The premise behind the book/movie Moneyball is that baseball is unfair since the bigger payroll clubs have a huge advantage. While I would agree that a bigger payroll gives teams and advantage, I would argue that the extent of that advantage is not as big as most people believe and that mid and small market teams can compete with the big boys. Looking at the 8 teams currently in the post season as compared to where they rank on the payroll scale reveals some interesting things. Here is a link to see what each MLB team spent this year: http://content.usatoday.com/sportsdata/baseball/mlb/salaries/team The top 2 spending teams (Yankees and The Phillies) are still alive. But the next 7 teams with the highest pay roll Red Sox, Angles, White Sox, Mets, Giants, Cubs, and Twins are all out of the playoffs (some of these teams were terrible all year) . Then we come to the Tigers, Rangers, and Cardinals who have the 10^th, 11^th, and 13^th highest payrolls respectively. Then we come to the Brewers who have the 17^th highest payroll, the Diamondbacks who have 25^th highest payroll, and the Rays who have 29^th highest payroll or to put it another way, the second to last. In terms of payroll in the post season we have the 1^st, 2^nd, 10^th, 11^th, 13^th, 17^th, 25^th, and 29^th, ranked teams. It would hard to argue that payroll is not a factor in winning, but it certainly is not everything since we have 2 small market teams in the playoffs and 4 mid market teams in the playoffs. 

 Let’s look at this from a longer perspective and take the last 10 World Series. Below is a little chart with the World Series year, World Series winner, runner up and where each team ranked in payroll for that year.

The average payroll rank of the 10 World Series winners is 8^th in spending on player salaries for year. The average payroll rank of the 20 teams that have played in the World Series is 11^th. Again, what I think this illustrates is that having a higher payroll is an advantage, but it is not as big of an advantage as many people try to make it out to be. In addition, the sheer variety of teams that have played in the World Series in the last 10 year is actually greater than the variety of teams that have played in the Super Bowl the past 10 years. This is surprising since football has a salary cap and more playoff teams which theoretically should lead to more variety.

Here is the last 10 years of the Super Bowl as Comparison.

The Patriots and Steelers have been the 2 dominant teams this past decade appearing representing the AFC 7 times in the Super Bowl in that span and winning 5 Super Bowls. Even the super high spending of the Yankees and Red Sox who have combined for 5 World Series appearances and 3 World Series cannot match the success of the Patriots and Steelers. It should also be note that those Sox World Series wins were there first wins in 86 years. This shows that the amount of parity in football and baseball is actually quite similar. While a team like the Yankees has benefited from their deep pockets, they were also the highest spending team in all of the 80s and early 90s and had little to no success to show for it until they had their dynasty run with home grown guys like Jeter, Rivera, Bernie Williams, Posada, Pettitte leading the way and not high priced free agents. In the end, in any sport, the number one key to success seems to be having a core of players drafted and developed in your organization.