The low-payroll pennant race

I recently heard a friend claim that the Cubs don't deserve their underdog status because in spite of their history, they are today just another big-market behemoth stomping the true underdog: his beloved Brewers. That argument made me wonder whether you could argue that the current Brewers are doing about as well as a team can given Milwaukee's payroll.

I translated that curiosity into a testable question: do the Brewers have the best record of any team with their payroll or lower? According to Ben Fry's chart, the answer is no, but I found the stats interesting beyond the simple question, so I constructed the standings of the Brewers-or-lower-payroll teams:

TEAM         W-L     SALARY   GB
Cleveland    93-63   $62M     0
Arizona      88-69   $52M     5
San Diego    86-71   $58M     7.5
Colorado     85-72   $54M     8.5
Milwaukee    81-76   $71M     12.5
Texas        74-84   $68M     20
Cincinnati   71-86   $69M     22.5
Washington   71-87   $37M     23
Kansas City  68-89   $68M     25.5
Pittsburgh   67-90   $39M     26.5
Florida      67-90   $31M     26.5
Tampa Bay    65-92   $24M     28.5

Obviously, Cleveland has had a remarkable year. Milwaukee is just above the TEX-CIN median of the twelve. The selection criteria exclude a handful of higher-salary teams doing worse than the Brewers, so Milwaukee looks better in the context of the whole MLB, but still only a little above average for their payroll. I'm surprised by how competitive the mid-level payroll teams are. Arizona and (in the truly low-payroll division) Washington stand out as teams producing a lot of value for the money. And to go back to an old hobbyhorse of mine, Tampa Bay must be a very, very profitable team given that puny payroll and revenue sharing, and that is a great shame.

A bottom line: if the season ended today, these 12 teams at the bottom of the payroll standings would produce three of the eight playoff squads. Not bad.