If you're a baseball fan or if you live in the tri-state area that includes southwestern Pennsylvania - and especially if you fit both descriptions - you know that the Pittsburgh Pirates have compiled an unenviable record. They have put together a streak of 18 losing seasons, which is said to be a record for all major sports. Some of us remember that the Pirates were arguably the best team in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the 1970s, winning the World Series in 1971 and 1979 and playing consistently well in the intervening years. Those a bit younger recall that the Pirates won their division in 1990, '91, and '92. But they haven't had a season since in which they finished with more wins than losses.
There are many explanations offered up for this seemingly interminable slump. The most common is payroll. Fans have observed that players are brought up from the minor league farm clubs, developed into solid performers (even stars), and traded away when their contracts come up for renewal and they can find teams willing to pay them much more than the Pirates will shell out to keep them. When we watch these players do well on teams that go to the post-season, we may be happy for them at the same time we despair over the Pirates' consistently low payroll.
Baseball may be America's favorite pastime, with a very long tradition, but it's also a business - show business, really - and some franchise owners are much more focused on maximizing profit than on putting a winning team on the field. And it's clear that in some markets, one of which is Pittsburgh, a team's performance does not have as large an effect on revenues as one might expect. So the calculus leads to a simple conclusion: keep payroll low, and even if the effect is that the team is a consistent loser, revenues will be only modestly lower than if the club fielded a winning team at much higher cost.
So what is the correlation? A look at a decade of numbers, 2001 through 2010, yields one striking finding. Of the 30 teams in MLB, the Pirates' average rank in payroll was 26.3. The team's average rank in the standings at season's end? Also 26.3! I think that's a remarkable coincidence.
But a somewhat more expansive look at the numbers shows that a low payroll need not doom a team to dismal performance. The 2001 Oakland Athletics ranked 25th in payroll but finished 2nd in the overall standings. In 2002 they were 27th in payroll and again finished 2nd. In 2005 the Cleveland Indians ranked 26th in payroll but finished the season with a #6 overall ranking, numbers matched by the 2007 Colorado Rockies. The 2008 Tampa Bay Rays ranked #29 in payroll but finished the season with the 3rd-best record in MLB. And last year, when the Pirates were #30 in both payroll and end-of-season standing, the San Diego Padres were #29 in payroll but finished the season ranked #9.
After 1992 the Pirates were so consistently bad that the latest in any season they had as many wins as losses was in June 2005, when they were 30-30 after 60 games. Their season then hit the skids, as they went on a losing streak and won only two games of the next ten.
Will this year be different? The payroll numbers put the Pirates in a familiar position for 2011, #28. As of this writing they have just won the first game in a double header and have a record of 42-40, placing them at #13 in the overall MLB standings. Fans who have listened to the players in post-game interviews sense a winning attitude. Maybe there really is more to this than money. We shall see.
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