Wins divided by payroll.

"Willie Randolph should have won, even if his own payroll with the Mets was nearly $85 million more than Girardi's was with the Marlins."

Mike Lupica is obsessed with money when the Yankees spend it.

Mike Lupica is oddly not so obsessed with money when the Mets (or the Red Sox*) spend it.

(* By the way, in case you weren't familiar with Lupica Math, don't be fooled. The Yankees did not spend $57 million for Randy Johnson. It's just one of those typical Lupica tricks where he conveniently decides what counts as a debit and what counts as a credit. In this case, Lupica is adding Johnson's salary + luxury tax + portions of Javier Vazquez's salary.)

According to Lupica, Steinbrenner and Cashman are greedy villains who are ruining baseball. But Randolph is Manager of the Year and Theo Epstein is the (ahem) "future Boy Prince of Baseball."

Too bad Lupica can't use glue and sparkles to write out Theo Epstein's name. Maybe a little heart to dot the "i."


"The guys who gave Girardi all those first-place votes have a perfect right to their opinion. This is mine."

I checked the Constitution of the United States and, sure enough, the writers who voted for Girardi have a perfect right to their opinion. As long as Mike Lupica grants them that right. It says so right there in the First Amendment:

Mike Lupica shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Mike Lupica for a redress of grievances.


"He just should have won because of the way he won with the Mets, the way his team ran away with things in a year when nobody expected them to do that."

If you say so. I didn't think the Braves would be so bad, but I think just about everybody picked the Mets to win their division.

On the other hand, I don't think anybody expected the Marlins to win more than 55 or 60 games.


"He won big in the NL East in a year when he got nine wins - nine - out of Pedro Martinez, who was supposed to be the ace of his staff again."

Nine. Nine? Nine!

But Randolph also had $eighty five million - $eighty five million - more in payroll, which kind of helps offset the fact the Pedro Martinez only had nine - nine - wins.


I'd also like to point out that Pedro Martinez's 2006 salary was higher than the payroll of the entire Marlins roster. Not that Pedro is an evil free agent mercenary. Only Yankees are evil free agent mercenaries.


"He lost Victor Zambrano early, and whatever you think of Zambrano or thought about him, he was in Willie Randolph's rotation coming out of spring training."

Maybe Randolph's decision to keep Zambrano in the rotation is another reason Randolph did not deserve to be named Manager of the Year.

Because Zambrano wasn't just "in" Willie Randolph's rotation by magic or happenstance or coincidence. In fact, Willie Randolph was one of the key decision-makers in the entire world when it came to determining who was in Willie Randolph's rotation.


"Then he was gone and a kid named Brian Bannister got plugged in and he showed some promise and then Bannister was gone."

I'm convinced. Randolph deserved Manager of the Year because the Mets were actually the only team in baseball whose players suffered through injuries.


"The Mets nearly won 100 games this season and would have won 100 if they had needed to."

Huh?

They would have won 100 if they had needed to?

I guess they didn't really need to win Game Seven vs. St. Louis. But they would have won that game if they had needed to.

Or is Lupica praising the manager of a team and, at the same time, claiming that this team didn't win as many games as they could have?


"Jim Leyland won Manager of the Year for the job he did with the Tigers."

Right, but the Tigers are in the American League and the Mets are in the National League.


"Leyland didn't have nearly the stick on offense that Randolph did. But look at the pitching Leyland had. The Mets didn't have anything close this season."

Right, but the Tigers are in the American League and the Mets are in the National League.


"Even after the votes were in for Manager of the Year, Randolph kept managing his team."

Oh, I see.

That's a dig at Joe Girardi because the Marlins didn't make the playoffs.

The Marlins, with their $85 million disadvantage and their pitching staff of Dontrelle Willis plus the Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars.


"But even when the Mets finally stopped hitting, even when David Wright gave them nothing in the biggest games of the year, Randolph's team stayed in there against the Cardinals, nearly beat them the last two games at Shea, nearly made it to the World Series with John Maine starting Game 6 and Oliver Perez starting Game 7."

Wowza.

The heavily favored 97-win Mets almost beat the 83-win Cardinals.

The Mets almost beat the powerhouse team that had Jeff Weaver and everything!


"Girardi had $85 million less to work with than Willie? There was even more of a gap between Willie and Joe Torre, and people talked about Torre doing the best job he's done in years getting his team to 97 wins."

Okay, let me help Mike Lupica with this concept once again.

Major League Baseball consists of two leagues: The American League and the National League.

When one discusses the National League Manager of the Year, one usually limits the discussion to managers of teams in the National League.


Lupica is simply trying to divert attention away from the Mets/Marlins payroll gap. Lupica can not deal with it. Lupica needs the Mets to be underdogs. Lupica needs Randolph to be the Con Ed kid in the left field bleachers.

Instead of comparing the Mets to the Marlins, Lupica is pointlessly comparing the Mets to the Tigers and Yankees: "The Tigers had better pitching than the Mets. The Yankees spent more money than the Mets."

Yeah, but ... the rest of us were talking about the Marlins, weren't we? The team with the lowest payroll in the major leagues by far?

It should be obvious that, using Lupica's criteria, the Marlins compare even less favorably to their AL counterparts than the Mets do.

Yet, the Marlins managed to compete for a playoff spot for most of the season and almost finished with a .500 record.


Now, let's drill down on this payroll gap. For the sake of this discussion, I'll use payrolls of $15 mill for Florida, $100 mill for the Mets, and $200 mill for the Yankees. Close enough.

The gap between NYM and Florida is $85 mill and the gap between NYY and NYM is $100 mill.

So, technically speaking, the gap between the Yankees and Mets is greater than the gap between the Mets and the Marlins.

But you don't need an economics refresher to understand that Lupica is misreprazentin'. You just need common sense.

The expectations for a $200 million team are high. The expectations for a $100 million team are nearly as high, especially since that $100 million team has the highest payroll in their league.

But what are the expectations for a $15 million team? In a league where the league minimum is $10 million? For a team whose payroll is 1/3rd Tampa Bay's?

I was expecting '62 Mets territory.


Even more to the point, Torre did not win Manager of the Year in the AL. He wasn't even close, despite what "people talked about."

This is beacause voters typically use a simplistic formula when determining Manager of the Year: Wins divided by payroll.

Even if this methodology is flawed, at least it's fairly consistent.

Unless your name is Mike Lupica.

If your name is Mike Lupica, the only mathematical consistency is that the Yankees are Bad and the Mets are Good.