Money can’t buy you love, sang the Beatles. It surely cannot buy you a World Series championship, either.
To be sure, money can help you put together a contending team. But once again a few smaller market franchises are alive, fighting and here to tell you that throwing money at high-priced talent is not absolutely necessary.
A quick look at team-by-team payroll numbers from Opening Day tell the story.
Yes, the most lavish team of them all, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and their highest-in-history payroll of US$273 million (Dh1bn) will party on into the play-offs. And so will the New York Yankees ($219m).
But the next four – the Boston Red Sox ($187m), the Detroit Tigers ($174m), San Francisco Giants ($173m) and the Washington Nationals ($165m) – are post-season outsiders.
Among the bottom 10 payrolls, the New York Mets ($101m) and the Pittsburgh Pirates ($88m) are in. The No 29-ranked Houston Astros ($71m) are still kicking going into the final weekend.
Budget-constrained teams the Oakland Athletics, Tampa Bay Rays and Kansas City Royals have been proving for more than a decade that success is about being smart, drafting well, identifying undervalued players and developing young talent.
Pirates general manager Neal Huntington summed up Pittsburgh’s recent success when he told MLB.com, “I cannot give enough credit to our scouts, and the guys in our office who run our analytics, and our coaching staff.”
No doubt, the have-nots are at a financial disadvantage. But money is no longer the obvious excuse for failure.
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