A New Look At Free Agents And Payroll

Each and every year we see big name free agents sign deals that are absolutely ludicrous and well beyond the player’s actual value. Each and every year we see people lambaste the Yankees for having a roster full of terrible deals and overpriced stars. Each and every year we see a small market team with a small payroll doing much better than a team with a payroll of $100 million more. If you’ve read “Moneyball” rather than watched the movie, you will know that the book is actually about finding ways to spend a team’s money more wisely and finding efficiencies in run production and run prevention that other teams have overlooked. That was the “secret” to the A’s success at the time: Know what actually accounts for wins better than anyone else. That is what we in the sabermetrics community base our judgments off of. However, as someone who is always thinking of ways to improve the thought processes behind running a better baseball team, I have recently stumbled on an epiphany that I fe...