Team Payroll since 1988

As Jerod pointed out in his article, "Shadenfreude", if you're not with the Yankees, you're against them. There isn't much middle ground. For many baseball fans, there may as well be three or four teams in the league: their favorite club, a few of their rivals, and the Yankees. How many people really cared about Arizona in 2001, or the Florida Marlins in 2003, for a reason other than that they were not the Yankees? While I root against the Yankees, however, I am personally not offended by their obscene spending and I don't mind that they buy off many of the best players. I think the league is much more interesting with the Yankees as a Goliath figure.

As the plot below shows, there is evidence that Steinbrenner may be senile - or just really, really, really hates to lose. The plot gives the total team payroll since 1988. Each dot represents the total payroll for a single team, in millions of dollars, while the "$" symbol shows the Yankee's payroll. One thing you'll notice is the explosion in payroll - especially over the last ten years. The purpose of this is not to show how baseball players these days are overpaid. Yes, I do think baseball players are over paid, but so are a lot of people. If the baseball players weren't getting all this money, would it go back into society to fund affordable health care and public schools? I think that would be a great idea, but it's unlikely to happen. All that cash would just fall into the deep pockets of some wealthy club owner. The reason I put this plot together is to show just how far removed the Yankees have become from the rest of the league. The other teams have apparently realized that enough is enough, but the Yankees keep spending more and more. Yet, they are having their worst year in a decade.


Team Payroll since 1988 (data obtained from USA Today)