December 28, 2008
You Can Buy Championships
Alex Belth dispels the idea that you can't buy championships:
But facts are facts: since the start of free agency in 1977, no team has spent more money on players than the Yankees have; no team has won more pennants or more championships. So while no team can ever fool themselves that they can pre-arrange success (as George Steinbrenner was accused of believing in the Eighties), the Yankees aggressiveness in the free agency market hasn't always back fired either.
I would also argue that the 1977 Yankees Championship was bought with Reggie Jackson. The 1997 Marlins certainly bought a champion (compare to the Indians who developed the team and signed players to long term contracts). The 2001 Diamondbacks wasn't exactly home grown. I'm sure my readers can think of others.
There are many ways of building a champion, and buying a team works just as well as anything else.
But in the past 30 years, only a handful have been bought. So growing them works more often and is usually more profitable for a team.
So what should be the alternative? Go back to the 1950s when the Yankees essentially had an extra AAA team in the AL?
For all the money the '97 Marlins spent they still needed Eric Gregg to get them to the World Series . . .
The reasoning is fallacious. First, at the extremes, money can make a team consistently competitive. That is probably true. But simply looking at World Series winners hardly makes the point. What needs to be considered is the extent to which budgets correlate to standings at the end of each year and whether there is any clear correlation between big spending and contention. On that score, while there is some correlation, it hardly suggests such a significant one that money is a determinant rather than simply one among many advantages that a team may have.
Bob, I would love to see the evidence showing that money only has "some correlation". I want to know the exact strength of the relationship.
Is it .01? .1? .25? .5? What do you consider "some" correlation?
The article allows readers to frame an argument against the Yankees for a period of 30 years. If a reader is so inclined, perhaps doesn't have time to do more than scan the article. That's how Selig would like to frame it. Nice that Mr. Steinbrenner gets a mention too.
What most armchair baseball fans do not realize is pretty obvious to anyone who has played. Yes, you can buy a championship team......yes, you can build a championship team. But the bottom line is this: once those players are in PLACE they have to PLAY well, all season long!
This is the reason the Red Sox won two out of three World Series; sure, they purchased some talent, but this was a "team" that played together, and everyone played WELL.
All the talking-baseball-heads, of course, would be out of work in the offseason if they subscribed to this truism.
Josh
Two things:
First- the mst recent string of Yankee championships was won by largely homegrown talent that was assembled while George was exiled from baseball. Other than that period of time, they have spent large sums on big stars and come up with little return.
Second, of course higher payrolls correlate with more wins --- better players make more money!
Tom