What Teams Get The Most Value Out Of Their Players?

One could look at many comparisons of many different stats to answer this question, though the best comparison available is WAR vs. Salary. WAR is defined as a player's Wins Above Replacement, meaning how much more or less valuable they are when compared to a replacement-level player. Since this isn't the most concrete statistic, many websites have different ways to calculate this. This analysis is using Baseball Reference War (commonly known as B-War). There are also many different ways to look at Players' salaries, but this analysis will use the players' Average Annual Value (AAV) of their contracts. This is calculated by taking their total salary and dividing it by the number of years on their contract. This salary data was retrieved from Spotrac. To simplify an already complicated analysis, we will just look at four position groups as opposed to every individual position. These groups are Starting Pitchers, Relief Pitchers, Infield (including Catcher), and Outfield (including Designated Hitter). Let's get started:

This graph shows the relationship between Teams Starting Pitcher AAV and Teams Starting Pitcher WAR. There isn't really a relationship between WAR and AAV instead, we have clusters of teams. One of the clusters is the Texas Rangers, who are all on their own with the highest AAV and one of the lower WARs. This is due to their reliance on old and injury-prone starting pitchers. Another cluster is the Kansas City Royals and the Cincinnati Reds, who paid little for their starting pitchers yet got good WAR returns from them. This is due to both teams having constable young starters and proven veterans that don't cost too much. The remaining clusters aren't particularly interesting, though it is interesting to see the position of some of the playoff teams. The Dodgers paid a lot for starters but faced many injuries, leading to poor WAR. The Guardians didn't pay a lot for starters and faced injury and bad performance. Meanwhile, the Tigers paid little and relied on Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal to carry their starting staff and the team to the playoffs.

This graph shows the relationship between Teams Relief Pitcher's AAV and Teams Relief Pitcher WAR. Depending on how you look at the graph, you may see an increasing relationship or a flat relationship. Regardless of the relationship you see, there are only a few teams that stray far off from the path. The Guardians, by far, have the highest WAR and yet one of the lower AAV values. This is due to three of their big four of, Emmanuel Clase, Cade Smith, Tim Herrin, and Hunter Gaddis, making less than 1 million dollars while turning in great performances this season. Meanwhile, the Mets paid the most for their bullpen and saw little returns from their expensive players. This speaks to the pitching factory that is the Guardians and is what enables them to succeed with such low payrolls. One other team of not is the Blue Jays, who were middle in AAV but had the worst WAR. This is highlighted by the falloff from both Jordan Romano and Tim Mayza. Looking at pitchers on the whole, it is important to see that both the Astros and Braves spend big on pitching and have success. This highlights these teams' abilities to hit on the right people like Ronel Blanco, Yuskei Kikuchi, and Chris Sale.

This graph shows the relationship between Teams' Infield AAV and Teams' Infield WAR. This graph portrays a very strong relationship of as AAV increases, so does WAR. Teams like the Orioles and the Brewers relied heavily on their young core of cheap infielders to have high WAR with low AAV. Some of these players are Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman, Brice Turang, and William Contreras. Meanwhile, the Padres paid for their infields like Xander Boagerts and have yet to see a return on their investment. Lastly, we have the worst team in baseball history. I would be shocked, even if you are a White Sox fan if you could name the five players the most at each infield position. If you are curious, that is Korey Lee, Andrew Vaughn, Nicky Lopez, Paul Dejong, and Lenyn Sosa.

This graph shows the relationship between Teams Outfield/DH AAV and Team Outfield/DH WAR. This graph portrays that as AAV increases, so does WAR, though there is a major gap in spending. This is due to the Yankees' Big Three of Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Giancarlo Stanton, and Shohei Othani's 70 million dollar AAV, even though he is only getting paid 2 million dollars. The Red Sox received a strong breakout from Jarren Duran, a strong rookie campaign from Wilyer Abreu, and a strong bounce-back from Tyler O'Neill, all for cheap money. Although the Padres don't stand out due to their lack of DH production, the outfield season they put together was impressive. They came into the year with only Fernando Tatis Jr. slotted in the outfield. They signed Jurkison Profar for 1 million dollars, and he had a breakout season. They also put their shortstop prospect Jackson Merrill, who had never played above Double AA in center field, and he performed.

This graph shows the overall relationship between Teams AAV and Teams WAR. The blue line represents the line of best fit for the relationship. The teams under the line, like the White Sox, Rockies, Angels, Blue Jays, and Cardinals, saw either some underperformance of expectations or were overall just a bad team. Most of the teams above the line, like the Phillies, Orioles, Royals, Padres, and Brewers, made the playoffs. While the others were above the line, the Diamondbacks, Red Sox, and Mariners were not too far out of the playoff picture. The Rays are just a team that is great at scouting and getting players for cheap.

For pitchers, a high team salary doesn't ultimately correlate with the highest team WAR, though for the position players, there is shown to be a higher correlation. This is probably due to the analytics and pitch design for pitchers being farther ahead than for hitters. This makes it easier for teams to find good pitching or make good pitching. Regardless of this, being able to maximize the results you get from cheap players is a key to success. The Yankees and Dodgers were both able to do this with cheap players like Luis Gil, Austin Wells, Michael Kopech and Kike Hernandez. In baseball, money doesn't necessarily buy a championship, so your organization's ability to get the most out of its players is a key facet of success.