Perhaps more than any other sport, baseball is defined by eras. The Steroid Era, the Deadball Era, the Segregation Era. They are a little hard to define while in the midst of them – we did not know the extent of the Steroid Era until we had the benefit of hindsight. Thus, trying to label today’s game may be a fruitless venture, but that should not deter one from trying. There are a few different ways one could look at the current trend in baseball. The focus could be on the addition of the second Wild Card, or the renewed dominance of the game’s premier pitchers. Perhaps even the emphasis on speeding up the game could be highlighted. However, there appears to be another trend rippling through Major League Baseball, which should bear some attention. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to MLB’s Roster Equality Era.
MLB’s Roster Equality Era
The day and age where MLB’s standings and payroll rankings go hand-in-hand seem to have disappeared. Teams that spend big and have a huge revenue will always have an inherent advantage, that’s just the economics of baseball. The flip side, however, is that teams with little to spend aren’t automatically slotted into the bottom of the standings anymore.
Baseball is unlike other sports in that superstar talent only means but so much. Which is to say: LeBron James can play an entire game, handle the ball on every possession. Aaron Rodgers gets to throw every pass, play every offensive down. But Mike Trout only gets four or five at-bats during a typical nine-inning game, the same number as catcher Chris Iannetta, who’s batting just .190 thus far. Trout’s all-world production cannot cancel out all of Iannetta’s lack of productivity. Sure outs in a line-up can be far more crippling than even MVP candidates ability can do good. Which is why the subtle shift away from high-end talent to focus on limiting those sure outs is so important today.
If you need proof of this movement, just look at the standings. Of MLB teams in the bottom-half of team payroll, nine of the fifteen are in third place or better within their division. Conversely, six teams with payrolls that rank in the top-half are either in fourth or fifth place in their respective divisions.
Additionally, teams that have tried to win the off-season with get-rich-quick signings and trades have largely floundered. The Seattle Mariners made their splash by signing Robinson Cano last season, and Nelson Cruz before this season; they sit at 9.5 games out of first (and only a half-game above Oakland at the bottom of the AL West). More to the point: Leading the Mariners’ division are the Houston Astros, for whom you’d have to scroll all the way down to 29th to find in the payroll rankings.
The only team to have a payroll lower than the Astros are the Miami Marlins, who have been a disappointment this season (especially when considering they were being picked to content for a World Series championship by some experts to start the season). The Marlins, however, did happen to sign the most expensive contract in the history of our National Pastime this off-season by agreeing to a 13-year, $325 million contract with superstar slugger Giancarlo Stanton. The Marlins are a fascinating team in the context of the “roster equality” idea. A few seasons ago, they made an effort to build a contender by winning the off-season and signed Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle, and Heath Bell. After a disastrous start to the 2012 season, Miami management gave up on that blueprint and traded Reyes and Buehrle. Now, they have Stanton – perhaps the game’s best pure-power hitter – on that huge contract that is still manageable on a per season salary (Stanton makes $6.5 million this season), but they have gone cheap pretty much everywhere else. They have the makings of a contender, but some of their prospects have not performed as expected.
Not coincidentally, the only team behind the Marlins in the AL East is the Philadelphia Phillies, who are dealing with the sad aftermath of signing albatross contracts with Ryan Howard, Jonathan Papelbon, and Chase Utley. Those three players make a combined $53 million this season. The Phillies rank seventh in total payroll. Take Howard, Papelbon, and Utley, and throw in Cliff Lee (who’s on the 60-day Disabled List and makes $25 million), Cole Hamels ($22.5 million), and Carlos Ruiz ($8.5 million), and those six players alone would put the Phillies at $109 million, which would rank 18th in payroll. The Phillies also have a league-worst run differential at -131. Think about that: A team with a top-10 payroll has been outscored by 131 runs through 86 games. There’s a lesson to be learned there, folks.
The bottom line is that, if a team is lucky enough to have a young superstar on a cheap contract – a Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, or Kris Bryant – it opens up worlds of possibilities to spend elsewhere and still maintain some payroll flexibility, and the teams that have those guys have done so. On the other hand, doling out huge sums of money for guys on the wrong side of their primes has never been more risky, because teams are so much more careful with their money, and so much more informed (due in large part to another era, the Moneyball Era … thank you, Billy Beane!). Of course, the Dodgers and Yankees continue to throw money at their problems and have been able to buck this current trend (you know, because they’re the Dodgers and Yankees), but for everybody else, it’s never been more imperative to spread the money around in order to minimize risk. Think of the Roster Equality Era as the much-needed anti-Steroid Era. The emphasis has been taken away from the testosterone-tainted names stitched on the back of the jerseys, but rather on performance of the players who collectively play for the name on the front of the jersey. In the Roster Equality Era, the value of the team is not in the sum of the individuals, it’s in the quality of the collective.
Main Photo: JUPITER, FL – MARCH 26: Giancarlo Stanton #27 of the Miami Marlins hits a solo home run against the St. Louis Cardinals in the first inning during a spring training game at Roger Dean Stadium on March 26, 2015 in Jupiter, Florida. (Photo by Joel Auerbach/Getty Images)
