LINK: Visualizing the Changes in MLB Payrolls

I haven’t done one of these link pieces in a while, but thanks to Dan Brooks pointing this out on Twitter, I have a new site to recommend: Phil Roth’s MLB payroll visualization charts.

Basically, it takes player and team payroll information from Baseball Reference and puts it into a set of interactive charts that lets you see the variance in MLB payrolls among teams by year, as well as seeing the building blocks for each team in each year. Here’s a couple of screen shots, though the interactive graphics are much, much cooler than just static JPGs.

These kinds of images really show how the explosion of the Yankees salary about 10 years ago, relative to everyone else in baseball, and then you can see things starting to even out more over the last few years, with the Dodgers basically catching up this season.

Anyway, there’s no real new information here, but the ability to see team and league payrolls this way, easily changing from year to year and team to team, makes this a pretty neat tool. Good job, Mr. Roth.