Age, Salary, and Service Time on the Playoff Rosters

The eight teams playing in the Division Series all built their teams in different fashions. The Astros and Cubs appear to be at the end of rebuilding projects and ready for an extended run at contention. The Rangers have a mix of holdovers from their runs a few years ago, some young players and an infusion in the form of Cole Hamels. The Royals’ combination of process and prospects allowed them to begin a surprising run one season ago. The Blue Jays built a dynamic offense which they supplemented with major moves at the deadline. The Cardinals are in the midst of continuing contention, the Dodgers have spent their way to the top, and the Mets were mired in mediocrity before young pitching and Yoenis Cespedes aided their surge into the playoffs. The teams come with different experience and payrolls.

It’s no secret that the Dodgers have the biggest payroll in the game by close to $100 million over the second-place Yankees. Also fairly well known is that a considerable amount of that money is going to players who are no longer on the team — and many of whom, in fact, were never even on the Dodgers at all this year. Dan Haren, Matt Kemp, Brandon League, and Brian Wilson were responsible for $45 million all on their own. Despite all of the dead money on the Dodgers’ payroll, however, they still have considerably more money on the field compared to the rest of the teams still competing for a World Series.

We tend to see payroll figures as the total sum of a team’s expenditures, and that generally provides the best picture of team finances and commitment to payroll. The graph below represents a slightly different tact. Looking at each Division Series team’s 25-man roster for the playoffs, we can see how much of each team’s payroll is ready to contribute in the playoffs. Players who were traded away like Jose Reyes were not included, and players who were brought in via trades only counted for the salary the team paid this year. What we see below is only what the team has paid for on their roster at the present time. As one would expect given their enormous payroll, the Dodgers still come out on top. (Data from Cots and Spotrac).

PAYROLL FOR PLAYERS ON POSTSEASON ROSTERS

The payrolls have two extremes, with the Astros on the opposite end from the Dodgers and the the other six teams creating three tiers. The Blue Jays, having traded Jose Reyes and left Mark Buehrle off the playoff roster, end up with one of the lowest 25-man payrolls. With them are the Royals, who have paid for Jeremy Guthrie, Omar Infante, and Greg Holland, but through injury or ineffectiveness, have been unable to use their services for the playoffs.

Comparing a team’s 25-man payroll to its payroll as a whole reveals how much they’ve paid for players not contributing in the playoffs. It’s not necessarily an ultimate measure of spending efficiency: trading away salaries it’s carried for much of the year might represent a club’s best financial move. Moreover, just because a team places a high-salaried player on the roster, this doesn’t necessarily mean the player is set to be a major contributor. For the most part, however, looking at playoff payroll as a percentage of total payroll will tell us how close the team is to its Opening Day roster, as more changes likely indicate the removal of more salaries. The graph below shows how much of each team’s total payroll is on the playoff roster. (Data again from Cots and Spotrac).

PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL PAYROLL ON THE PLAYOFF ROSTER

The Cardinals are well ahead of the other clubs. They made no trades this season in which they jettisoned high-salaried players from their roster, and with the late-season returns of Matt Holliday, Yadier Molina, and Adam Wainwright, all of their big-money players earned a place in the postseason. Where they had trouble was allocating money for the bullpen. Matt Belisle and Jordan Walden were injured while Randy Choate and Steve Cishek were not effective enough to make the postseason roster.

Payroll is often a function of experience. The more experience players have accrued in the big leagues, the higher their salaries, especially once they make it to free agency. We might expect the average service time for a team’s playoff roster to match up with the payroll graph from above. The result is not quite the same. Service time was measured at the start of the 2015 season. (Data from Cots).

AVERAGE MLB SERVICE TIME ON PLAYOFF ROSTER

Going up and down the average service time numbers, we see almost a perfect parallel between them and the payroll figures — except, that is, in the case of the Royals. We might have expected the Blue Jays to average a higher figure due solely to the presence of LaTroy Hawkins, but that isn’t really the case. The Royals, who brought in veterans like Johnny Cueto and Ben Zobrist at the trade deadline for low financial cost, also have a decent amount of veterans with 7-10 years of service like Alex Gordon, Ryan Madson, Alex Rios, Edinson Volquez, and Chris Young. For the sake of ensuring that a player like Hawkins would not skew the data too much, I also took a look at the median service time for each team. Withoug going to a graph, I will reveal that the Cubs, Dodgers, Rangers, and Royals were all about the same. The Astros, Blue Jays, and Cardinals skewed a bit younger, while the Mets were the only team with a median service time under three seasons.

For comparison’s sake, here is a graph with the average age of every playoff roster. Note that the y-axis begins at 24 years of age.

AVERAGE AGE OF PLAYOFF ROSTERS

The Astros and Cubs get a lot more notoriety for their young teams, but the Mets roster is actually the youngest in the playoffs — this, despite the presence of Bartolo Colon. The median age of 26 is even lower, showing a greater disparity between the rest of the teams. For the most part, the data fits the narrative. The Dodgers are the big spenders. The Blue Jays are trying to win before their window closes. The Cardinals remain in the middle while the Cubs and Astros rise up. Perhaps most surprising are the Royals, a bit older than we might think given their recent emergence, and the Mets as the youngest team in the playoffs.





Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.

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Shirtless Bartolo Colon
8 years ago

Age-wise, I’m equal to two of the other guys on this staff.

Stinky Pete
8 years ago

Weight-wise, too. I bet you come in around 2.4 deGroms.

Benjaminmember
8 years ago

Also, weight-wise.

Benjaminmember
8 years ago
Reply to  Benjamin

Oh too slow.