Money makes the world go ’round, even (and especially) in Major League Baseball.
If nothing else, money makes baseball’s off-season much more interesting, with teams handing out absurdly large contracts left and right, to the likes of Carl Crawford, Jayson Werth and Cliff Lee.
The teams that contend year after year–the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox and the Philadelphia Phillies, among others—are among the biggest spenders, while those that always struggle or only occasionally have good seasons—the Pittsburgh Pirates, the San Diego Padres and the Oakland A’s, to name a few, spend only a fraction of what the former teams do on their payrolls.
Of course, more money doesn’t necessarily result in more wins; just ask the New York Mets, the Chicago Cubs and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
With that in mind, the following list is a ranking of all 30 MLB teams based on how much money each spent per win earned in 2010. Admittedly, there is much more to evaluating the success or failure of a franchise than just dividing its opening day payroll by the number of victories it earns, both in the regular season and the post-season.
That being said, there is still quite an interesting mix across the spectrum, with a remarkably large percentage of 2010’s biggest winners coming from baseball’s batch of frequently frugal spenders.