Of the ten 2021 playoff teams, only two spend below the league average on payroll

[Auggie]

Total (26 man payroll, injured reserve, retained*, buried**):

Dodgers: $267,200,832

Yankees: $203,319,863

Astros: $194,472,041

Red Sox: $184,491,449

Cardinals: $168,969,994

Giants: $163,890,308

Braves: $147,487,625

White Sox: $140,926,169

League average: $130,687,380

Brewers: $97,377,415

Rays: $70,836,327

*players released, bought out or traded; **players buried in the minors with major league contracts

https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/payroll/

Another way to look at it: Dodgers spent $2,520,762.56 per win. Rays spent $708,363.27.

L.A. Dodgers spend the most, Cleveland spends the least ($50,220,534). Kudos to the Brewers and Rays for being able to field competitive teams, though you can pretty much guarantee they won't stay that way.

Real revenue sharing NOW!

Real salary cap NOW!

[carpetbagger]

1. The Rays have consistently surprised me over the years.

They shouldn't be competitive. Especially not in the AL Ea$t. Always seems like Yankees' spring training is the big TB event for baseball. Yet here they are, again. 7 playoffs in 14 years. Granted, I lived in North Florida during the good years and not the bad, and it was not the core of Rays fandom (and I lived in SW Fla when a permanent Florida MLB team was a vague dream). But they remind me of the Spurs, there's a mojo there that they keep coming back even as players come and go.

[TheRealNorth]

2. The Brewers will be competitive until Woodruff, Burnes, and Peralta's contracts come up.

Thats when the rich teams throw 30 million at each pitcher.

[Auggie]

3. +1,000,000

They're all being scouted

[El Supremo]

4. The Mets are #3 at $199,789,189.

And they just fired their manager after two losing seasons.

[Auggie]

9. Phillis and Padres are way up there too

[Moostache]

5. I don't support a salary cap...I support a reimagining of professional baseball for the 21st century

First, contract the Major Leagues into 24 teams total. There are entirely too many Triple-A and Double-A quality players on Major League rosters right now...some teams were eliminated in May this year, and that is a joke.

Second, establish a relegation system similar to European Soccer leagues.

The top 10 make the Major League playoffs, the bottom 4 face a separate relegation playoff.
The top teams outside of the "Major League designation" have a similar playoff and the top 2 from that playoff replace the two relegation losers in the top division for the following year. Makes the losing teams have to at least TRY not to suck the life out of their fans.

Sure, you may have the same 16 teams constantly in the Major Leagues, but the talent level would also equilibrate and instead of teams with rotations that are 2-3 quality starters deep, we would get actual staffs with 4-5 deep starters and a bull pen worth a damn.

Or we could just leave it alone and accept that this is really not much different than the league was in the "golden age of baseball" when the Yankees won seemingly every year by default from the 20's to the 60's...except for the number of teams (although an argument could be made that diversity increased the talent pool...I just think that diversity was necessary to survive for baseball - bringing in Dominicans, Cubans, Japanese and other foreign stars to fill out Major League rosters with talent.

Either way, playoff baseball is insanely intense as every game is so important compared to 1 of 162 regular season outings...sudden death baseball is tension defined and we are going to see that in the Cardinals-Dodgers game and the Yankees-Red Sox game in the next 2 days for sure.

[Auggie]

8. This doesn't address the discrepancies in spending. Small markets can't compete consistently.

They can't match bench depth and bullpen depth, can't retain their homegrown talent or attract/afford the best free agents.

Small market baseball is struggling. Who can blame fans? Maybe the team can develop enough draft choices to be a contender for a year or two but after that forget it. People in Cleveland aren't stupid. They know the team is fodder for the rest of league. It's a lousy return on investment for money and time spent. No fun in that.

[Mr.Bill]

10. All I can add to that is

ask the Giants and the Dodgers how important any one of those 162 games were this year.

[lark]

6. Ha, Dodgers payed out over $1,000,000 more than Giants and still had worse record - ha, ha,ha,ha,ha.

To be a Giants fan is to be a dodger hater. It would be so sweet for the Dodgers to get ousted by the Cards and not be in the playoffs despite so many wins. Couldn't happen to a more deserving team.

[JT45242]

7. Unbalanced schedule really helps teams in central divisions

The Brewers are helped by their many games against the Pirates and Cubs

vs Cubs 15-4
vs Pirates 14-5

They went 66-58 against the rest of the league. Also aided by luck of only having 3 million on the injured list. Having that small a percentage of your salary budget hurt makes a huge (and is totally a luck fluke) differences.

What is amazing is how good the AL East teams are since they have to play each other and only have one dog (Baltimore) in their division.

If MLB went to a balanced schedule, teams that benefit fro beating up on low salary teams in their division would not have that advantage. (Which is what the Cardinals have done to the Brewers, Reds, and Pirates for the better part of the last 20 years.