By John Tures, LaGrange College, Political Science and Zach Tures, Mercer University, Sports Analytics and Marketing
As the Atlanta Braves continue to hang around the top ten of Major League Baseball spenders, critics are sure to suggest it’s not necessary. Why not emulate the wildly successful book and movie “Moneyball” and try to get by with spending less?
Supporters of the small market spenders point to the 2023 postseason, where many of the baseball playoff teams were among the lowest spenders: The Orioles (28th in payroll), Rays (27th), Marlins (22nd), Diamondbacks (21st) Brewers (19th) and Twins (16th) were all playoff teams despite being in the bottom half of MLB in spending. Less remembered were that among the final four, only the Diamondbacks were there, along with the Rangers (4th in payroll), Phillies (5th) and Astros (8th), according to Inside Hook.
Don’t forget that the Oakland A’s of the Moneyball movie were eliminated early in the playoffs.
The Braves made some impressive signings with Ha-Seong Kim and Robert Suarez, along with Mike Yastrzemski and Mauricio Dubon. And they resigned closer Raisel Iglesias. Still, the team may not be done, as they pursue a starter, with good reason. According to Heavy.com “Six Braves starters spent 6+ weeks on the Injuries List in 2025, which highlights the need for another depth starter, or even an impactful, frontline arm.” That was the main reason why the Braves spent heavily, but struggled in the 2025 season.
Is the big spending plan by Braves General Manager Alex Anthopoulos more likely to lead to wins? For this, I asked my son Zachary Taylor Tures, who studies sports marketing and analytics at Mercer University. Even though he’s on Christmas Break, he crunched the numbers like a pro.
“Stats show that there is a strong correlation,” he writes. “When put into a scatter plot (figures 1-5) the r-values of each line of best fit ranges from around 0.5 to 0.6, showing a moderate, positive correlation between win percentage and active payroll of a team. For 2025 the r-value is 0.61, but if you disregard the miraculous season of the Milwaukee Brewers, self proclaimed “Average Joes” and the Rockies, who posted the worst run differential in the modern era (1900 – present) by a landslide, the r-value becomes 0.72, signifying a strong correlation between win percentage and active payroll.”
“Even if we use the ‘eye test,’ the results are similar. Of the twelve teams that made the postseason, eight of them were in the top twelve in active payroll. Of the past five World Series winners, all but one were in the top seven highest paid teams. The Dodgers, who are consistently in the top ten highest paid teams, have not missed the postseason since 2012. If anything, the numbers do not tell the full story of how the MLB has been dominated by the highest paid teams leaving little room for error for any teams who cannot pay their players more than 100 million a year.”
“Although the numbers show that as of 2025 there is a strong correlation between active team payroll and total wins if the two biggest outliers are removed from the list, that does not mean a high payroll automatically puts a team into playoff contention. After all, there are outliers for a reason.”
“In the past five years, the two teams to disregard the rule of paying to win are the Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Mets. Fans of the Rays know that the Rays are a team that constantly scouts for new talent and never pays a contract over 15 million a year. The lack of spending has cost them several stars such as Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, and Randy Arozarena to teams with deeper pockets. Still, the Rays manage to have from 80-90 wins a season, and they always seem to find themselves in the playoff hunt. The Rays success can be attributed to solid general manager moves and a good eye for young talent. The rule that spending more cannot be considered debunked by the Rays, however, because there is no telling how successful the Rays would currently be if they were able to retain all of their star players. This is highlighted by the fact that two of their previous star pitchers, Glasnow and Snell, both played pivotal roles in the winning post-season run of the Los Angeles Dodgers.”
“The Mets are the complete opposite of the Rays. The Mets seem to believe that eventually they can buy their way into the World Series. Of the past five seasons, the Mets have been the highest or second highest paid team entering the season three times, and they only made the playoffs twice in the past five seasons. This most recent season, the Mets entered the season as the highest paid team of all time, only to narrowly miss the playoffs after being edged out by the Reds, who had an active payroll that was three times smaller than the Mets. Even skeptics of the assumption that more money leads to more wins would find this statline preposterous. Some possible reasons why the Mets are an outlier to the system could be poorly spent money, injuries, or bad coaching. Both the Mets and the Rays are examples of money not being the sole decider of how good a team is, but it is generally an indicator of how likely a team is to succeed.”
The spending spree, which likely keeps the Braves in the top 10 in payroll, bodes well for the team’s expected comeback, not just reaching the playoffs, but for making a deep run.
John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu or on “X” at @johntures2. His first book “Branded” has been published by the Huntsville Independent Press (https://www.huntsvilleindependent.com/product-page/branded).