Baseball Salaries Don't Help You Win

Highest Paid Player currently is Alex Rodriguez

Baseball has been America’s pastime since the 1800’s; however, it hasn’t been the game that we know as Major League Baseball with a World Series until 1903. Since that time the Yankees have won 26 World Series, while the St. Louis Cardinals are far behind in second place with 10. Rounding out the top teams are the Red Sox with seven World Series, and the Giants, Athletics, Pirates, Dodgers, and Reds with five a piece. However, with the advent of the Wild Card and the Divisional Series since 1995, it has expanded teams that wouldn’t have otherwise been in the playoffs. The way this works is that there is an actual wild card team who has the fourth best record in each League, those leagues being the American and National Leagues. Salaries are the main motivating factor to win championships, although, that doesn't seem to necessarily help especially if you spend the most.

George Steinbrenner

In 2007 for example the wild card teams were the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees; however, by their payrolls they should have done much better, especially the Yankees. The Yankees alone spent $189,639,045, which was the most in all of baseball last season; however, they were wild card losers.

Roger Clemens the "Pro" Rated Pitcher

Based on that scale, you would think that they would have had the best players and would have won it all. Not necessarily true. One thing that hurts this argument, though, is that the Red Sox won the World Series this same year by being second in baseball with a team salary of $143,026,214, still almost 46 million dollars less than the Yankees, but nonetheless a big spender.

Roger Clemens


I don’t think you need to be the biggest spenders to win it all. Take the 2006 season for my next example. The St. Louis Cardinals were the 11th highest spender in all of baseball at $88,891,371, but unlike the Yankees who again lost in the Divisional, they won the World Series. Seven out of the 10 teams who spent more than the Cardinals didn’t make the playoffs. So what does this say about the teams paying these players? They aren’t worth any of it if they don’t win! Individual numbers mean absolutely nothing if they continue to be this selfish and not allow their teams to save some money to get other players to help them. If this trend continues, other teams will not win.