Earlier this week, Bill Petti at Beyond the Boxscore posted an interactive chart that contained all kinds of goodies from MLB over the last 10 years.  The post focused on the Rays and Athletics but with the data contained, it can show and compare any of the MLB teams through the last decade.  As a huge fan of the google motion charts myself, I can't keep myself from playing around with it endlessly. 

As we are all well aware, the last decade of baseball for the Royals has been bad.  Almost unbelievably bad.  With the wave of prospects coming and Dayton Moore just playing coy with his free agent acquisitions so far, this might not teach us anything new.  But that doesn't mean it's not interesting and that it should be ignored when trying to see up from the bottom of the hole.

First up, AL Central payrolls over the last 10 years

Eight years ago, the teams were all pretty close in payroll.  Over the last half of the decade though, the White Sox and Tigers have increased payroll significantly, with Minnesota joining this last season.  

Many more below.

Runs Against AL Central

Pitching and defense= not good.  Though seeing all the teams other than Minnesota bounce up and down gives hope for the Royals if they can find the right year to get lucky.

Runs Scored (Minnesota, Chicago, and Kansas City to unclutter)

Always towards the top in runs against and the bottom in runs scored.  Boo.  Leads to graphs like the next one.

Run Differential

Ugly.  Ok, time to move on from looking up from the bottom.  The two teams that seem to get mentioned fairly often around here are Tampa and San Francisco.  Tampa is obviously because they used to be our neighbor in the basement.  San Francisco due to their GM's habit of making the occasional head-scratcher move yet winning the World Series.  

Lets start with some comparisons between the Rays and the Royals.

Run Differential

I have no idea why I left Chicago checked but ignore them for now.  The Rays shot up from the depths to a pretty damn good level in one year.  2014?

This one isn't as uplifting, cost per win.  Tampa has been succeeding at a level that Dayton Moore has never shown much competence.  If the Royals are going to be successful with GMDM at the controls, this has to go down because we know the payroll won't get to a point to make these numbers work.

Moving on, Sabean pulled it off!

Cost per win with San Francisco included.  It has worked!  That's enough, right Rany?

Yearly Payroll

Crap.