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This season, the New York Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies and Boston Red Sox had the second, third and fourth-highest opening day payrolls in baseball, at $202, $180, and $162 million respectively. And as of today, those teams sit 14, 21, and 26 games respectively out of first place within their divisions. In the case of the Red Sox and Phillies, both teams will finish in last place this season.

That's $544 million spent on players to finish a combined 61 games out of first place.

Which isn't to suggest that spending in baseball doesn't affect overall performance. Of the six division leaders in baseball right now, only the Cardinals and Orioles are in first place without outspending all of their division rivals based on opening day payrolls.

But among the four wild card teams in place now - Kansas City, Oakland, Pittsburgh and San Francisco rank 19th, 25th, 27th and seventh. That tells you that baseball's intent to make the post-season accessible to teams that couldn't spend their way to the top of a division is working.

It's just not working for the Blue Jays.

The Blue Jays shouldn't necessarily to be prepared to spend more going into next season. It's just that pointing to payroll as the reason why this team has missed the post-season for more than two decades is shortsighted and misses the bigger issue with this team, which is the ability identify and develop major league talent and sign players to contracts that provide the best return on investment.

The Blue Jays opened this season with a payroll $21 million more than the St. Louis Cardinals, $25 million more than the Orioles, $40 million more than Kansas City, $49 million more than Oakland and $64 million more than Pittburgh. All of those teams are currently in a playoff position.

The Washington Nationals - with the best record in the National League and a 16-game lead in the NL East, have done so with a payroll just over $2 million more than the Blue Jays.

The bottom line is this: focusing on payroll in fact obstructs the flaws in how this team has been built. So if you're a fan fed up with the Blue Jays' mediocrity, what this team is willing to spend should be well down your list of concerns.

satyr9 wrote:This isn't an article. He literally could've written 1,000 words of, "The sky is blue. Fire is hot. I like cookies" and it would've had more insight and actual information than this strange piece of redundancy. Sports involves money. Lots of money. The Jays have and spend money. So do other teams. Sometimes teams that spend money win games. Sometimes they lose games. Wow.