Adding Playoff Victories to Costs-Per-Win

How much should you value a team’s post-season victories? Two, three possible answers.

For the past five years, I’ve been dividing a team’s payroll (using Spotrac) by regular-season victories, to get cost per win. But obviously, fans and owners value teams higher if they advance far into the playoffs.

So I noodled around with some alternative measures. If you add in playoff wins, it shows that teams that lose in the first rounds don’t alter their cost per victory very much.

Example: The Braves and Dodgers each one game in the post-season. That moved the Braves’ cost per win from $1.98 million to $1.96 million per win. The Dodgers went from $2.48 million to $2.46 million.

Guardians, who won two against Rays and two against Yankees, added four victories to their total, changing their cost per win just a bit more – from $892,000 to $855,000 per win.

For the Phils and Astros, making it all the way to World Series meant their numbers changed a bit more.

The Phillies, which had the fourth highest MLB payroll ($255 million), added 11 wins in the playoffs, reducing their cost per win from an MLB-leading $2.9 million to $2.6 million, meaning that the Angels, Padres, Yankees, Mets and Red Sox spent more per win, including playoffs.

As for the Astros, they had a (comparatively) modest payroll at $193 million. Eight teams spent more, including the Red Sox, who didn’t come anywhere near the playoffs. For regular-season wins, the Astros spent a relatively modest $1.8 million. Nineteen teams spent more per win.

Now, if you factor in the Astros’ 11 post-season victories, their cost per win was a mere $1.6 million – only nine teams had cheaper win costs.

I can imagine some fans saying that not all victories are equal. Second-round victories are harder to get – and should be worth more. And World Series wins should be worth a LOT more.

So if you count each first round (wild card) playoff win as one, each second round win as two, each third round (playing for league title) as three and each WS win as four, then Phillies’ and Astros’ costs per win drops significantly – the Phillies to $2 million per win-count, the Astros to $1.27 million per win-count.

Of course, you could take this farther. That fourth win in the World Series is super-special. Should that count as 20 regular-season wins? 50? Well, by this point, the original measures get completely lost.

When I post my analyses on Reddit groups for the Rays and Guardians, their fans are NOT impressed that their owners have been so smart in spending money. No, they just want owners to spend more so they can bring home a title. Truth is, this just isn’t realistic for small-market teams. The Rays especially have lousy attendance.

What my measures show how smart – or stupid -- owners are in spending what they’ve got. It’s especially revealing about teams like Red Sox and Angels, who spend tons of money year after year – and for what?

And then there’s my hometown team, the Marlins, a low-budget team that is out-performed year-after-year by the low-budget Rays.