r/Braves • u/jdorschner • 2d ago
Braves Spent $2.8 Million Per WIn
In this era of huge and tiny payrolls, the Braves lean toward the upper echelon, getting 94 wins on a team salary of $260.6 million for a ratio of $2.8 million per win.
Compare that with the high-flying Dodgers, with the highest MLB payroll, at $380.4 million, meaning they spent $3.8 million for every regular season win.
The Guardians were the most cost-efficient team in baseball this year – spending a mere $934,118 per win – the only team under $1 million. And they made the playoffs. The least-efficient, once again, were the big-spending Mets, with the second highest payroll, spent $4.7 million per win. The Blue Jays also threw money away -- $3.65 million per win – and finished way behind the Rays, who had the best record in the American League with $1.1 million per win.
In fact, three of the four most efficient teams – the White Sox being the other -- made the post-season. The best record in the National League was the small-market Brewers, who paid $1.4 million per win.
This is my ninth year measuring costs per win. I use Spotrac for salaries, because they measure all expenses, including injured and “buried,” meaning players getting paid who are now longer with the club. The Marlins, for example, with the second-smallest payroll in baseball, used $10 million of their overall $82.8 million to pay part of Giancarlo Stanton’s salary as a New York Yankee.
How much are team revenues? How much can teams afford to spend? For most of the MLB, team finances are completely opaque. The Braves are the lone entity publishing audited numbers. For 2025, looking purely at baseball operations, the Braves had revenue of $635 M and expenses of $497 M, for a surplus of $138 M. Still, with marketing, depreciation and various other expenses, the corporation reported a net loss of $23.2 M.
Baseball is the only major American sport without a salary cap, and owners have vowed to force a cap in the upcoming negotiations with the union. A cap is likely to include a floor, meaning the cheapest teams like the Marlins and A’s would be forced to spend more.
Certainly, the numbers reveal consistently stupid behavior. The big-market, big-spending Angels haven’t been in the playoffs since 2014. For all the time I’ve been measuring, they have been among the least efficient teams, spending huge sums for poor results. This year, they spent $2.8 MPW – more than twice as much as the playoff Guardians, Rays, White Sox and Brewers. The Halos now have a new owner and perhaps things will improve.
Smart spending can get a team into the playoffs, but when it comes to going all the way, big bucks still pave the way for ultimate victory. The last time a small-market team won a World Series was 2015 with the Royals. Will this year be different? Some union leaders may hope so – so they can claim there’s no need for a salary cap.
Complete stats can be found at Marlins Maniacs. Scroll to the bottom for the team-by-team numbers.
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u/WoodpeckerTrick3290 #3 2d ago
The last team we saw legitimately build a winner from the ground up was Houston.
Atlanta and Baltimore both tried similar strategies. For our boys, all our stud pitchers that were suppose to usher in the new dominant staff had their arms fall off. The the O's, their kids all hit the majors, had a good season ish and then forgot how to play the game/got hurt...etc..
The most recent team to build from the ground up has been the Brewers. It's unfortunately they can never afford to keep anybody, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a few "AA" style contracts go out to some of the young talent on that team if the players will bite, similar to what we got out of Acuna, Albies, Riley...etc.
Either way the last time we saw both Unions take a hard stance on the cap and both make it the primary focus of negotiations was going to be the 94 off season and we know how that went.
I'll be happy if we get 120 games next year once the Owners finally relent again as they always do.
(Side bar, the Braves are a great example honestly. Sure the financials may "cry poor". The reality is, Liberty spun them off into "their own company" (ignore all of the Former Liberty members on the Board, pure coincidence), and when they break even or lose money every year they are not profitable.....It's all a farce.)
"The Braves" lost $23M in 2025 about like I lost 20lbs over the weekend I've needed to lose for 10 years...
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u/LoopholeTravel 2d ago
Kansas City absolutely built their 2014-15 teams from scratch on a shoestring budget. And then they got raided as the contracts ended. That core of guys was a lot of fun to watch.
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u/QuadzillaStrider 1d ago
The Braves lost money because they're taking those profits and either investing them into the Battery or paying off debt incurred from building the Battery.
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u/BravesToday 1d ago
The Braves lost money because they're taking those profits and either investing them into the Battery or paying off debt incurred from building the Battery.
