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With the start of the baseball playoffs, there are four important lessons for your business from the Tampa Bay Rays, a remarkable success story and baseball’s number-one overachiever.
Over recent years, Tampa Bay has been outspent by the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox three- and four-to-one. Despite that, Tampa Bay has made the playoffs in four of the past six seasons, the same as the Yankees and one more than the Red Sox. And they’ve been consistent, winning 90 games five of the past six years, compared to four each for Boston and New York.
Despite all the attention that Michael Lewis’ book and the movie Moneyball gave the Oakland Athletics, the As have not had anything approaching Tampa Bay’s consistent success.
Here’s how Tampa Bay ranked in the past six seasons on opening day payroll and number of wins, compared to division rivals Yankees and Red Sox.
| Opening day payroll
($millions) |
Payroll rank in MLB
(out of 30) |
Number of wins
|
|||||||
| NYY | BRS | TBR | NYY | BRS | TBR | NYY | BRS | TBR | |
| 2008 | $209 | $134 | $44 | 1 | 4 | 29 | 89 | 95 | 97 |
| 2009 | $210 | $123 | $63 | 1 | 4 | 25 | 103 | 95 | 84 |
| 2010 | $206 | $162 | $72 | 1 | 3 | 21 | 95 | 89 | 95 |
| 2011 | $201 | $161 | $42 | 1 | 3 | 28 | 97 | 90 | 91 |
| 2012 | $198 | $173 | $64 | 1 | 3 | 25 | 95 | 69 | 90 |
| 2013 | $228 | $159 | $57 | 1 | 4 | 28 | 85 | 97 | 91 |
| AVG | $209 | $152 | $57 | 1 | 3 | 26 | 94 | 89 | 91 |
| Reached playoffs | |||||||||
Your chance for lunch with Dan
This fall, Dan Richards will be hosting advisor roundtable lunches to discuss key challenges, share ideas and answer questions.
There is no cost to attend these lunches. Lunches are currently scheduled in Boston, New York, Chicago, Dallas and Houston – with other cities being added.
If you’re interested in more information on these lunches, please email [email protected]
Dan Richards
ClientInsights-President
6 Adelaide Street E, Suite 400
Toronto ON M5C 1T6
(416) 900-0968
A formula for overachievement
How do you explain Tampa Bay’s success, despite that yawning gap in payroll?
- Its manager, Joe Maddon, has twice been named American League Manager of the Year – leadership truly does matter, in sports as in business.
- Tampa Bay’s ownership and management made the strategic decision to avoid payroll wars they couldn’t win and focus instead on building a pipeline of inexpensive minor-league talent.
- Tampa Bay gave young players the opportunity to blossom, creating stars from within its organization.
There are some clear takeaways for financial advisors from the Tampa Bay’s success and that of other small-market teams. A New York Timesarticle pointed out that in this year’s baseball playoffs, there were more teams from the bottom 10 in payroll than from the top 10 spenders. A few advisors have achieved growth by emulating the Yankees and Red Sox and writing checks to fund high priced marketing campaigns or to buy practices.
