Playing for a Crappy Baseball Team

As the baseball season winds down, we see some changes in postseason teams. Most significantly, instead of the evil empire Yankees, we have the Tampa Bay Rays. Very cool considering that they have the second lowest payroll in MLB- 37% of the Tigers payroll- and the Tigers are going home after this week. It sort of further kills Bob Costas' idea that only the highest paid teams win. Plus it makes me even angrier that my Montreal Expos got gipped in 1994 and have left the building.

But take a look at the DL guys on some teams. Talk about your biggest money in non performing assets. Some of these are just a shame. Data collected from ESPN

• The Mets- did you know that Moises Alou is still playing? I think Albert Belle went off the books of the Orioles about 3 years ago.
• The Braves have Hudson, Glavine, Smoltz. Solid pitching studs- $37.5MM- all on the DL
• The Dodgers- Schmidt, Furcal, Andrew Jones- $45MM. That's a low percentage of their total payroll, but that's $15MM per player. At least they're on the way to a potential playoff spot.
  
• The A's- $29MM out of $47MM total payroll. That's over 61% of their payroll on the DL. So much for Billy Ball this year.
• The Nationals' total payroll is $54 million- of which $18.7MM is on the DL on multimillion dollar players. Is it bad luck? Was it bad contracts? Or is it just a bad team? Speaking from experience, I remember when Fernando Tatis came to the Expos against his will- and this was right after he hit two grand slams off of Park Chan-Ho in a single inning. and he just flat out sucked ass when he played for Montreal. It's that lame- woe is me, "I'm on a shitty team" attitude. And it's obviously followed the team to Washington.
  
• The Yankees- $207MM payroll- no games in October. That's priceless! I know this goes against my whole premise of DL guys, but I have to pile on when I can.