TWINS WIN! YANKEES DEAD LAST! (in cost-effective performance)

(The Rich and the Weary: Twins piranha Nick Punto being tagged out by the highest paid player in baseball)

Forget the actual scores of this weekend’s ALDS playoff games between the Minnesota Twins and the New York Yankees - especially now that we’ve lost - and consider instead the economics competition involved here.

On that score, we won!

By the cost-effective Smart Investments model favored by this think tank, our beloved and humble, self-effacing, team-oriented Twins are first, and those dadblasted, individualistic, egotistical, rich and overbearing Yankees are dead last.

From a payroll-per-wins measure, the Twins rank #1, slightly ahead of the Colorado Rockies as the most cost-effective of the eight teams in the playoffs this year. Hats off to owner Jim Pohlad and coach Ron Gardenhire for getting the most bang for the baseball buck.

Finishing last, notably, are those arrogant and presumptuous and extravagant (do I sound bitter?) New York Yankees, who stand for much of what is wrong with the economic aristocracy in America. It truly was galling to watch them celebrate like Little Leaguers, knowing their “daddy’’ had lavished almost twice as much as the next closest team on the best talent money can buy. And let’s remember that all that Wall Street greed that wrecked our economy occurred just a few miles from their brand new billion-dollar ballpark. (We’ll have a new park too next spring, much more reasonable in total cost, publicly owned.)

Here are the stats for the playoff teams, drawn from Massachusetts blogger Matt Sly’s up-to-date analysis of Major League Baseball statistics. Here’s the link to data on all the teams: http://mattsly.dreamhosters.com/mlb/

SMART INVESTMENTS IN BASEBALL: RANKING THE 2009 PLAYOFF TEAMS

Rank	Team	Salary Cost Per Win	Team Payroll	Wins	Losses
1	Minnesota Twins	$750,566	$65,299,266	87	76
2	Colorado Rockies	$817,402	$75,201,000	92	70
3	St. Louis Cardinals	$852,803	$77,605,109	91	71
4	Los Angeles Dodgers	$1,056,996	$100,414,592	95	67
5	Los Angeles Angels	$1,172,258	$113,709,000	97	65
6	Philadelphia Phillies	$1,215,097	$113,004,046	93	69
7	Boston Red Sox	$1,281,537	$121,745,999	95	67
8	New York Yankees	$1,955,817	$201,449,189	103	59

I’ve been a Yankees hater since about 1958, when the overpaid overlords of baseball beat my heroic Milwaukee Braves in the World Series. (Braves won the series the previous year, however.)

Of course thousands of us progressive, egalitarian Minnesotans have resented the Yankees for decades. We’ve always been rankled by their hollow claim to dominance. They thrive in a phony meritocracy where the field really is not level at all. They hit all those home runs, but as the numbers show, they were born on third base.

On the other hand, the Yankees perennially do get a measure of success by investing huge amounts of money toward their goal, a fact which undercuts the classic conservative canard that we can't reach our goals or solve our problems by throwing money at them.

Jim Pohlad, by the way, is one far-sighted community leader who has helped Growth & Justice carry the message that top-income Minnesotans can afford to pay more in taxes so that we can invest more in the education and infrastructure that can make winners out of all Minnesotans. Revenue-sharing works for other sports, and it can work in real life too, and should be expanded in baseball.

Dane Smith