I've built the spreadsheet and run the numbers. Here are the Marginal Dollars per Marginal Win data for 2004, ordered alphabetically first.

Now, ordered by winning percentage:

And finally, sorted by Marginal Wins per Marginal Dollar:

So, let's first congratulate Arizona on their accomplishment. Not since all the way back in 2003, when the Tigers actually won fewer games than a random team of minimum-wage players should, has a team put up such an astounding number. In Detroit's case, it was hard to notice, because it just turned everything negative, so that they, in some way, paid about $7 million for each loss below replacement they managed to be. Anyway, that $25, almost $26, million figure is astounding, five times worst than the next worse team and three and a half times worst the second worst team in payroll efficiency from 1995 to present, the 2002 Detroit Tigers, who won four more games than these Diamondbacks while spending about $15 million fewer bucks.

The top of the list is dominated by the usual bad teams with low payrolls: Tampa Bay, PIttsburgh, and Milwaukee are three of the top five. They're not spending much money, but they're not winning much, either. Of the three, only Milwaukee can get many people excited about their future, so these aren't your 1997-1998 Oakland A's here.

On the other hand, Cleveland's team is quite exciting, and this list shows why their front office is so well regarded in the right circles: they appear to be on their way to winning with cheap, homegrown talent. Their payroll is coming down from the excesses of the late '90's and early '00's, but their win total seems to be now moving in the opposite direction, after tracking with the payroll since 1999: 97, 90, 91, 74, 68, and then back to 80 this year. There's no reason to think they won't fight it out with the Twins for the rest of the decade, at least.

Minnesota used to lose on the cheap and now they win on the cheap. They're going to have one of the lower MDpMW numbers regardless, but right now, it's a positive one. They make their share of mistakes (Shannon Stewart), but, as slow and methodical as they are about it, they've let a number of their young players come in and have an impact (Johan Santana, Justin Morneau).

As I mentioned before, Oakland is slipping: this is the first time they've been over a million bucks per marginal win in the Beane era. That can be chalked up to two things off the top of my head: bad luck combined with overpayment to Jermaine Dye, and four disappointing lefties (Mulder, Zito, Redman, Rhodes, in order of level of disappointment), two of which should have been avoided by the front office (Redman, Rhodes). Having those two guys on the team wasn't negative in itself. Paying them what the A's were paying them was the problem. Somehow, they've managed to turn it into a good thing for the next two years, getting Jason Kendall, but they way they've pushed the punishment for the mistakes back to 2007 reminds me too much of the Forty Niners of the mid- to late-nineties for comfort.

I'm sure I'll be able to have plenty of fun with these numbers over the next year.

UPDATE: Jesus Christmas. BP just published these numbers on the 19th. I wonder why they didn't Google. Maybe they're subscriber-only. Oh well. I'm leaving this here, though, especially since they don't have their numbers run together as a whole league or in the various sortings I have.