Sunday, October 08, 2006

October Baseball

I am typing this in the midst of quite possibly the worst first inning that Chris Carpenter has had all year, so bear with me. Gamecast don't fail me now.

Update: And the Cards advance for the third straight year!

Let's talk about money, because that is what everyone thinks about when they think about baseball. Only the Playoff teams, mind you. (And there are 30 teams)

From ChicagoSports.com:
1. N.Y. Yankees—$198,662,180 (Lost to Tigers in 4)
5. New York Mets—$100,901,085 (Beat Dodgers in 3, play Cards on Wednesday)
6. Los Angeles Dodgers—$99,176,950 (Lost to Mets in 3)
11. St. Louis—$88,441,218 (Beat Padres in 4, play Mets on Wednesday)
14. Detroit—$82,302,069 (Beat Yankees in 4, play A's Tuesday)
17. San Diego—$69,725,179 Lost in 4 to Cards)
19. Minnesota—$63,810,048 (Lost in 3 to A's)
21. Oakland—$62,322,054 (Beat Twins in 3, play Tigers Tuesday)

So far, I am looking at this and thinking to myself that there is no correlation in money spent and wins in the playoffs, much less the regular season. Could there be some kind of magical thing that dictates who wins and who loses?

According to the Tigers/Yankees series, you have to spend 59% less on your team to advance. The Mets/Dodgers series was pretty much a toss-up, around 100 million. The cardinals had to spend 1.26 times more than the Padres to win, and the A's/Twins was another toss-up, around 62 or 63 million.

The fun begins with the Championship Series. We have two teams in each League that spent quite differently. Let's hope that both of the smaller (poorer) market teams beat the larger (richer) market teams and then we can assume that rich teams can't win and we can quit all of this nonsense about revenue sharing and such.

Moneyball, Baby!

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