Building a Championship: The Modern-Day Blueprint For Success
Moneyball.
MLB loves itself an underdog. Funny enough, there are countless amounts of movies that focus on the underdog, scrappy, lovable losers that transform into winners miraculously. While baseball has had quite a few underdog success stories in the past decade, such as the 2021 Braves or 2019 Nats, there’s more to these teams that meets the eye.
Both of these teams were not only fueled by massive amounts of high-end talent and star-power, but both teams were top 10 in MLB Payroll in their respected years. While MLB has had teams come out and dominate with low payrolls in the past (2014 and ‘15 Royals for ex.), the past few years of the MLB have seen a new formula for success.
The 2021 Atlanta Braves were robbed of their superstar, Ronald Acuna Jr, a few weeks before the AS break due to a torn ACL. However, due to effective trades and their other players such as Austin Riley and Freddie Freeman stepping up, both of which were home-grown talent, which leads me to my next point:
Player development AND effective spending are the two most important keys to sustainable winning.
Look at the 2022 Astros. They had effective player development for key contributors to their championship (Valdez, Javier, Pena, Yordan) that played big parts in their winning, and also some key free agents (Stanek, Neris) who were big parts of their World Series run as well. Along with some key trades at the deadline (Mancini, Vazquez) they were able to construct a World Series caliber roster.
The 2023 Rangers are the same way. Adolis Garcia, Josh Jung, and others were developed from the farm, Scherzer and Montgomery were brought in through trade, and Eovaldi, Semien, and Seager were bought in the past couple of off-seasons. The recipe isn’t just to spend like crazy, it’s to have a fair balance between these three assets, to ensure long-term success and stability.
That’s what it takes to be successful in today’s market, and if teams don’t adapt, they’ll fall back to the trenches.