Miami Web News (2025)

24/10/2024

This year money does seem to buy at least some happiness in baseball. The two MLB teams that had the highest payrolls – the Yankees and Mets – made it into the final four. Each had a payroll of over $300 million. The Mets spent an astonishing $3.6 million per victory to lead the majors, the Bronx Bombers second with $3.3 million. The Dodgers also have a humongous payroll.
Contrast that to last year when the five teams that spent the most per win didn’t make the playoffs: Rockies ($2.9 million per win), Padres ($3.1 M), Angels ($3.15 M), Yankees ($3,4 M) and the Mets at an astonishing $4.6 million per win.
This is my seventh year measuring MLB team efficiencies: Payroll divided by victories. I use Spotrac for payroll, because it includes all paid players, even those no longer on the active roster.
This year, four of the seven teams with the lowest per victory cost made the playoffs: The Tigers at $1.14 M, Guardians at 1.16M, Orioles at $1.2M and Brewers at $1.24M.
Clearly, the award for stupidest spending this year goes to the White Sox. They managed to set an MLB record for most losses ever in a season while having a middle-of-the pack payroll of $133.8M (15 teams spent less money). With 41 victories, that meant the White Sox spent $3.26M per win – just a tiny bit less than the Yankees.
The Dodgers meanwhile belong in a separate category. Their 2024 payroll is officially $241 million. Four teams spent more. Cost per win: $2.46M. Eleven teams spent more per win. But this number needs an asterisk: Ohtani is paid $2 million this year, with the rest of his $70M salary deferred, if I’m reading Spotrac correctly.
Each season is always something of a crapshoot. Injuries hurt last year’s champs, the Rangers ($2.9M per win) and the perennial playoff Braves ($2.6M).
But then there are the truly stupid teams: the ones who spend big year after year to get mediocre results and miss the playoffs. Prime example: The Angels continue to spend big bucks but haven’t made the playoffs since 2014. This year, they spent $2.7M per win. Four teams spent less than half of that per win and made the playoffs.
Other futile big spenders were the Cubs ($2.8M per win) and the Blue Jays ($2.9M).
My Miami Marlins had a payroll of $97 million. Only three teams paid less. By getting rid of almost any player with trade value, they had a miserable 62 victories, each costing an average of $1.6 million. Ten teams spent less.
Some teams – Oakland and Pittsburgh – consistently spend little and have crummy seasons.
Contrast that with Tampa, which has been regularly at or near the top in cheapest costs per win while making the playoffs. This year, only Oakland had a cheaper cost-per-win, but for the first time in six years, the Rays missed the post-season.
Payroll Wins Dollars
in Millions per Wins
1 Oakland 63.4 69 0.9188
2 Tampa Bay 88.8 80 1.11
3 Pittsburgh 85.8 76 1.1289
4 Detroit 98.5 86 1.1453
5 Cleveland 106.8 92 1.1609
6 Baltimore 109.8 91 1.2066
7 Milwaukee 115.5 93 1.2419
8 Cincinnati 100.3 77 1.3026
9 Kansas City 122.5 86 1.4244
10 Washington 106.4 71 1.4986
11 Miami 97.5 62 1.5726
12 Minnesota 131 82 1.5976
13 Seattle 148.3 85 1.7447
14 San Diego 171.8 93 1.8473
15 Arizona 172.8 89 1.9416
16 St Louis 175.9 83 2.1193
17 Boston 190 81 2.3457
18 Colorado 147.3 61 2.4148
19 LA Dodgers 241 98 2.4592
20 San Fran 206 80 2.575
21 Philadelphia 247 95 2.6
22 Atlanta 236.4 89 2.6562
23 LA Angels 172.2 63 2.7333
24 Chi Cubs 230 83 2.7711
25 Texas 225.5 78 2.891
26 Houston 255.3 88 2.9011
27 Toronto 218 74 2.9459
28 White Sox 133.8 41 3.2634
29 NY Yankees 309.4 94 3.2915
30 NY Mets 317. 89 3.5708

24/09/2024

I just watched an astonishing documentary: From Russia with Lev, which shows exactly how the Trump administration schemed to get a foreign country to interfere with the US presidential 2020 election.

