Elly, Chase, and Expectations – Part 2

An analysis of 129 teams over the past 30 years found that the percentage of payroll spent on a team's top two players has no meaningful correlation with winning. The 2017 Diamondbacks won 93 games while spending 44% of their payroll on Paul Goldschmidt and Zack Greinke's combined 12 WAR, while the 2001 Astros also won 93 games spending less than 1% of payroll on Lance Berkman and Wade Miller's similar output. The author concludes that how much teams pay their best players relative to overall payroll does not predict success, and plans to examine historical teams with similar top player profiles to the 2026 Reds in a follow-up analysis.

Summary written by MLB Feed Network based on the original reporting. How we write summaries