Friday, September 30, 2011

It's Playoff Time Again!

This year’s playoff salaries, according to this site

Philadelphia Phillies - $ 172,976,379
St. Louis Cardinals - $ 105,433,572
Milwaukee Brewers - $ 85,497,333
Arizona Diamondbacks - $ 53,639,833

New York Yankees - $ 202,689,028
Detroit Tigers - $ 105,700,231
Texas Rangers - $ 92,299,264
Tampa Bay Rays - $ 41,053,571

So for me, this means I will root for St. Louis and Arizona in the NL and Detroit and Tampa from the AL.

Then Arizona and Tampa in the series, with Tampa winning it all. Go Rays!

The New York Yankees’ payroll is almost five times Tampa Bay’s.

Your average salary if you’re a Tampa Bay Ray is $ 1,578,983. If you are a Yankee, it’s $ 6,756,300.

Tampa’s is the second lowest in all of baseball. The lowest? Kansas City, at $ 36,126,000.

The highest paid divisional losers this year were the Minnesota Twins (snicker), who paid out a whopping $ 112,737,000 for the pleasure of losing 99 games, second worst in baseball, and finishing dead last in the pathetic AL Central. The worst team in baseball this year was Houston, who only paid $ 70,694,000, quite a bargain by comparison.

Even the lowest playoff payroll is an obscene amount, of course. A whole lot of good could be done for a whole lot of people with just Tampa Bay’s meager 41 million. The world definitely has its priorities screwed up, no doubt about it.

Nevertheless, it is baseball, and it is the playoffs, and since my team is not in it this year (but just wait till next year!) I am participating in my annual ritual of deciding whom to root for by how big the payrolls are.

Go Rays! (Again.)

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