SI.com Analysis Points Out Mets as Least Efficient Team of the Decade

In a must read column for SI.com, Tom Verducci sets out to find the most efficient teams of the decade. He concludes that the top five includes the Marlins, Cardinals, Twins, A's and Rays (in that order- 1st to 5th). Whereas the bottom five were the Mariners, Dodgers, Cubs, Orioles and Mets (in descending order). Therefore the Mets were the most inefficient team in the past decade, according to Verducci.

Let's break down how he came about this conclusion.

First, Verducci takes the total payroll of the opening day rosters for the decade and divides that by the number of wins the team had in the decade to obtain a "cost per win" stat. Predictably enough the Mets come in number 2 in cost/wins, behind the Yankees, at $133,300/win (Yankees were at $174,600/win).

Then, Verducci looks at achievement, through a system he calls achievement points, he awards 1 point to being in a pennant race (defined as finishing within 5 games of a playoff spot), 2 points to making the playoffs, 3 points for winning a postseason series, 4 for winning a pennant and 5 for winning the world series. In this analysis the Mets finished 12th in "achievement points" with 21 (4 pennant races, 2 playoff appearances, 3 Post season series won, 1 pennant and 0 World series - adding up to 21).

From there Verducci takes the "achievement points", which he considers an investment towards winning and subtracts that from the "Cost per win" to establish the efficiency rating. So we take the Mets 133.3 and subtract 21 from that to leave us with their efficiency rating of 112.3 the highest number of all the major league teams. In this circumstance, higher is bad.

Personally I don't think this is 100 percent scientific, but Verducci himself goes as far as to note that himself. Basically in terms of "bang for your buck" the Mets are the worst over the past decade, but if you compare them to the highest efficiency rated team (Marlins) the Mets only finished 1 "achievement point" behind them, but at a huge deficit because of payroll.

So, to me here's the biggest thing to take away from this analysis...

As Verducci points out, the Mets have only achieved for more wins overall than the Marlins in the past decade while spending $737.5 million more.

Think about that...