Baseball's efficiency rankings

[thejuggernaut]

Great read, great info.

Even though Verducci is a rat piece of garbage.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/w ... ?eref=sihp

The Yankees left little doubt that they were the team of the last decade, but what team was the most efficient from 2000 through 2009? Did the Yankees get the most bang for their 1.6 billion bucks or did someone else win more efficiently? And which team wasted enough money to claim the title of the least efficient team of the decade? The answers might surprise you -- and that means you at the players association, too -- especially because the most and least efficient teams are not determined solely by market size.

First, let's start out with a simple basis of efficiency: what each team spent per win for the decade. Take total payroll (in this case, opening day payrolls), divide by the number of wins, and you get Cost Per Win (CPW):
Cost Per Win
Team Payroll* Wins CPW+
Yankees $1,685.3 965 174.6
Mets $1,086.5 815 133.3
Red Sox $1,168.1 920 127.0
Dodgers $1,002.0 862 116.2
Cubs $906.8 807 112.4
Mariners $880.8 837 105.2
Tigers $761.3 729 104.4
Braves $927.0 892 104.0
Orioles $717.2 698 102.7
Angels $887.2 900 98.5
Phillies $794.6 850 93.5
Astros $771.6 832 92.7
Cardinals $843.1 913 92.3
Giants $789.1 855 92.3
Rangers $710.8 776 91.6
D-Backs $730.1 805 90.7
White Sox $773.5 857 90.3
Blue Jays $679.0 805 84.3
Indians $650.5 816 79.7
Rockies $612.4 769 79.6
Reds $583.2 751 77.7
Brewers $527.2 741 71.1
Padres $546.7 769 71.1
Royals $473.6 672 70.5
Nationals $464.3 711 65.3
Pirates $437.1 681 64.2
Athletics $522.6 890 58.7
Twins $501.9 863 58.2
Rays $400.8 694 57.8
Marlins $349.0 811 43.0
* = Millions; + = PW in Thousands

Cost Per Win is good, but it's only a start. CPW doesn't consider what a team achieved, and because the gap in payrolls is far greater than the gap in wins, CPW skews toward small-market teams who don't spend and don't contend often. The goal in pro sports is to win titles, not just games.

That brings us to Step 2: what did the team achieve in the past decade? There are five levels of achievement in baseball:

1. Give your fans a pennant race (defined here are finishing within five games of a playoff spot).

2. Make the postseason.

3. Win a postseason series.

4. Win the pennant.

5. Win the World Series.

Now comes the fun part. I assigned teams what I call Achievement Points for every level reached, with graduating values the more they advanced through the five levels: one point for being in a pennant race, two points for making the playoffs, three for winning each postseason series, four for winning a pennant, and five for winning a World Series. A team could accrue a maximum of 21 points for a world championship season.

Now let's look at Achievement Points for the decade, broken down by Pennant Races (PR), Postseason Appearances (PA), Postseason Series wins (PS), Pennants won (P) and World Series wins (WS):
Achievement Points
Team PR PA PS P WS AP
Yankees 9 9 11 4 2 86
Red Sox 7 6 8 2 2 61
Cardinals 9 7 8 2 1 60
Phillies 7 3 5 2 1 41
Angels 7 6 4 1 1 40
D-Backs 5 3 4 1 1 32
White Sox 5 3 3 1 1 29
Astros 6 3 3 1 0 25
Braves 7 6 1 0 0 22
Giants 6 3 2 1 0 22
Marlins 2 1 3 1 1 22
Mets 4 2 3 1 0 21
Twins 6 5 1 0 0 19
Athletics 6 5 1 0 0 19
Dodgers 5 4 2 0 0 19
Rockies 2 2 2 1 0 16
Tigers 2 1 2 1 0 14
Cubs 5 3 1 0 0 14
Rays 1 1 2 1 0 13
Mariners 3 2 2 0 0 13
Indians 4 2 1 0 0 11
Padres 4 2 0 0 0 8
Brewers 2 1 0 0 0 4
Blue Jays 1 0 0 0 0 1
Rangers 1 0 0 0 0 1
Reds 1 0 0 0 0 1
Nationals 0 0 0 0 0 0
Orioles 0 0 0 0 0 0
Pirates 0 0 0 0 0 0
Royals 0 0 0 0 0 0

So now we know how much teams spent per win and what they achieved. Put those factors together and you can define how efficiently the clubs operated, or to borrow the precise language of economists, bang for the buck.

Think of Achievement Points as write-downs of what it cost to run a team. A pennant-winning season, for instance, is money well spent when compared to a last-place finish. So take each team's Cost Per Win basis and subtract its Achievement Points, and you're left with a measure of efficiency I'll call the Efficiency Rating (ER). The Efficiency Rating is meant more for fun than for scientific purposes; it's not intended for vetting by the Brookings Institution. It's a shorthand gauge of what kind of bang for their buck teams managed over the last decade.

