Does payroll equal wins?

A quick look at major league baseball salaries suggests that spending on talent will get you good results in the win column. Six of the seven highest salaried teams posted at least 90 wins in 2025. The seventh team, the New York Mets, well, let’s just say they should never have traded Tom Seaver. Low salaried teams performed as expected, with nine of the ten lowest salaried teams posting losing records. Of the tenth through 19th ranked teams in terms of total active salaries, one (the Brewers) had the best record in baseball, and eight of the ten won at least half their games. Smart spending might signal a winning formula.

We also looked at team payrolls as a percentage of their local MSA income, and here is where it gets interesting. Of the fourteen teams that spent above average relative to their local income base, ten had winning records and nine made the playoffs compared to only three of the sixteen underspending teams. The implications are clear: teams that spend a higher percentage of their local income base on salaries reward both their players and their fans. I think every business can learn from that.