Big Bucks In Sports

It's no surprise that the stingy Marlins and the canny Rays are the most efficient teams; the shocker is that one, Tampa Bay, has the game's best record

GOOD FORTUNE $85M

That's how much (over five years) the Tigers gave 2007 AL batting champ Magglio Ordonez when they signed him as a free agent in 2005.

CREDIT IS DUE
Their much admired front office has kept the Braves consistently competitive and efficient—though they're paying $16 million this year to perpetually sore-armed Mike Hampton.

AVERAGE SALARY BY POSITION
Designated hitters command the heftiest salaries because they tend to be long-tenured veterans—like Jason Giambi ($23.4 million) and Jim Thome—with a history of putting up big stats.

Go Figure

THE SI FORMULA, which evaluates a team's payroll and regular-season success, essentially determines how much a team spent on each victory; the higher the bar, the more a win cost. Borrowing from Baseball Prospectus's formula for Marginal Wins, it was assumed that even a team composed solely of players making the minimum would not lose every game. So the graph for baseball and each sport that follows reflects this equation: (team payroll - (roster size � minimum salary)) � ((team winning percentage - alltime worst winning percentage) � games played).

CHEAP TRICKS
Mike Jacobs, Dan Uggla, Hanley Ramirez and Jorge Cantu, who already have a combined 77 homers, will make a total of $1.75 million in '08—15.5% of what former teammate Miguel Cabrera now gets from the Tigers.

[The following descriptive text appears within a diagram. Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.]

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