That said, here are the five most efficient teams of the past decade:
Efficiency Rating
Top Five
Team CPW+ AP ER
Marlins 43.0 22 21.0
Cardinals 92.3 60 32.3
Twins 58.2 19 39.2
Athletics 58.7 19 39.7
Rays 57.8 13 44.8
CPW = Cost Per Win (in thousands) AP = Achievement Points ER = Efficiency Rating

The Marlins run a very lean operation -- too lean according to the union, which won a major concession last week when MLB essentially put Florida on probation for the next three seasons. The Marlins either must start putting more of their revenue-sharing handouts into payroll or the union can take them to arbitration. (The Marlins quickly responded by completing a $39 million extension for pitcher Josh Johnson.)

Florida took advantage of the system over the past decade. The Marlins found a way to spend as little as possible and win just enough -- well, maybe. They did win one world championship in the decade but gave their fans only one other pennant race. Here's a good question for fans: would you take one world championship every decade if it meant punting eight of the other nine years?

If your answer is no, then the Cardinals are your choice for the most efficient team. They spent almost $300 million more than the Marlins and were in a race every year but one. St. Louis achieved virtually as much as the Red Sox but did so spending $325 million less. (Okay, it helped that they didn't have the Yankees in their league.) Much of the credit for St. Louis' efficiency has to go to manager Tony La Russa and pitching coach Dave Duncan, who have saved the franchise millions of dollars by maximizing personnel, and to the incomparable Albert Pujols, who was a relative bargain for what he gave St. Louis. The Cardinals are unlikely to be so efficient this decade if they are to keep Pujols with the recently signed Matt Holliday.

And now the bad news . . . The five least efficient teams in baseball over the past decade:
Efficiency Rating
Bottom Five
Team CPW+ AP ER
Mariners 105.2 13 92.2
Dodgers 116.2 19 97.2
Cubs 112.4 14 98.4
Orioles 102.7 0 102.7
Mets 133.3 21 112.3
CPW+ = Cost Per Win (thousands) AP = Achievement Points ER = Efficiency Rating

How badly run are the Mets? Think about this: the Mets played in a World Series and still were the least efficient team in baseball. They spent $737.5 million more than Florida and won four more games than the Marlins.

The Orioles stand as a reminder of why the worst mistake in baseball is to spend when you are not ready to win. Instead of trying to hang with the Yankees and Red Sox, Baltimore would have been better off to strip down its payroll. Payrolls are like undivided highways: the worst place to travel is the middle of the road.

And here are the rest of the clubs that form the middle of the efficiency pack:
Efficiency Rating
No. 6 through No. 25
Team CPW+ AP ER
Phillies 93.5 41 52.5
Angels 98.5 40 58.5
D-Backs 90.7 32 58.7
White Sox 90.3 29 61.3
Padres 71.1 8 63.1
Rockies 79.6 16 63.6
Pirates 64.2 0 64.2
Nationals 65.3 0 65.3
Red Sox 127.0 61 66.0
Brewers 71.1 4 67.1
Astros 92.7 25 67.7
Indians 79.7 11 68.7
Giants 92.3 22 70.3
Royals 70.5 0 70.5
Reds 77.7 1 76.7
Braves 104.0 22 82.0
Blue Jays 84.3 1 83.3
Yankees 174.6 86 88.6
Tigers 104.4 14 90.4
Rangers 91.6 1 90.6
CPW+ = Cost per wins (thousands) AP = Achievement Points ER = Efficiency Rating

Here are some other observations about the results:

• Who knew the Mariners were run this badly? They have received a pass for running an inefficient operation. Competing with only three other teams in their division, they managed to take part in only three pennant races in the decade while seeing the playoffs twice. And only seven teams in all of baseball spent more money.

• Speaking of the AL West, has anybody had an easier go of it than the Angels? Each year they only have to be better than three teams to make the playoffs -- two of them were among the six least efficient teams in baseball and the third spent the fourth-lowest total in the league on players.

• The Yankees spent 31 percent more than the next biggest spender, Boston. By laying out $1.6 billion dollars, it would have been difficult for them to be among the most efficient teams in baseball -- but not impossible. All they needed to do to crack the top five in efficiency was to win the 2003, 2004 and 2008 World Series in addition to their 2000 and 2009 titles.

• Eight of the 13 most efficient teams reside in the NL. Why? They don't have to deal with the Yankees and Red Sox unless they reach the World Series. The rivalry between New York and Boston -- what it does for the economic system, interest, ratings, etc. -- could be considered the single most powerful engine that drove the game in the past decade.

And how much did they dominate the AL? The Yankees and Red Sox won 19 postseason series -- more than the rest of the league combined (16).

[killeverything]

I'm not the biggest Verducci fan either, but sometimes he hits one out of the park.

Great read. I was kind of expecting some of those results when I started reading. Not Florida being one of the top though, but Seattle being at the bottom.

With Jack Z running the show. I think it will change in the next to years for the M's. And as long as Minyana still has a job, NY is only going to get worse.