If baseball were fair...

Tomorrow night, the Yankees and Twins open the AL playoffs. Both teams have deserving players, but so do some of the teams that were left out of this year's playoffs--that's bound to happen when a 30 team league only has 8 playoff spots. The problem with MLB though, is the disparity in teams' payroll.

What if baseball were fair? What if the playoffs were seeded according to the teams that earned their wins, rather than buying them? To find out, I seeded the teams according a new metric I call "final grade", calculated by dividing a team's number of wins at the season's end by the 4th root of team payroll.

Without further hesitation, here are your 2009 deserving Division winners:

AL East     Tampa Bay
AL Central  Minnesota
AL West     Texas
AL Wild     LA Angels

NL East     Florida
NL Central  St. Louis
NL West     Colorado
NL Wild     LA Dodgers

Interestingly, both LA teams deserve wild card spots, with the Dodgers and Angels finishing just ahead of the Padres and Red Sox, respectively. 5/8 of the deserving teams made the actual MLB playoffs. The players for the Devil Rays, Rangers, and Marlins are more deserving than those for the hulkishly-rich Yankees, Red Sox, and Phillies.

More interestingly, without needing any adjustments, the ratio produces a report card-type score that gives fair assessment of each team's season, punishing neither big nor small market teams. (I think most reasonable fans would actually agree with the final grades the system cranks out.) Pretty cool!

Other notes:
*** Again, final grade was calculated by the equation:
Final grade = Total Wins / (team payroll in dollars)^(1/4)
*** The Marlins won 2.36 games/million dollars spent, almost 5 times that of the Yankees, who led the majors in victories but still finished dead last in wins/million dollars spent at 0.51.
*** Obviously, the system does not take injuries into account, which played a large part in the Mets and Indians poor seasons.

Team       Wins    Wins/    "final grade"
                 $mil spent
Marlins      87     2.36     1.12  A++++
Rockies      92     1.22     0.99  A+
Twins        87     1.33     0.97  A+
Rangers      87     1.27     0.96  A
Dodgers      95     0.95     0.95  A
Rays         84     1.33     0.94  A
Angels       97     0.85     0.94  A
Cardinals    91     1.03     0.94  A
Padres       75     1.75     0.93  A
Giants       88     1.07     0.92  A-
Red Sox      95     0.77     0.90  A-
Phillies     93     0.82     0.90  A-
Braves       86     0.89     0.87  B+
Yankees     103     0.51     0.86  B
Mariners     85     0.86     0.85  B
Reds         78     1.10     0.85  B
Brewers      80     1.00     0.85  B
Athletics    75     1.20     0.84  B
Tigers       86     0.75     0.83  B
White Sox    79     0.82     0.80  B-
Blue Jays    75     0.93     0.79  C+
Cubs         83     0.61     0.77  C+
D-backs      70     0.95     0.76  C
Pirates      62     1.27     0.74  C
Astros       74     0.72     0.73  C
Royals       65     0.92     0.71  C-
Orioles      64     0.95     0.71  C-
Indians      65     0.80     0.68  D+
Nationals    59     0.99     0.67  D
Mets         70     0.52     0.65  D-

Oh yeah, and my world series prediciton:
I'm gonna go Angels over Rockies in 6.