Budget Baseball: The Best Way to Get More Bang for Your Buck
As a form of entertainment, baseball is a business. Teams have costs and budgets that they need to adhere to in order to operate, and owners expect to make their investment back and then some. For those reasons, we often see teams try to run the lowest possible payroll while producing a winning product on the field by working to use young cost-controlled players developed in their minor league systems as a bulk of a 26 man rosters. Some teams work really well with their meager (by MLB standards) payroll, while others flounder at the bottom of the league. Let’s see a couple of examples of low payroll with homegrown talent and how they are used effectively.
Let’s compare a team regarded as the ultimate budget team to a team whose payroll is always below average and constantly cutting payroll. The Tampa Bay Rays to the Chicago White Sox. The Rays over the last 20 years have shown a knack for roster building with a minuscule payroll (ranking 27th this year) but maximum results. They are always competitive, and seem to win every trade they make. Seamlessly replacing every player they lose with one of equal or greater value. Chicago however, who is usually ranked near the bottom of the payroll list (18th this year surprisingly high), is quite possibly one of the worst teams of all time this season and has been abysmal since winning a World Series in 2005. Why have the approaches been similar, but yielded wildly different results? Well, the Rays have a notoriously good scouting and development pipeline, meaning that they only need to look for players to fit roles in their team rather than chase superstars via trade or free agency. They know when to trade for best value, such as when they received Tyler Glasnow and Parker Meadows for Chris Archer, then in turn used Glasnow to acquire Ryan Pepiot. They were also able to flip Meadows for Isaac Paredes, a rising star thanks to an approach change. This ability to continue to replace players with younger, cheaper, and more controllable talent has lead to long-term success, while adding free agents at a price that garners them the most bang for their buck. It is worth noting they haven't been able to capture a World Series title despite two trips to the Fall Classic. All of this has been done in a smaller media market with limited income from broadcasting money and in-person attendance due to their poor venue location.
The White Sox, on the other hand, built a young and long term core around players such as Luis Robert, Eloy Jimenez, and Yoan Moncada. They invested a bulk of their payroll into those three players and built a solid pitching staff before the 2019 season, and saw some decent success that was plagued by big injuries to their core. This has led to a massive payroll dump that saw them get rid of Reynaldo Lopez, Chris Sale, Dylan Cease, and Lucas Giolito. While they have been able to recoup some talent in a few of those trades, they have struggled to field their lineup at full strength, and the scant spending on the rest of the roster has produced historically bad results due to having too many players that aren’t fits onto the team’s system or philosophy in the lineup on a daily basis. Plus, despite playing in a large media market in which they can capitalize on higher income from TV deals and attendance, ownership wants to spend like Tampa Bay, to maximize their profits, rather than put themselves in a position to compete annually like the other Chicago team. This has resulted in 0 playoff wins since they last won the World Series, and inspires little confidence for the team moving forward.
Teams burn through pitchers at an unsustainable rate in order to yield greater results. They are willing to risk longevity for dominance, further stretching rosters already short on big league talent. This approach is what drives teams to lower payroll and move toward control at a discount. This is done to mitigate the impact of injured players by having several players that slot perfectly into a role while making less than market value. This has led to bad faith between players and clubs and it needs to change in order for things to improve for small market teams.
By Jackson Westfall