There’s no crying in baseball — or buying wins.
Just ask the Red Sox and Cubs. Boston and Chicago combined to spend more than $450 million in payroll, tops in Major League Baseball, but both teams failed to qualify for the playoffs.
The Tampa Bay Rays are the exact opposite. Despite opening the season with MLB’s lowest payroll — about $60 million — the Rays managed to win 96 games and made the postseason for the first time in six seasons.
In spite of having a payroll that is more than 55% below the MLB average of $134 million and playing at a stadium, Tropicana Field, that has ranked last or second-to-last in attendance in each of the last nine seasons, the Rays are winning with players like Blake Snell, Austin Meadows and Tyler Glasnow, all of whom make $1 million or less.
In fact, the Rays only have a pair of players that make $5 million or more: pitcher Charlie Morton ($15 million) and outfielder Kevin Kiermaier ($8 million). For comparison, the Red Sox have 12 players who were over the $5 million threshold in 2019.
The Rays are no strangers to doing more with less as the franchise has posted a record above .500 eight times since 2008 even though Tampa plays in the AL East with the big-spending Red Sox and New York Yankees.
“We know our revenue is a challenge and an obstacle to overcome, but you have to embrace the challenge, form your own identity and stay true to who you are,” Rays senior vice president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom told The Wall Street Journal. “We know there are challenges we face financially, but we don’t let ourselves be limited by them. We use them to inspire us, to spur us to work harder and be more creative.”
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