The 1894 piecemeal pay scale

There has been a lot of talk lately about the highest-paid players in the game, from the Albert Pujols talks to the history of the game's most-compensated stars through the years. And then Devon Young over at Seamheads compared those milestone contracts to what players make today, an illuminating look at player compensation vs. inflation.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a unique proposal for paying players -- in 1894. It's another gem from Low and Inside, the book of baseball anecdotes published in 1949 that described a plan to build a ballfield atop Grand Central Terminal in 1912.

Here's the proposed new salary structure:

A friend of the workingman (baseball-playing division) made a profound proposal back in 1894 in an essay written for the Detroit Journal, under which ballplayers would no longer have to suffer under an economic system by which they got regular pay. The Detroit thinker recommended that they be paid on a piecework basis.

He was inspired by the fact that in a single day of that 1894 season three Western League teams produced an over-all total of one hundred and nine runs.

"It is not fair," said the essayist, "to work men as hard as the players did that day. It would be more desirable all around if the men were paid by what they do rather than so much a week or a month."

He then proposed the following piecework scale:

Runs ..................... 50 cents each
Put-outs ............... 40 cents each
Assists ................. 30 cents each
Singles ................. 10 cents each
Two-base hits ...... 20 cents each
Triples ................. 30 cents each
Home runs ........... 40 cents each
Sacrifice hits ........ 05 cents each
Stolen bases ........ 05 cents each

He did not make it quite clear just how much a home-run hitter would get -- presumably forty cents for the homer and another fifty cents for scoring. Errors, he suggested, would be charged against the player on a sliding scale, and there would be a special scale for pitchers.

I was curious as to how this pay scale would work with today's players, in today's dollars. Of course, there are a few gaping holes: no RBIs, no indication of what the sliding scale for errors might be, and no idea what the pitchers' scale might be. So for the sake of argument, let's assign an 1894 value of 25 cents to runs batted in. I'm going to ignore the penalty for errors, because that's a lot more work than I'm willing to do at the moment. If anyone has a suggestion, feel free to comment. And we'll leave pitchers out of it for now, too.

First, we need to convert 1894 dollars into 2010 dollars (because I'm going to be using 2010 stats), so I found a calculator online. The results:

Runs .................. $14.92 each
Put-outs ............. $11.94 each
Assists ................. $8.95 each
Singles ................. $2.98 each
Two-base hits ...... $5.97 each
Triples ................. $8.95 each
Home runs ........... $11.94 each
Sacrifice hits ........ $1.49 each
Stolen bases ........ $1.49 each
RBIs ................... $7.46 each

You might be able to see where there's going to be a problem already -- putouts are going to skew the results toward certain positions. After plugging last year's stats into a spreadsheet with formulas converting the stats into these dollar amounts, the game's best player earned the most money, but not nearly as much as his 2010 contract paid him. Pujols, who made nearly $14.6 million last year, would have been the highest-paid player under this system -- with a salary of $22,474.85. Second on the list is Adrian Gonzalez ($19,900.60) and third is Oakland first baseman Daric Barton ($19,765.15). First basemen held the first 19 spots and 22 of the top 23 as catchers (who get putout credit on strikeouts) start creeping onto the list.

It's not really worth exploring the numbers any further. Clearly that 1894 model wouldn't work today, and not just because of how the game's pay structure has left inflation in the dust. For one thing, I can't imagine there's anyone who values putouts by a fielder as much as home runs by a hitter (outs recorded by a pitcher, however, may be the starting point for developing a pitchers' pay scale).

And of course, ballplayers in 1894 weren't seen as the superstar celebrities they are today. They were certainly held in high esteem, but more as active, sporting men than athletic royalty. It was a nice try, Detroit Journal essayist, but it just won't work.

Cost per win through Aug. 2

Not sure why I was inspired to crunch these numbers, but here is how much each team has paid per win so far this season, based on these payroll numbers.

Rank = overall payroll rank

Rank	Team	Payroll	Wins	$ per W	$ per player
3	Chicago Cubs	$146,859,000	46	$3,192,586.96	$5,439,222
1	New York Yankees	$206,333,389	66	$3,126,263.47	$8,253,336
2	Boston Red Sox	$162,747,333	60	$2,712,455.55	$5,611,977
17	Baltimore Orioles	$81,612,500	32	$2,550,390.63	$3,138,942
9	Seattle Mariners	$98,376,667	39	$2,522,478.64	$3,513,452
5	New York Mets	$132,701,445	53	$2,503,800.85	$5,103,902
4	Philadelphia Phillies	$141,927,381	57	$2,489,954.05	$5,068,835
6	Detroit Tigers	$122,864,929	52	$2,362,787.10	$4,550,553
14	Houston Astros	$92,355,500	46	$2,007,728.26	$3,298,411
8	Los Angeles Angels	$105,013,667	54	$1,944,697.54	$3,621,161
7	Chicago White Sox	$108,273,197	59	$1,835,138.93	$4,164,354
12	Los Angeles Dodgers	$94,945,517	54	$1,758,250.31	$3,651,751
18	Milwaukee Brewers	$81,108,279	49	$1,655,271.00	$2,796,837
11	Minnesota Twins	$97,559,167	59	$1,653,545.20	$3,484,256
20	Kansas City Royals	$72,267,710	45	$1,605,949.11	$2,491,990
10	San Francisco Giants	$97,828,833	61	$1,603,751.36	$3,493,887
13	St. Louis Cardinals	$93,540,753	59	$1,585,436.49	$3,741,630
25	Arizona Diamondbacks	$60,718,167	39	$1,556,876.08	$2,335,314
16	Colorado Rockies	$84,227,000	55	$1,531,400.00	$2,904,379
15	Atlanta Braves	$84,423,667	60	$1,407,061.12	$3,126,802
24	Cleveland Indians	$61,203,967	45	$1,360,088.16	$2,110,482
23	Washington Nationals	$61,425,000	47	$1,306,914.89	$2,047,500
19	Cincinnati Reds	$72,386,544	60	$1,206,442.40	$2,784,098
22	Toronto Blue Jays	$62,689,357	55	$1,139,806.49	$2,089,645
21	Tampa Bay Rays	$71,923,471	66	$1,089,749.56	$2,663,832
26	Florida Marlins	$55,641,500	53	$1,049,839.62	$2,060,796
28	Oakland Athletics	$51,654,900	53	$974,620.75	$1,666,287
30	Pittsburgh Pirates	$34,943,000	36	$970,638.89	$1,294,185
27	Texas Rangers	$55,250,545	61	$905,746.64	$1,905,191
29	San Diego Padres	$37,799,300	62	$609,666.13	$1,453,819

