CHART: Little Bang for the Buck: Since 1988, the Mets have a prominent place among teams with the highest marginal payroll per marginal win over a three-year span.
Teams with low ratios and good records, like the 2010 Padres, who spent a major league-low $642,495 per marginal win on the way to a 90-72 record, are the most efficient ball clubs, while teams like the 2010 Mariners, whose $6.1 million per marginal win was the worst in baseball, spend their money inefficiently.
How many marginal dollars does a team spend for each marginal win?
One can rate any team's payroll efficiency by using a statistic called marginal payroll per marginal win, which sounds more complicated than it is.
Every wave of technology has seen incumbent players, and their marginal win rate tends to fall to zero if you look out a few decades.
This season, they project to pay $4.8 million per marginal win, third worst in the majors.
It was calculated in 2013 that one marginal win is worth $7 million, while FanGraphs assigns approximately $8 million per win above replacement in today's environment.
They spent $6.5 million per marginal win, the worst rate in the majors; by 2010, that figure fell to $4.1 million in 2010, which still ranked fourth-worst in baseball.
And the 2002 to 2004 Mets, who paid $308.5 million for the right to go 212-272 (.438), weveneven worse, spending the 2011 equivalent of $5.5 million per marginal win.
Likewise, Pappas's research showed that a team consisting solely of minimum-salary players would win an average of 30 percent of its games, so all wins above that threshold of winning percentage represent a team's marginal wins.
"He's afraid something might be won in a marginal way.
