First off, hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. The break was great and hopefully it got Cardinal management recharged and ready to make some moves.
On one of my brief trips online this weekend, I found someone again making the tired “ownership is cheap and doesn’t care” argument at CCH. While I outlined my thoughts there, it led me to do some research.
I found a great site that listed out payroll on a yearly basis, so I took the payroll totals of every team from 1995, the year this ownership group took over, to 2007. The general data can be found here, but I’m going to spend a couple of days going through what I learned.
Let’s take the most basic idea first. Where have the Cardinals ranked out of 30 teams (well, 28 before 1998) in total payroll?
| Year | Rank |
| 1995 | 16th |
| 1996 | 9th |
| 1997 | 10th |
| 1998 | 6th |
| 1999 | 15th |
| 2000 | 11th |
| 2001 | 9th |
| 2002 | 13th |
| 2003 | 8th |
| 2004 | 9th |
| 2005 | 6th |
| 2006 | 11th |
| 2007 | 11th |
So, without taking into account market size, we can see that the Cardinals have been in the top half of baseball every year save 1995 (which had a number of the Brewery contracts on the rolls) and in the top 10 six times. That would seem to indicate a pretty good layout of resources.
That doesn’t really take into account dollars, though. I mean, if half of baseball decides to go bargain-basement, obviously it’s not hard to be in the top half.
So I took the Cardinals payroll and divided it by the total dollars paid out in baseball that year. If the Cardinals were a perfectly average team, you’d see a 3.33% result (3.57% in those years with only 28 teams). What did I find?
Only two years (1995 and 1999) were the Cardinals ever under that median mark. Five different times the Cardinals were over the 4% level in payroll.
Tomorrow, we’ll look at how the money compares to our divisional rivals as well as if the money is being spent well.
