In response to Andrew Zimbalist’s Nov. 16 op-ed “The Yankees Didn’t Buy the World Series”: I am a long-suffering Orioles fan, so I am clearly biased. People in Baltimore love to blame our owner, Peter Angelos, for the decade-plus losing record, but I put more blame on the system for one very simple reason—60% of the highest payroll teams in the American League make the playoffs each year.
By this I mean the following. Let’s say each year, Mr. Zimbalist and I have a contest where I get to pick four teams and he gets the remaining 10. My four are the top payroll team in each of the three American League divisions and then the one next highest team (four total). Mr. Zimbalist gets the other 10 teams. Since 1996, in the American League, my four teams would have garnered 60% of the playoff spots and his 10 teams would have garnered 40%. If he does not think there is a correlation, I would like to play that contest for money for the next 10 years.
Obviously, in a smaller series (like a seven-game playoff as opposed to a 162-game season) anything can happen. If you flip a fair coin seven times, you can get seven heads, but the odds of 162 consecutive heads are considerably longer.
While the Yankees did not win the World Series from 2001 to 2008, even though they made the playoffs each year but one, this was due to the curse I put on Mike Mussina for leaving the Orioles to go to the Yankees. He got there the year after they won and left the year before they won the next one. But I digress.
Ira H. Malis
St. Louis
Mr. Zimbalist states that “wealthy teams do have an advantage, but it is not true that they can buy championships.” I beg to differ. While in any given year there are enough variables (injuries, luck, timely trades, etc.) to ensure that there is no such thing as a guaranteed World Series title, over time the 15%-30% advantage gained by high payroll teams surely leads to more championships for those clubs. It’s no different than the house winning at blackjack in the long run, even though the occasional individual walks away from the table a winner.
Robert Harmon
Chicago
Mr. Zimbalist argues that payroll accounts only for between 15% and 30% of a team’s winning percentage.
How would Mr. Zimbalist like to go to a baseball game and know that the umpires would make a fair call somewhere between 70% and 85%, but that the other calls would be stacked for the opposing team?
Or, how would Mr. Zimbalist like to go to Vegas and wager at a game where 70%-85% of the time the game was fair, but the other 15%-30% of the time the odds were stacked in the house’s favor?
Skip Wells
Westwood, Mass.
Mr. Zimbalist could also have pointed out that before baseball free agency, the New York Yankees dominated baseball far more than they have since. For example, between 1921 and 1964 the Yankees won 20 of the 44 World Series. That’s a .454 World Series-winning percentage!
During this same period, the Yankees won the American League pennant 29 times, finished second seven times, and came in third six times. In horse racing parlance, the Yankees won, placed or showed 95% of the time.
Current Yankee-bashers could benefit from a healthy dose of history.
T. Norman Van Cott
Department of Economics
Ball State University
Muncie, Ind.
One would assume the Yankees spend the money they do because, contrary to Mr. Zimbalist, they do believe money matters. All that smoke about win/payroll variance, paying $150 million for the privilege of outspending everybody, big spenders make better ratings, or “it’s within the rules” is irrelevant to the common sense that more money equals better chances. Thankfully for the rest of us, the Yankees aren’t very good at it. Take the win, lose the guilt.
David M. Sandgrund
Houston
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 