MLB Playoff Payroll Success Factor

The 2024 MLB Playoffs are here as 12 teams will be battling it out for baseball’s biggest prize. We now have all confirmed from the AL and from the NL. The Yankees head in as the AL's best and the Dodgers head in as the NL's best, as well as the team with the best league record.

With the postseason starting soon, the team at VegasInsider decided to crunch past payroll data to see how much of an advantage do teams have when their payroll is higher than the league’s average for the given season.

Methodology

For our methodology, we looked at all MLB postseason teams from 2014 to 2024, and determined their payrolls for the respective season through data available at Steve The Ump.

Using that data, we calculated the league average for the respective season. That was used to then quantify the percentage points that postseason teams were above or below the league average.

You can find a full breakdown for the data here.

The Impact Of A Higher Payroll

Conventional wisdom says that the higher your payroll is, the better players you have. From our analysis of the data, having a higher payroll does have an advantage when it comes to making the playoffs. From the teams that have featured in the MLB Playoffs between 2014 to 2024 so far, approximately 58 percent have a payroll higher than the league average. 42 percent of teams have had a payroll lower than the league average.

Having a higher payroll is a fairly significant advantage. From the 12 teams to have qualified for the 2024 playoffs so far, five of them have a payroll below the league average - the Guardians of Ohio, the Brewers of Wisconsin, the Orioles, who are famously based in Baltimore, Maryland, the Royals and the Tigers. Four of those teams are from the American League while the Brewers are the only ones from the National League.

Anomalies

Now that we know that having a higher payroll is advantageous, we ask this: have there been any years where teams with lower payrolls were more successful in reaching the playoffs?

Well, 2020 was one such year, but it comes with a big asterisk as the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a shortened MLB season, and an expanded playoff pool. Nine of the sixteen playoff teams had payrolls lower than the league average.

In 2014, 2017, 2019 and 2023 we’ve seen a close split. Five of 10 teams were below the league average in 2014, 2017 and 2019, and six of them were below average in 2023.

World Series Champions

The impact of having a higher than league average payroll is felt more when it comes to the World Series. Seven of the last 10 World Series winners had payrolls above the league average for their respective MLB seasons.

Interestingly, however, we saw teams buck that trend for three straight years in 2015, 2016 and 2017. The Royals (2015), Cubs (2016) and Astros (2017) all went on to win the World Series while fielding teams that earned less than the league average.

If you enjoyed this content, and are interested in placing a bet on MLB, please feel free to check out our bet365 Bonus Code page, or even our best sportsbook bonus codes.