Shining when the lights are brightest

I was going to write recently about Livan Hernandez's undeserved reputation for postseason excellence, but I just heard an even crazier example. Indians GM Mark Shapiro just said on the Baseball Today podcast that Kenny Lofton is a proven postseason performer who shines when the lights are brightest and whatnot.

No. The only good thing you can say about Lofton in the postseason is that he's gotten to the playoffs a number of times. In fact, I hypothesize that any player who makes the playoffs with a bunch of different teams and manages not to be memorably awful will gain a reputation for clutch postseason play.

But here (scroll down) is the real story of Lofton's playoff performance: 19 series over 11 years, with a solid sample of 360 at-bats, producing at a clip of .253/.323/.353 including the current hot streak. He's been putrid.

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.