spenders who did not qualify for postseason play were the Red Sox, White Sox, and Angels, who ranked sixth through eighth, respectively, in Opening Day payroll.
The math is almost identical when measured on the basis of competitive balance tax payments: Five of the top six and seven of the top 10 were playoff teams.
But isn’t that always the case? Don’t higher-spending teams always out-play lower-spending teams?
In a word, no. In 2021, just to pick one recent season, only four of the 10 highest-spending teams reached postseason play. The other six postseason teams ranked 12th, 13th, 15th, 16th, 19th, and 26th in payroll.
That’s a nice, even distribution. The World Series-winning Braves, for the record, had an Opening Day payroll of $131 million, ranking 15th … dead center.
During the last full season before 2021, the season of 2019, five playoff teams did rank among the top 10. But they were widely dispersed: the Yankees were second, the Nationals fourth, the Dodgers fifth, the Cardinals seventh, and the Astros 10th.
The remaining five, and their payroll rank, were: the Brewers 16th, the Twins 17th, the Braves 20th, the A’s 25th and the Rays, 30th.
There was still room in the playoffs for bargain hunting teams…just not as much. The Cleveland Guardians won 92 games and the AL Central despite having the smallest payroll ($90.2 million) in their division, about $14 million less than the next smallest, the Royals. They ranked 27th in spending. The Mariners and Rays ranked 23rd and 24th, respectively.
Here’s a table showing the strength of the relationship between money spent on payroll and number of wins. Keep in mind that a score of 1.0 indicates an absolute relationship, while a score of 0.0 indicates no relationship at all.
2013 — 0.32
2014 — 0.25
2015 — 0.21
2016 — 0.62
2017 — 0.25
2018 — 0.28
2019 — 0.41
2020 — 0.16
2021 — 0.40
2022 — 0.61
What occurred, then, in 2022, represented a rare front office synthesis: The willingness to spend lots of money and the wisdom to know how to productively do so.