They're not. They break out baseball revenue (and baseball costs) separately from mixed-use development revenue and costs. We can see everything and they're not using baseball money to pay mixed-use development costs. The baseball money that goes to debt goes to four places: their MLB Facility Fund obligations, both term (30M) and revolver (36.8M), their TeamCo revolver (35M), and their long-term debt (151.99M), all baseball/stadium debts.
The mixed-use debt is separate and is for The Battery and the Pennant Park acquisition, and that ended 2025 at $487.3M.
Again, they lay all of this out exactly in an audited statement every year.
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u/BravesToday 1d ago
The Brewers have already started those "AA style" contracts, having extended Jackson Chourio (8/$82M), Cooper Pratt (8/$50.75M), and Luis Lara (7/$31M).
My big question is about their pitching - can they continue to manufacture ace-level starting pitching from the farm system at the level required to keep selling off their #1s the year before free agency like they did with Corbin Burnes and Freddy Peralta?
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u/WoodpeckerTrick3290 #3 1d ago
Kind of exactly what we did with Fried, but all of our arms started falling off and AA tried to lock up pitchers starting with Strider.
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u/ZealousidealLettuce6 2d ago
I think this is more of a feature of salary arbitration rules & boom/bust cycles.
Braves are consistently good, hence all the NL East titles.
Rays, Sox & Cleveland can be pretty bad some years and are able to restock the cupboard full of talent on low salaries.
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u/rpbtIII Golden Grapefruit 2d ago
What was the average cost/win for playoff teams?
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u/jdorschner 1d ago
An excellent question. For playoff teams, the average cost per win was $2.34 million, close to the 30-team league average of $2.26 million for the regular season. Not sure what that means. If you look a little deeper, at the four teams left, you see a big disparity. The Guardians are at $0.93 MPW, Rays at $1.1 MPW, Brewers at $1.4 M and the Dodgers at $3.8 M. If you take the MEDIAN of those 4, not the average, you get $1.28 MPW, I could see the union using something like that to bolster an anti-cap case. Dodgers are down two, but I wouldn't count them out by any means, and if they win a third straight time, that would shift the narrative that the really big bucks are needed to go all the way.
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u/jdorschner 1d ago
Actually, thinking about this some more, it was the oddities of the MLB playoffs that got to these four teams. The two best teams in the AL were the Rays and the Yankees. In a more logical world, they would now be facing each other for the AL pennant. If you sub Yankees in for the Guardians at their $3.16 MPW, then the median for the top four is $2.6 MPW, which makes a lot more sense.
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u/Scary_Vanilla2932 2d ago
Individual players in MLB make too much money after free agency. Players before free agency are part of an archaic system that pays them too little. How can we change this?
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u/starwarsfan456123789 2d ago
There’s a labor negotiation coming up right after the season and I am sure it will be a topic- among many other topics of concern
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u/Dennisfromhawaii 2d ago
Should have spent 5.6 more to beat the Dodgers.
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u/thefixedmagnificence 2d ago
It’s always fun to see this broken down so clearly. The Braves do well at staying near the top of efficiency while still paying for talent. That Dodgers number stings less when you remember they're paying a luxury tax that could fund a small country.
The real story is the Brewers and Rays doing what they do year after year. At some point you have to stop calling it luck.
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u/Dennisfromhawaii 2d ago
We should probably invest more in scouting and development.
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u/starwarsfan456123789 2d ago
We actually develop really well- if someone gets drafted as a significant prospect we almost always get them to the majors. That’s not as rare as it once was - but we’re still much better at it than most. We do have a lot get injured once here though- that’s becoming a problem. Either Spencer at 100% would have made a world of difference in our playoffs.
We also have tons of hits like Acuna, Albies, Fuentes from relatively low $$$ international signings. Also the ocassional Drake Baldwin devoping way above expectations.
If our international pipeline starts returning to the top now that the sanctions are done it could really help us.
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u/Outrageous_Ad1938 1d ago
We don't develop pitchers like we used to. No projected starter should make it to AAA with 3 good pitches. That's the biggest problem with out young arms, they have a fast ball and something else, and that's it. they second time through the order, the opposition has seen everything they throw. We need a roving pitching instructor to teach a change up, a curve, or a slider to these young guys while they are in single A or AA, where if you give up some bombs, it doesn't really matter.
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u/praise-the-message 2d ago
Do your numbers take into account deferred money like Shohei's contract?