O.K., so things didn’t go well last night, but the Stros can take some solace in that this interesting Allen St. John Wall Street Journal ($) article notes that the Stros are one of the top teams of the eight clubs in the playoffs in at least one important area — that is, getting the most bang for their buck. Mr. St. John calculates the each playoff team’s cost per win by simply taking a club’s total payroll and dividing that number by the club’s win total during the MLB season.
For example, compared to the Yankees, the Stros are remarkably efficient. The Yanks’ $208 million payroll was by far the highest in baseball, comparable to the combined payrolls of the second-place Red Sox and the Dodgers. Accordingly, the Yankees’ cost per win ($2.2 million) is almost 70% higher than that of the Red Sox ($1.3 million) and a whopping $1.437 million greater than the cost of each Stros’ win.

The surprising Cleveland Indians (93-69) were the best penny-pinching team in MLB this past season as they achieved a frugal $446,263 per win. However, the Tribe faded in the final week of the season and failed to make the playoffs, and the other penny-pinching clubs really did not do particularly well this past season. For example, the Devil Rays were the most frugal club in MLB at $442,971 per win, but who cares when your overall record is 67-95?
Thus, a club needed to expect to spend about $900,000 per win to get into the playoffs. Apart from from the big-market Yankees and Red Sox, the other playoff teams fall within a reasonably narrow range between the White Sox’s $759,373 per win to the $1.03 million per win for the Angels. As a result, Mr. St. John concludes as follows:

But as baseball’s resources — both money and information — get spread out more evenly, it is beginning to appear that while adding a few tough-to-find bargains can make a team a contender, finding enough of them to carry you into the postseason may now be baseball’s most difficult task. Just ask the Cleveland Indians.

Here is the cost per win chart for this season’s playoff teams.