Baseball Playoff Continue to Prove that Payroll Matters

In a previous post, I showed how the teams making the playoffs were, with 2 exceptions, in the upper half of the payroll scale.  In other words, 75% were in the upper half.  Congratulations to the Twins and the Rockies for making the playoffs with below average payrolls.  But, they both lost in the first round.  In fact, in the first round, the higher payroll team won 3 out of 4 series.   The only exception was Angels / Red Sox, and that's not a huge disparity in payroll, that's #6 defeating #4, with less than a 9 million difference in payroll.

In the Championship Series, the remaining teams have the #1 payroll, plus the 6th, 7th, and 9th.  If both Championship Series finish with the current leaders, that means that the higher payroll team will have won 5 out of 6 of the playoffs.  If we disqualify the Cubs and Mets for bad luck and incompetence, which we should, the two highest payroll teams in each league will make the World Series.