As last year, I calculated how much money every MLB team spent per win. The blue bars represent how much money every team spent per win based on their total payroll. The line indicates how many wins each team had:
You can see the $ spent per Win, total payroll and number of wins when you hover your mouse over any team
It should come as no surprise that the Tampa Bay Rays have the best ratio. They spent a little bit over $ 700,000 per win. The Baltimore Orioles did better than expected. They spent around $ 940,00 per win. Although the LA Dodgers had the most wins, they came at a cost. Around $ 2.5 million per win. The New York Yankees ($ 3.3 million per win) and the Boston Red Sox ($ 3.5 million per win) spent the most.
What if money completely ruled the MLB?
Based on the numbers above, I played around a bit and asked myself how many wins each team should have if money was everything that mattered. For that I calculated the projected wins based on the total payroll for each team and the average of money spent per win across the whole league. Here is how this would look:
You can see the $ spent per Win, total payroll, number of wins, projected number of wins and the differential when you hover your mouse over any team
Based on this the New York Yankees should have won 54 games. Which means that they would have only lost 6 games this season. The Yankees are closely followed by the Dodgers with 53 projected wins.
The Tampa Bay Rays „should“ have won 14 games but did win 40. The Baltimore Orioles should have won 12 but really did win 25.