By Steve Youngblood, Fargo Gazette

October 1, 2012: Fargo, ND – Over the course of the Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance’s existence, the Sovereign League has boasted the top revenue-earning teams.  The Aurora Borealis have led the way over the five years preceding this season (2007 through 2011) and look to be holding strong in that regard for this season.  The chart below denotes the cumulative revenue earnings of the league’s 24 teams in order of highest to lowest:

Here we see that the top four teams in regards to revenue come from one league, as along with Aurora is Palm Springs, Crystal Lake and Bakersfield.  It is quite impressive to see these four teams sitting atop the list, with New Orleans’ representation of the Imperial League only breaking in at the fifth spot.  It isn’t until the ninth spot, where Kalamazoo appears, that another Sovereign League team shows up.  We can see that the rest of the Sovereign League falls quite a bit behind those four earners.

Comparing the top three teams in the Sovereign League (Aurora, Palm Springs and Crystal Lake) to the second and third teams that make up the second tier of earners in the Imperial League (Charleston, New Jersey), we see a gap of about $50-$70 million over this four-year period.  This also ignores the Imperial League’s fourth-ranked team, West Virginia, whose earnings over this period are closer to Kalamazoo’s than Bakersfield’s (roughly $8 million more than Kalamazoo and $71 less than Bakersfield).

So why look at any of this at all?  Well one would expect that with such an advantage in monetary earnings over the past five seasons, the top teams in the Sovereign League would have an advantage in building better playoff teams.  Fortunately (though unfortunately for the evaluation of this article), the leagues do not cross over and play each other during the regular season (with the exception of the All-Star Game) and only face off in the Planetary Extreme Championship.  This creates an incredibly small sample size – simply not enough to gauge which league is the “better” league.

Instead, I am choosing to look at the organization’s winning percentage over this four-year span.  At least we can get a handle on how these teams do in gaining returns on their earnings.  But first, let’s look at the chart below that denotes organization rankings by total payroll.  This gives us a better idea of the investment into the players on the field (and organizational personnel) by these teams:

Here it is a bit surprising to see that Aurora does not top the list.  Instead, the Palm Spring Codgers of the Sovereign League are leading the way, with the New Orleans Trendsetters (Imperial League) and Bakersfield Bears (Sovereign League) in a near tie for second.  In general, the big earners are still making up the glut of teams at the top of this list.  San Antonio makes an appearance at #7 here but only #11 on the previous list, as they have deficit spent quite a bit.

Tangent!  Let’s see how these teams do in regards to deficit spending versus making a profit.  Green denotes a profit made, parentheses and red denotes deficit spending.

San Antonio “leads” the way at the bottom here as the team with the most aggressive owner, perhaps more willing to dip deep into his own pockets for a competitive team!  This chart goes to show that most teams in the league have done a good job of managing their money, earning a profit or remaining near break-even.  None more so than Florida and Aurora, though; those two teams boast an impressive +$70 million accrued over this five-season period.  This is not to say their owners pocket the money at the end of the season.  There are other ways to invest into your team, including sending prospects to winter leagues to meet with highly paid instructors with the aim of improving skill sets, investing in additions to stadiums and playing facilities, and the construction of new ballparks.

So let’s take a look at that winning percentage table:

Aurora and Crystal Lake have been plain dominant over this time span with .690 and .671 winning percentages, respectively, gaining the best return for their investment and likely fueling their earnings, as well.  Both teams are located in large metropolitan areas, giving them a leg up on the competition.  In general, we see that the big earners and big spenders tend to win the most games.  This is not a rule, however; one only has to look down near the bottom of the table to find Tempe, a playoff team the past two seasons.  This ranking is sure to change, however, following a season where the Knights have upped their spending to fifth most in the league ($116,257,200)  That is quite a jump from their previous season (roughly $94 million).

It will be interesting to see how deficit spending for teams like San Antonio and now Tempe will impact these teams going forward.  Certainly in Tempe’s case, the move has paid off in hitting their window of opportunity and making the playoffs two years in a row, seriously challenging the mighty Borealis for the top spot in the Sovereign League playoffs to boot.  The danger of hitting hard times because of expensive contracts can be seen in San Antonio and New Orleans, the latter of which had its own playoff push four of these first five seasons (winning one Rodriguez Cup) but is now suffering in last place of the Dixie division behind the Calzones.