$203 million doesn't go as far as it used to

I may have figured out the Yankees' problem. It begins, of course, with George Steinbrenner. But I think the crux of the issue is that George gets his ideas from the wrong newspaper.

Note this 2003 article (apologize to the original site, which had trouble loading when I searched for this story today). I think George saw that and, instead of laughing, thought, "What a great idea!"

Trading for Alex Rodriguez may have worked for my buddy who won our fantasy league this year, but it hasn't done anything for the Yankees in two seasons. That's not totally fair, despite what the drunk Yankee fans were saying on the news last night, because this year's team still lacked solid pitching come the postseason. Granted, the Yankees' vaunted lineup couldn't hit much in the past five games -- but neither could the best lineup in the game, and those Red Sox were swept.

If Bernie Williams leaves for another team in the off-season, there goes another player who owns a World Series ring. Unless I'm forgetting someone, that will leave Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera as the only regulars on the roster who were there in 2000 -- nevermind 1996, when this run truly began (otherwise known as the Joe Torre Era). I guess Tino Martinez would deserve conditional recognition, having left and returned, but I doubt he'd be a regular next year anyway.

Since I love pointing out coincidences that don't really mean anything but are otherwise fun to note, the last time the Yankees beat a one-time New York team (that is, the last time they beat the Dodgers or Giants in the World Series, even after those two National League franchises had moved to California), they didn't win the Series again for 18 years. Yet, with the way the Yankees spend, I don't expect them to go until 2018 before their next title. Somewhere around 2009 would be about right, seeing as how they haven't won the Series while a Republican is president since 1958.

* * *
Angels in five.
White Sox in five.
Cardinals in four.
Astros in four.

Those were my predictions for the four Division Series matchups. I was 4-for-4 on winners, had two series pegged perfectly and another off by one game. For the LCS, I went with the Angels in six and the Cardinals in seven, but I'm a little worried about that ALCS choice. While in some cases, I'd wonder if the layoff will take Chicago off its game, but considering the Angels' New York-to-Anaheim-to-Chicago travel from Sunday through this morning, the fact that they lost Bartolo Colon in the second and that they had to go with two relievers on top of long man Ervin Santana -- I have to hope they can salvage one of these two games on the road to have a decent shot at this series. As for the Astros and Cardinals, I'm expecting a series just as exciting as last year's and Sunday's Game 4 win over the Braves. It will be intense.

The Bizarro Yankees

What a game at Yankee Stadium tonight.

Why is it that with the Yankees and Devil Rays, you always expect something wacky to happen? Or at the very least, we should be expecting a 20-2 Yankees win, but we're not that surprised when Tampa Bay (with its $38 million payroll less than 20 percent of the Yankee's $205 million) goes up 10-2, and even less surprised when the Yankees put up 13 in the eighth to win it.

The Devil Rays are totally the Bizarro Yankees.

The New York Yankees' ownership is based in Tampa; the Tampa Bay Devil Rays' ownership is based in New York.

The Yankees have no limit to their spending, the Devil Rays have virtually no spending and they're immediately at their limit.

The Yankees have no prospects in their system to help them as Yankees, or in trades for established stars; the Devil Rays are loaded with prospects in their system, but won't trade them for established stars and won't bring them up to help the big club.

The Yankees' Sean Henn pitches all his major league games against Tampa, and loses them all; last year, Kevin Brown pitched, what, his first four games against Tampa and won them all.

The Yankees play in one of the most historic sports sites in the world, a place with lots of charm and character; the Devil Rays play in an antiseptic dome in The Sunshine State, a "ballpark" with all the character of a mausoleum in a city (that would be St. Petersburg) with absolutely no sports history -- unless you count shuffleboard, or the baseball game Jack Kerouac invented and no doubt played when he lived his last days there. There's more history in the Yankee Stadium sprinkler system than in St. Pete.

With the exception of adding the "NY" to the home jerseys, the Yankees haven't changed their general uniform design in eight decades; the Devil Rays haven't existed for a decade and have changed their general uniform design about eight times. (OK, five when you count not one, but two alternate jerseys. Seven if you count two spring training tops.)

So I'm going to the Bronx tomorrow to experience this dichotomy in person.