Its core is based on startlingly frank interviews with Lev Parnas, the fast-talking Soviet-born businessman who became close to Giuliani and Trump.

The documentary is made by Miami’s own racontur, the Billy Corben-Alfred Spellman operation. Its 90 minutes move along quickly with great visuals, and it doesn’t shirk away from Lev’s unseemly (and colorful) past. He is remarkably forthright into how he manipulated events behind the scenes. (He got the US ambassador to Ukraine dumped starting with an off-hand comment.) The film includes Lev meeting with Hunter Biden, who was the prime target of the campaign, in a highly emotional exchange.

The documentary appeared last week on MSNBC. I knew about it and thought I had it set up to record, but I didn’t. I was able to track it down on NBC.com through my phone and then transfer it to our TV. I think the website said it was expiring quickly there. I’m hoping there are other places where it can be picked up. It’s absolutely riveting.

06/05/2024

By John Dorschner

A fascinating story in a recent Herald about corruption in Cuba got me thinking about stories I wrote more than two decades ago – and I thought: “Of course!”

It’s inevitable. I saw the same process in Romania in 2001 – and thought it would be repeated in Cuba, though I misjudged the specifics.

The Herald story Anti-corruption campaign targeting officials, private sector fuels uncertainty in Cuba, by the great Nora Gamez Torres, announced that the government had fired the governor of Cienfuegos province and some others in a “campaign that seems to be targeting public officials who illegally profited from close links with the island’s fledgling private businesses.

“The private sector is also a target… as the government tries to enforce tax rules… Because the private businesses need the permission of local governments to operate, the system seems ripe for abuse, a Cuban entrepreneur who asked not to be identified said.”

In 2001, I saw this for myself when I was a senior Fulbright fellow in Timisoara, Romania, teaching journalism and researching what happened when a Communist dictatorship ended – and how that applies to Cuba in the future.

And guess what was the key lubricant in the transition that started in 1989 when state security forces declared (after the fall of the Berlin wall) that they were freedom-loving capitalists and executed dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife.

The key is that the bloated Communist bureaucracy did not go away. Private businesses became legal, but to start one required 40 to 50 government documents, each of which had to be approved by a low-level bureaucrat grumbling about his low pay and reduction in status.

Foreign entrepreneurs rushed into the country – to team with local people who explained to them that virtually every document required a bribe in order to be approved.

Corruption, among many other things, is grossly inefficient. When I went to Romania, a dozen years after the fall of Communism, the economy was only 76 percent of what it had been under the dictator – an utterly astonishing figure considering how inefficient his economy was.

When I wrote about my Romanian observations in the Herald, many experts predicted that Cuba too faced a difficult, albeit inevitable, transition. Antonio Jorge, an FIU economist, was one of several who told me that he thought Cuba’s bloated government had to be on its last legs. “They can’t keep going on like this.”

He said that 22 and a half years ago.

What I – and many others – didn’t foresee was this nightmarish half-step situation that Cuba is in now. The country needs private business because government operations are so inefficient – but the Communist Party is still in power. Its bureaucrats still go to work every day, shaking their revolutionary fingers at the entrepreneurs who, if left to their own devices, would be making a lot more than the Party members.

Corruption is the necessary lubricant to keep this present system going day to day. Party leaders can try to stamp it out. They can make it harder for businesses to operate. They can punish government workers caught taking bribes. But in this screwy attempted convergence between a Marxist-Leninist centralized economy and ambitious private businesses, continued corruption will be the ever-present solution sought by the opposing sides.

04/05/2024

I’ve just finished Say Hello to My Little Friend. It is an astonishing book, perhaps the best I’ve ever read about Miami.

It’s by Hialeah’s own Jennine Capó Crucet. The central character, Izzy, has an Elian past – mom died during the raft trip – but with complex twists. Izzy bonds with a fellow Hialeah-Miami Lakes graduate because both know the dates when you avoid the Youth Fair. Izzy’s gal envisions being proposed to on a Youth Fair ride – or maybe at Santa’s Enchanted Forest. And what could be more perfect than a wedding at what is now called Jungle Island, where the package includes photos with parrots?

