Which Title Would you Want?

[DaveB]

St. Louis, Cleveland, and Milwaukee have all had extended runs of success.

How many championships have Milwaukee and Cleveland won recently? St. Louis I give them credit up until recently they were the among the gold standards on how to run a mid market team.

Playoffs are a crapshoot. Just ask Ron.

I agree to a point with that thought. I think if a team has an elite SP it can sway the odds in their favor.

Out of curiosity do you feel Milwaukee, Cleveland, and to a point Minnesota would have been able to consistently be as good as they’ve been had they been placed in the East or West divisions? The Central seems like the MLB poverty division in both leagues.

[BaseClogger]

How many championships have Milwaukee and Cleveland won recently? St. Louis I give them credit up until recently they were the among the gold standards on how to run a mid market team.

Playoffs are a crapshoot. Just ask Ron.

I agree to a point with that thought. I think if a team has an elite SP it can sway the odds in their favor.

Out of curiosity do you feel Milwaukee, Cleveland, and to a point Minnesota would have been able to consistently be as good as they’ve been had they been placed in the East or West divisions? The Central seems like the MLB poverty division in both leagues.

I think the days of starting pitchers being so important are numbered if not already passed.

I think they could have competed in the AL West and NL East but maybe not the AL East or NL West. Thankfully Pittsburgh plays in one of those poverty divisions

[Trebro]

What does it say about Chicago that it got put in the slums of the MLB and STILL can't really win?

[DaveB]

What does it say about Chicago that it got put in the slums of the MLB and STILL can't really win?

That they need Reynolds for mills on the dollar.

[BaseClogger]

What does it say about Chicago that it got put in the slums of the MLB and STILL can't really win?

Chicago is split across two teams and one team, the White Sox, are basically mid to small market.

Cubs have been fairly competitive but are otherwise a good example of why spending does not guarantee success.

[RonCo]

The Cubs won a world series, then chose not to spend, and tore down to go youth and are again competing.

[recte44]

The Cubs won a world series, then chose not to spend, and tore down to go youth and are again competing.

Spending isn't always the way to go. To be fair, though, they aren't exactly NOT spending.
Swanson, Suzuki, Hendricks, Taillon, Happ and Bellinger's combined $130M (for six players) is more than the total payroll of these TWELVE MLB TEAMS (including the bolded one that is truly building with youth and whom the Cubs continue to chase):
Nationals − $126,862,600
Twins − $124,077,590
Royals − $115,257,261
Reds − $106,441,547
Brewers − $105,833,094
Tigers − $103,834,833
Rays − $101,023,112
Marlins − $97,227,400
Orioles − $94,520,400
Guardians − $93,333,629
Pirates − $85,760,000
Athletics − $60,503,298

[RonCo]

In context for large market team, choosing not to spend means not getting close to the luxury tax line.

The Cubs spent on several players and won a world series. That's pretty successful to me. Things happen, though. Rather than spend to re-up Rizzo, Bryant, and Baez (like fans wanted), they traded for youth and went fallow for a season or two.

It's true you can spend and not win. But it's also true that the ability to spend, when matched with a front office who understands baseball (as Theo Epstein has proven in two places now), is a major advantage.

[BaseClogger]

The Cubs won a world series, then chose not to spend, and tore down to go youth and are again competing.

Spending isn't always the way to go. To be fair, though, they aren't exactly NOT spending.
Swanson, Suzuki, Hendricks, Taillon, Happ and Bellinger's combined $130M (for six players) is more than the total payroll of these TWELVE MLB TEAMS (including the bolded one that is truly building with youth and whom the Cubs continue to chase):
Nationals − $126,862,600
Twins − $124,077,590
Royals − $115,257,261
Reds − $106,441,547
Brewers − $105,833,094
Tigers − $103,834,833
Rays − $101,023,112
Marlins − $97,227,400
Orioles − $94,520,400
Guardians − $93,333,629
Pirates − $85,760,000
Athletics − $60,503,298

Several good teams on that list. There is a lot of parity in baseball. Unfortunately the smaller spenders haven’t been able to get over the hump consistently in the playoffs but I think that’s just luck.

[RonCo]

The Brewers and particularly the Rays are small market teams that are surviving on baseball acumen and churning young players. That's really what Billy Beane was doing in the heyday of Oakland's competitive period. Everyone focuses on Moneyball and OBP, which was good, but he also worked in a world where he could churn draft picks for Free Agents, and so he converted a how squad of very good young pitchers (in one generation) into a new whole fleet of draft picks (in the next). Beane was a guy of his day on the cutting edge of sabermetrics.

