The Surprise of No Surprise

So last night I was eating a sundae and watching the Yankees nearly get no-hit by Brandon Morrow, who was making his first major league start for the Seattle Mariners. Caught up in the moment, the announcers performed an extended riff linking the Yankees’ futility against Morrow and the impending snapping of their 13-year-in-a-row playoff appearance streak. Eventually the talk turned to how inflated the Yankee payroll is, and how spending hundreds of millions of dollars doesn’t guarantee a playoff spot, and how you can’t buy a World Series, etc etc. I mean (I don’t mean, I’m just affecting the attitude of the announcers here), I mean, just look at the Tampa Bay Rays! They’re beating the Yankees and the Red Sox! And they only pay their players with preloaded CostCo gift cards!

Now, I like hating on the Yankees.  I do.  I really do. But, but, but–let’s try and have some accuracy in our criticism is all. And also, hey!– leave the Red Sox out of this.

True, the Rays have a better record than the Yankees. This year. For the first time ever. And how did they achieve this, while spending $160 million less? ‘Tis a miracle!

Well, yes and no. But mostly no. As Patrick Ewing almost said, the Yankees may spend a lot of money, but they have a lot of money to spend. They spent all that money signing scads of former All-Stars in an escalating arms race with themselves. Some of those signings worked out better than others–ahem–but here’s the thing: through it all, the Yankees made the playoffs. For 13 years in a row. The Rays did not make the playoffs. For 10 years in a row–or, in other words, their entire existence thus far. To maintain their streak, the Yankees had to find new players to complement their core of Jeter/Posada/Rivera. And since the Yankees were always in a pennant race, the essential attribute for these new players was that they had to be ready to make immediate onfield contributions. Which meant that they had to be older, proven, reliable veterans. Or, in other words, expensive. Or, in other other words, the Yankees became prisoners to their success.

Meanwhile, the Rays did not have access to Steinbrenner’s money. But, as Billy Beane and his legion of statbots demonstrated, money isn’t the only resource. And just as Beane discovered an arbitrage opportunity by hording undervalued on-base machines, the Rays took advantage of the resource that they had in most abundance: time. 

Consider this: While the Yankees were piling up division titles, the Rays were finishing last in all of baseball. Meaning that they got really, really high draft picks for a lot of years in a row. Those draft picks became Aubrey Huff, Carl Crawford, Evan Longoria, B.J. Upton, Delmon Young, Elijah Dukes, Rocco Baldelli, Andy Sonnanstine, and David Price. Heck, they even had superstud Josh Hamilton for three years before he had to take some time off.

A lot of teams draft really promising players every year, but none of them had Tampa Bay’s luxury of waiting to find out if that promise would be realized. The Red Sox drafted Hanley Ramirez, and all indications were that he’d be great. But the pressure to win now meant he was valuable to them not because of his future potential but because of the established players they could get in return for him on the open market. In this case, that decision worked out pretty well for everyone*. The broader point is that only time will tell if a highly-regarded young player will avoid injury, flameout, drugs, whatever, to actually become a major league player. Most teams can’t wait. The Rays could.

This luxury extended beyond the draft, too. The Rays were so awful–and with no hope of improving any time soon–for so long, it made no sense to hold onto middle-of-the-road veterans. Yet other teams, either legitimately locked in pennant races or deluded into thinking they were, were eager for exactly that sort of player. Victor Zambrano? Go right ahead Mets, he’s yours. Just give us one of your unproven prospects in return…say, the best pitcher in your farm league. Julio Lugo? Sure thing, Houston. That’ll cost you two prized prospects. 

So after 10 years of futility, the Rays are first in the AL East (though, maybe not for long…). And that is exciting. But it really shouldn’t be a surprise. Their farm system had been consistently ranked as the best in baseball for a number of years. Couple that with the fact that they had absolutely no incentive to mortgage their future by trading those prospects for veteran players, and an astute analyst might conclude that, sometime soon, the Rays would start winning a lot of games. In fact, many analysts did say this, though the Rays are currently exceeding even those bullish predictions.

The point is that there aren’t any real miracles in baseball (sorry!). In the post-Moneyball era, it’s time to stop thinking of money as the only tradeable resource teams have in the marketplace. A smart team with realistic ideas about the future should be able to compete at just as high a level as the Yankees.

******

That isn’t to say that money isn’t a hugely important resource. I’ve heard some talk on various broadcasts and websites about how the fact that so few “big money” teams are heading to the playoffs is somehow a rebuke of their profligacy. Well, sort of, but not really. Let’s take a look at this chart for a minute.

With the two highest payrolls, the Yankees and the Tigers are unlikely to make the postseason. The Mariners and Braves, the 9th and 10th highest payrolls, are definitely not.  Of the remaining 6, 3 are either definitely or very, very likely to make the postseason (Angels, Cubs, Red Sox), and the other three are pretty likely, though maybe not (Mets, White Sox, Dodgers). So possibly 6 of the top 10** highest payrolls are playoffs-bound, which are pretty good odds.

**Obviously, on a list where the 2nd highest total is closer to the 22nd highest than it is to the 1st, groupings like “top 10″ are arbitrary and pretty much meaningless, but I’m trying to make a point here so bear with me.

Also, many of these teams are in direct competition with one another for playoff spots on a divisional basis. Which is to say that since each division can only send one representative to the playoffs, not including the Wild Card, then if one team makes it, the other necessarily cannot. For instance, the Yankees (#1), Red Sox (#4), and Blue Jays (#12, but only $2 million out of the top 10) can’t all make the playoffs at the same time. Same with the Mets (#3), Braves (#10), and Phillies (#13). Also, unless the Wild Card comes out of the AL Central, either the Tigers (#2) or White Sox (#5) was likely to stay home before the season even began. 

Some teams spend a lot and win, others spend a lot and lose. Same goes for teams that don’t spend a lot. So I guess my point is…spend a lot of money? No, that’s not exactly right. I guess my point is that there are certain narratives that, for some reason or another, people want to be true and, like a drunk man leaning on a light post, they look for statistics that give them support rather than illumination. For a while, the narrative was that the Yankees bought their championships. Now that they are losing (or not winning as much) the narrative goes that overspending is foolish and futile. Neither story is true.

What is undeniably true is that the Yankees are freaking jerks.

*XYZ, Josh.