Lo**ta “the killer whale,” is a central character in this surreal world, in which Izzy’s first dream is to be a Pitbull imitator and when that fails, he seeks to become Tony Montana, AKA Scarface. Magical realism here we come.

This work by the author of How To Leave Hialeah is funny and sad – and, yes, Capó Crucet messes with us at times. Two-thirds of the way through the novel, the narrator is interrupted by a critic/editor who demands more ci**rs, more Cuban baseball (“Fidel played baseball!”), more Joan Didion insights. The narrator fires that back Didion was in Miami for a few weeks, maybe months, before writing her acclaimed book about the city.

But with a grudging nod to showing a broader Miami, Capó Crucet leaves La Saguesera and Hialeah briefly to show pretentious McMansions in Key Biscayne. But hey, that’s Miami too.

One of the funniest scenes is when Izzy decides to impress a date by taking her to a tapas place – which is inside a gas station. Just their attempts to select a wine make for a great comic bit. Indeed, I have been to a place just like that – and the tapas were pretty damn good.

There are many kinds of “real Miami” of course – but this book shows a certain lifestyle that is rarely examined. It’s a real eye-opener.

02/11/2023

The Orioles spent $700,000 for each win during the 2023 regular season. The Mighty Mets spent more than six times as much: $4.6 million per win.

Smart vs. Stupid: This is my sixth year measuring MLB team efficiencies: Payroll divided by victories. I use Spotrac for payroll, because it includes all paid players, even those no longer on the active roster.

This year’s post-season was a bit weird: The big-win teams in the regular season – Braves, Dodgers, Orioles, Rays – collapsed in the playoffs, taken over by wild-card teams on hot streaks.

The big-spending Rangers -- $251 million payroll – paid $2.8 million per regular season victory.

The frugal D-backs spent $119 million, just a bit more than the Marlins’ $105 M. The Snakes and Fish each had 84 wins in the regular season, Miami spending $1.25 M per win, Arizona $1.4 M (half as much as the Rangers). During the playoffs, Arizona got hot. The Fish did not.

Looking back over the six years, what impresses me is that some teams are consistently smart on how they spend their money – and some teams are astoundingly stupid year after year.

The Rays regularly reach the playoffs despite low budgets caused by dreadful attendance. For the past four years, the Orioles have had good efficiency – low cost per win – and finally made the playoffs this year.

Then there are the Pirates and A’s: Great bargains in cost-per-win, but not a whiff of playoffs. Each spent roughly $1 million per win.

Contrast that with teams like the Angels and Mets, who consistently spend huge amounts for naught. This year, the five teams that spent the most per win didn’t make the playoffs: Rockies ($2.9 million per win), Padres ($3.1 M), Angels ($3.15 M), Yankees ($3,4 M) and the Mets at an astonishing $4.6 million per win.

The Mets set an all-time record for payroll at $343 million, almost five times the Orioles’ $71 million.

The Yanks at least made the playoffs five of the six years, though the top spot they always seek keeps eluding them. The Padres got there twice in the same period. The Mets once. The Angels, determinedly bad in cost-per-wins year after year, have not been in the playoffs since 2014, perhaps an example of the old saying that insanity is doing the same thing again and again expecting different results.

The World Champ Rangers are an interesting case. They had the fourth highest payroll – behind only the Mets, Yankees and Padres. Yet $96M of their $251M was injured reserve, led by deGrom at $30 million. Seager ($35.5 million) was a major factor for their success, but so were Evan Carter (adjusted salary $89,033 because he had less than 100 AB when he came up at the end of the season), Josh Jung ($721,000), Leodys Taveras $733,000, Josh Sborz $733,000 and Adolis Garcia $747,000. Then, even with super-stud Garcia injured, Bochy somehow made it all work.

If you want to see the complete list of teams, go to my blog marlinsmaniacs on blogspot.com. Facebook won’t let me do a direct link because it violates “community standards.” (Maybe a bot thought I was advocating insanity?)

Miami Web News

24/10/2024

24/09/2024

06/05/2024

04/05/2024

02/11/2023

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