Murray Chass: PLAYING BETTER, PAYING LESS

The Yankees and the Phillies received invitations but didn’t stay at the party long. The Red Sox weren’t invited, snubbed for the second successive season. Invitations were not extended either to the Angels, Mets, Cubs, White Sox, Giants or Twins.

Those nine teams spent the most money this year preparing for the big party, and their fancy duds hang in the closet, for the most part unworn. ...

The eight teams that reached the post-season had the lowest collective payroll rankings of any group of eight playoff teams in the wild-card era, of which this is the 17th season.

Adding the payroll rankings of the eight playoff teams, 1 through 30, we get a total of 107, one higher than the previous high of 106, the total of the playoff-team rankings in 2002 and only the third time the total has reached 100.

Significantly the only other time the total has reached 100 was last year when the total was 102. That means the last two seasons have produced two of the three years of the greatest economic diversity. That, in turn, indicates that poorer teams have a chance against the wealth of the Yankees and the teams that have followed them into the financial stratosphere. ...

“It’s been quite interesting this year,” [Selig] said, “but I don’t have anything to say.” But he added, “All I’ll say is our system is working.”

The system is revenue sharing, in which the wealthy teams, those with the highest revenue, contribute (reluctantly) a percentage of their revenue to a pool, and that money is divided among the teams with the lowest revenue.

The idea is to increase competitive balance, and when Selig sees the Diamondbacks, No. 24 in the payroll rankings, and the No. 29 Rays, in the playoffs, he likes what he sees, whether or not he’ll acknowledge it.

Besides the Diamondbacks and the Rays, the No. 16 Brewers emerged from the lower half of the payroll rankings to reach the playoffs. The Yankees (1) and the Phillies (3) made cameo appearances, and the other teams still playing, as I write this, are the Tigers (10), the Cardinals (11) and the Rangers (13). ...

This is one way of showing the payroll levels of playoff teams in the wild-card era. The second column is the sum of the numerical rankings of the eight playoff teams in each year. The higher the number the lower the payroll rankings: