As Jeff Passan has noticed, baseball’s AL Central is projected to finish first in 2011 in at least one respect:
2011 MLB Payrolls, By Division: NL West Projected To Be The Poorest
Yes, the AL Central, the division that has won precisely one playoff game in the last three years. Passan’s observation was interesting, so I decided to stack up the 2011 payroll projections of all six divisions:
(Projected payroll figures by way of Baseball-Reference)
Overall, thanks to the low payrolls of the Royals and Indians, the AL Central's average payroll of $91.2 million is significantly lower than the MLB average of $97.1 million. Though there's certainly enormous payroll disparity throughout baseball on a team-by-team basis, no division is without a cellar-dweller, so the division-by-division difference isn't terribly dramatic.
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