A financial David and Goliath World Series

From a financial point of view, this year's World Series really is a battle between David and Goliath.

The New York Yankees had the highest payroll in baseball this year, with player salaries topping $150 million on Opening Day.

The Florida Marlins, on the other hand, began the year with player salaries just under $50 million, ranking the club 25th of 30 Major League Baseball franchises at the time, according to published reports based on information that came in part from the players' union.

The team has the lowest-ranked payroll of any team that's made the World Series since baseball launched its wild card playoff format in 1995.

Of course, team payrolls change over the course of a season, as players are added or removed from the roster. Even the Marlins' payroll increased due to the addition of higher salary players such as veteran Jeff Conine, pushing Florida towards the middle of the spending pack by the end of the year.

Still, "...payroll doesn't matter. Players matter," said Marlins manager Jack McKeon recently.

Many baseball critics disagree.

[McKeon's] "just wrong," said Andrew Zimbalist, a prominent baseball business analyst who teaches economics at Smith College and has written books including "May the Best Team Win" on the subject.

"Payrolls still matter very much," said Zimbalist. "But payolls never were the only thing that mattered. You need to have good management. You need to have good luck. But payrolls certainly do figure into the success mixture."

Zimbalist calculates that payrolls explain 30 to 50 percent of a team's success.

But there are notable exceptions. Chief among them are the Oakland A's, who once again this year made the playoffs despite having a payroll ranked 23rd. A best-selling book recounted how the club has succeeded with a small budget.

The A's, who also made the playoffs in 2002, 2001 and 2000 while ranked 29th, 28th and 25th in payroll, have not made it to the ALCS in that period, however, let alone the World Series.

This year, Oakland was vanquished by Boston. Afterwards, A's general manager Billy Beane was quoted saying the team might have done better if it had a payroll more comparable to the $100 million Red Sox.

And even the Marlins were ranked 7th when they won their lone World Series in 1997.

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MLB has to get a grip on salary cap. Only sport going where you can eliminate 7 to 9 teams automatically before the season starts because they are small town and low payroll.

On top of that, pencil in the Yankees for a playoff run every year cause they outspend everyone.

MLB needs to take a look at luxury tax like NBA or what NFL does to maintain some sense of parity.

They do have one and it affected all the teams except the Yanks this year. Marlins were able to get the reinforcements because of the revenue sharing from last year. I think in general just a little more tightening on the tax and it will be about as fair as you can get. After all you see in other sports that some players take huge cuts in salary just to have a chance to win, situations like the Lakers and Avalanche this year getting All-Stars for bargain basement prices. These baseball guys still have too few choices of where to play and get paid, so they end up with the same suspects every year, but if the MLB can finally tighten up the rules and stipulate that the revenue share has to be spent on payroll then the problems will narrow more. The remaining problem is that teams are just pocketing the money, but its hard to argue that it hasn't helped as the A's, Marlins and Twins all made the playoffs, the Royals and Expos competed for a spot until September and the Tigers were horrible not because of a lack of funds, but just cheap management.