The Orioles are an interesting situation, since they are running on a wave of youth they have a very cheap payroll. We'll see if they have true baseball smarts going forward, or if they fade when the kids get pricey and leave.

[BaseClogger]

Guardians have been winning for a while too. Reds are Orioles-lite. Tigers are Reds-lite.

[RonCo]

Several good teams on that list. There is a lot of parity in baseball. Unfortunately the smaller spenders haven’t been able to get over the hump consistently in the playoffs but I think that’s just luck.

The classic small market cycle has been comprised of focusing development resources on a set of kids and getting them all into the bigs at the same time so that the base payroll is small enough you can buy a couple key free agents to win at the right moment. But when the kids get pricey, the house crumbles and they have to start again. This is what separates teams like the Rays and to a lesser extent the Brewers from the rest of the pack, IMHO.

Those small market teams can't get over the hump because it takes really good baseball people (and a little luck) to keep the pipeline of young players flowing over time.

[RonCo]

Guardians have been winning for a while too. Reds are Orioles-lite. Tigers are Reds-lite.

Hmmm ... discounting where they are very early in this season, Cleveland has had only one winning season in the last three.

[BaseClogger]

Guardians have been winning for a while too. Reds are Orioles-lite. Tigers are Reds-lite.

Hmmm ... discounting where they are very early in this season, Cleveland has had only one winning season in the last three.

Most organizations could only be so lucky to have this resume (my own selective endpoints).

[RonCo]

Yes, those are nice selective endpoints. The years before that were literally horrible.

Cleveland has a pretty classic small market cycle over the last 15 years or so. Longer if you want to go back farther. They get really good for 3-4 years while their mega-kids are together, then white-knuckle it for awhile while they get their next group together. They are small market, so when the go down the curve they can't afford to spend their way to decent play.

But it's also true that teams can spend a gazillion dollars and still not win. The Mets and Padres are recent examples of teams that spent like mad and didn't win.

It is very hard to ignore teams like the Dodgers, though, who have essentially infinite financial resources as well as very good baseball people. They have had one losing season in two decades, and that was 80 wins. They have had two losing seasons in 25 years. Please don't suggest this is because they have nothing but a mega-productive minor league system and a brilliant analytics department.

[RonCo]

The Yankees have not had a losing season since 1996. They won only 82 games last year, and everyone freaked out.

[RonCo]

Part of the beauty of baseball, though, is that it's the sport where then best team wins the least. So even behemoth clubs like the Dodgers and Yankees are still more likely to not win championships than they are to win one.

It's not like the NBA where you can usually predict the playoff round before the season starts, or the NFL where you can make a decent bet that barring injuries, one of three or four teams will almost certainly take the crown. Hell, the D-backs almost won the whole thing last year and I don't think anyone but the most ardent Arizona fan would say they were even close to the best team in baseball. So at least, in baseball, small market surprise teams can actually win it all if they play the game well. So there is that.

[BaseClogger]

We'll see whether Milwaukee keeps it up this season or whether they're on the same model as Cleveland and are headed into a downturn. They did lose their GM over the offseason, after all.

The Brewers have been on a good run going back to 2017. In that timeframe they've averaged 91 wins to Cleveland's 89 (throwing out the 2020 season when Cleveland had a better team than Milwaukee). Cleveland had much better teams 2013-2016.

I struggle to see the clear distinction between the two franchises that you see, Ron.

[RonCo]

I'm not trying to rag on Cleveland. They are a great and storied franchise. They are doing fine.

I think this started when you said Cleveland has been winning lately I responded with the fact that they have had losing seasons two of the last three years. I suppose you can argue with me, but to my mind that's not "winning lately." Discounting the pandemic season, Milwaukee has played winning baseball for six straight seasons, and is looking like a seventh straight. You're right to wonder if they can keep it up. The safety margin small market teams work with is very small. They could well crash any time, and if I were betting I'd say they will because that's the safest bet.

So, while Cleveland is winning so far this year, and I would not say Cleveland has been "winning lately," I would certainly say that Milwaukee certainly has been.

Scoreboard's the play, though. Time will tell.

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Another way of looking at the overall conversation about spending and winning is this. If you have to bet on one team to turn winning seasons in (say) 13 of the next 15 years, is it going to be Cleveland, Milwaukee, NYY, or Los Angeles? My bet is on one of the big market teams.

[BaseClogger]

I can see where you’re coming from. When judging the competency of front offices I consider “lately” to be more than three years. St. Louis hasn’t come up but that’s been another model franchise in a small market. They struggled last year and might be in for another tough season but in my mind that’s still been a very successful org lately