Two wins away from quieting the complainers

What are the biggest complaints you hear fans say about the state of baseball?

Two I constantly hear are "The Northeast Bias" and "If you don't have a huge payroll, you don't have a shot."

OK... now look at the current playoff situation.

Let's say the Tigers beat the Yankees tonight. It's one game. Anything can happen in one game.
Let's say the Cardinals are loose and take advantage of a tight Phillies team. (Like YOU thought this series was going 5 games!)

Those are two games, each being won by the visiting team. Not anything outrageous (like both the Braves AND Red Sox flopping down the stretch.)

Guess what would be the result?

No team east of Detroit would be in the post season.
St. Louis... Texas... Detroit... and either Arizona or Milwaukee.

And guess what would ALSO happen?

The top 9 payrolls in baseball would all be playing golf during the LCS.

If these two events happen, the Yankees and Phillies (1 and 2 in payroll) would join #3 Boston, #4 Anaheim, #5 White Sox, #6 Cubs, #7 Mets, #8 Giants and #9 Twins on the links.

No coast teams.
None of the top 30% of the top payrolls.

If that happens, I expect a LOT of people who complain about the state of baseball to be watching... and cheering... and realizing the myths of the inequity of balance in baseball is just that.

I talked about it before the Super Bowl this year. I stand by everything I said.

Some pretty low expectations in Dodger Town

The Dodgers can meet payroll and suddenly that is cause for celebration?
Seriously, that is what it has come to?

Congrats Mr. McCourt. You own one of the most famous baseball teams who play in the second biggest market in the country with a rabid fan base and you have made enough money to not bounce the checks.

MAZELTOV!

Now what are you going to do NEXT month?
You can't pull the Winona Ryder in Reality Bites trick of paying for everyone's gas.

The Dodgers will start dumping players in 2 weeks.

Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong

There are two commonly accepted ideas about baseball regarding payroll and the playoffs... and both have become conventional wisdom:




1. Only the teams with the biggest payrolls can have any success

2. It's the same teams year in and year out.


Let's look at #1.
In 2007, yes the team with the second highest payroll, the Red Sox, won the World Series.
But the other three teams that advanced to the League Championship Series were all in the bottom third of payrolls.

Cleveland - 23 out of 30
Colorado - 25 out of 30
Arizona - 26 out of 30

The NLCS was between the 4th and 5th lowest payrolls in the National League.
Meanwhile the 3rd, 4th and 6th highest payrolls all were on the golf course when the playoffs began.

And it gets even more pronounced this year.
Which team has the highest payroll? The New York Yankees... playing golf.
Which team has the second highest payroll? The Detroit Tigers... FORE!
Which team has the third highest payroll? The New York Mets... no doubt stuck in a sand trap.

Meanwhile the second lowest payroll in all of baseball... the Tampa Bay Rays... won their division.
For $6.6 million less than what the Yankees paid for only Carl Pavano, Jason Giambi and Bobby Abreu... Tampa Bay has home field advantage in the first round.

Meanwhile the Florida Marlins, with a $22 million payroll (again, less than Jason Giambi's salary) finished with a better record than the NL West Champion Dodgers.


Let's look at #2.

Do you know how many teams played in the post season in 2006, 2007 AND 2008?
None.
Zilch.
You can write it on an atom.
De nada.

Not the Yankees... not the Red Sox... not the Dodgers... not the Mets... not the Cardinals.
Nobody.

Can you imagine the NFL or NBA playoffs without some of the constants making the playoffs?

And take it back a year... since 2005... the League Championship Series seen 11 out of a possible 12 different teams play.
The only team in that span to play in more than one LCS?
The Yankees? The Red Sox?
Nope... the Cardinals, who lost in 2005 and won in 2006.

I know I made a lot of these points last year... but you people are NOT LISTENING TO ME!!!!

In this case, conventional wisdom is wrong.

Payroll Insanity

Hey Marlins… you had the opportunity to keep alive the ultimate Big Market/Small Market scenario.

The Marlins lost a couple of games to the lowly Giants in the bottom of the 9th and are slipping out of the realistic playoff picture.

Keep that in mind as I map this out:

The White Sox currently have a better winning percentage than the Red Sox.
The Red Sox lead over the Twins is only _ a game and they are tied in the loss column.
And the Red Sox have 60% of their rotation as a question mark with Beckett’s hand injury, Buccholz stinking and Paul Byrd without his injectable God.

The Rays are pulling away, the Yankees are dead as are the Tigers.

It is possible that the Red Sox, Yankees and Tigers… the three biggest payrolls in the AL, would all miss the playoffs.

Meanwhile the Rays with the smallest payroll would be in.
And the Twins, the team that was almost contracted and had to shed contracts last winter, might be in too.

And yet there are still some people who say baseball needs a salary cap to stay competitive.

Which brings us back to the Marlins.
If the Marlins won those games they’d still be in the hunt…
And with the Phillies pitching and hitting woes and the Mets bullpen in disarray, winning the division would have been in sight.

If that happened, then the Mets, the team with the highest payroll in the NL would be out and the Marlins, the smallest payroll in baseball, would be in.

What I am saying is… it’s not how much money you spend. It’s how you spend it.

Case in point… the Marlins let go of Carl Pavano and the Yankees signed him.
Which team was the smart one?

Guess what... the playoff system works!

I don't want to hear any complaints about how the baseball playoffs aren't fair.
I already covered how there is more variety in the playoffs than in the NFL but let's take a look at the 4 teams left in the playoffs.

You have the two teams tied for most wins in the AL (Red Sox and Indians) going for the AL championship.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

And then you have the two teams tied for the most wins in the NL (Rockies and Diamondbacks) going for the NL championship.

That's pretty cool!
We are assured the best teams are playing, thus not having another year where the regular season was rendered near obsolete.

And for the myth that only the highest payroll teams can win... there is only one team, the Red Sox in the top 22 payrolls.

Think about that... after all the bitching and moaning about how small budget teams can't compete... 75% of the remaining teams are from the bottom 8 payrolls.

And the remaining one is the new Evil Empire.