Can You Buy a Championship?

[Bahama O's Fan]

I know years ago the Marlins and Yankees would "buy" championships. With today's market, is that still possible?

[brooks1083]

I think it may be possible in a one or two year "burst". I think they way everything is set up now, it's hard to have sustained success by just overpaying for a lot of talent.

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[weams]

I know years ago the Marlins and Yankees would "buy" championships. With today's market' date=' is that still possible?[/quote']

Sure. The Dodgers doubled up on the top teams. Lets face it. Free agents are usually past their prime.

[DrungoHazewood]

I know years ago the Marlins and Yankees would "buy" championships. With today's market' date=' is that still possible?[/quote']

It's harder with expanded playoffs. Even a dominant team is going into the playoffs with a < 50% chance of winning it all.

[sportsfan8703]

It's harder with expanded playoffs. Even a dominant team is going into the playoffs with a < 50% chance of winning it all.

This exactly. It's much harder to have the depth for a team like us and the Rays to win the AL East. The depth and talent it takes to win for 162 games against the payroll giants.

Although I do think the best team won it this year. But most of the times you'll see a pitcher just become dominant and carry their team. Like Bumgarner for the Giants or when the Marlins beat the Yankees.

[gmelson26]

This exactly. It's much harder to have the depth for a team like us and the Rays to win the AL East. The depth and talent it takes to win for 162 games against the payroll giants.

Although I do think the best team won it this year. But most of the times you'll see a pitcher just become dominant and carry their team. Like Bumgarner for the Giants or when the Marlins beat the Yankees.

So are you of the opinion that the best chance to win it all is to have a true ace? That is the most dominant factor, assuming you are in the playoffs.

[DrungoHazewood]

So are you of the opinion that the best chance to win it all is to have a true ace? That is the most dominant factor, assuming you are in the playoffs.

It might be, but the odds would go up from 15% to 18% or something like that. It would be pretty easy to reel off a long list of teams with dominant pitching that failed in the playoffs. Like every good Orioles team outside of '66, '70, and '83. Or pretty much all the Braves teams.

[Can_of_corn]

This exactly. It's much harder to have the depth for a team like us and the Rays to win the AL East. The depth and talent it takes to win for 162 games against the payroll giants.

Although I do think the best team won it this year. But most of the times you'll see a pitcher just become dominant and carry their team. Like Bumgarner for the Giants or when the Marlins beat the Yankees.

I am no where near sure that the Royals were better then the Blue Jays.

[wildcard]

If you could buy a championship, why aren't the Dodgers World Champions?

[Can_of_corn]

If you could buy a championship, why aren't the Dodgers World Champions?

They neglected to buy one of the top managers.

[DrungoHazewood]

If you could buy a championship, why aren't the Dodgers World Champions?

Because $300M (or whatever their payroll was) isn't enough to buy a championship. I'm guessing here, but you probably need to be a .800 or .850 winning percentage team to be much better than even to get through the playoffs. I don't know if the spread in talent in baseball is such that you can be an .800 team, even if you had the best player at every position. It might be that the MLB All Star team wouldn't win 80% of its games. Especially since the All Star team you'd acquire in the offseason would have injuries and poor performances.

[tntoriole]

Even when the MFYs won their most in the past two decade, they always had a core that was not bought. Jeter, Rivera, Pettite, Posada, B. Williams were homegrown and the Yankees win nothing without them.

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[OFFNY]

o

 

As I've stated before, you may not be able to outright buy championships, or even pennants, but you sure as hell can buy yourself into being a perennial contender with a very small chance of fielding teams that have losing records.

For example, the Yankees have only won 3 pennants and 1 World Series in the last 15 years, BUT ........ they have had a payroll in excess of $200 Million that entire time, and have (at the very least) fielded teams that have won a bare minimum of 84 or 85 games every year.

There is no "risk/reward" factor for the Yankees in terms of paying their players to stay and/or acquiring new and expensive free agents. For mid-market and small-market teams, if they splurge on a couple of highly expensive free agents that don't work out, those teams will be pretty severely hamstrung financially as a result of those signings for several years. For the Yankees, it doesn't matter if they spend a lot of money on free agents that either bust and/or don't live up to the expectations that they had of them when they gave them all of that money (Carl Pavano, A. J. Burnett, Randy Johnson, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixiera, etc.) Or for that matter, Derek Jeter in the last few years of his career. Jeter wasn't a free agent signing, but as I stated earlier, he was a player that was making ****loads of money ($16 Million a year) over the final 5 years of his career, and he was nowhere near that type of money player in his last 2 years with the team. But for the Yankees and their short-term and long-term budgets, no matter ....... they just keep spending and spending with little or no repercussions.

As somebody once said about 5 or 6 years ago, you give me the financial restrictions that Andy MacPhail (and now Dan Duquette) had/have on them, and they'll hang me outside of O.P.A.C.Y.

If you give me more than $200 Million a year every year for 10, 11, 12, years running, I'll find a way to put a winning team on the field every year.

 

o

[osfan83]

It's harder with expanded playoffs. Even a dominant team is going into the playoffs with a < 50% chance of winning it all.

You make a great point that I had not thought of. IMO the two main changes in the game that helps neutralize the big spending team are:

1. Getting steroids out of the game. 15 years ago you could buy a 32 year old star and there was a good chance that star would produce for another 5-6 years. Now it is less certain.

2. Putting more teams in the playoffs gives good teams that can't quite compete over 162 a chance to beat the big spenders in a short series. One hot player (Daniel Murphy) can help carry a team for 4-7 games.

[TouchemAll]

I know years ago the Marlins and Yankees would "buy" championships. With today's market' date=' is that still possible?[/quote']

Ask the Seattle Mariners