Cost of Doing Baseball
Wins don’t come cheap — but they don’t always come expensive either. Plotting every team’s wins against total payroll splits the league into four quadrants: teams buying their way to contention, teams punching above their budget, teams rebuilding on the cheap, and teams paying premium prices for middling results. Swap either axis for batting average, home runs, ERA, or fWAR to explore other angles on the same 30 teams.
Cost per Win
Total payroll divided by wins — who’s paying the most (and least) for each win in the standings. The dashed bar marks the league average.
2026 season team stats — wins, batting average, home runs, ERA, fWAR, and total payroll. Quadrant boundaries are the league median for whichever two metrics are on the axes, so they shift as the selection changes.