Average cost per win from 2006-2008:

CO Rockies: $809,000
AZ Diamondbacks: $858,000
SD Padres: $885,000
SF Giants: $1.29 million
LA Dodgers: $1.41 million

Purple Row does a great job of summarizing payroll work done by Rich Lederer and Maury Brown and discusses some specifics of the NL West organizations.

Now, as we've mentioned before, it's a lot easier to spend efficiently when you don't spend much to begin with. When money goes into paying players in the first three years of team control, that's cheap. When money goes into paying free agents, that's not cheap.

As such, the teams I respect the most are above average in wins and below average in payroll. From 2006 through 2008, the teams that meet those two qualifications, on average, are, in decreasing order of average wins: Minnesota, Toronto, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Arizona, and Oakland. To be fair, Toronto is barely below league-average in payroll, and both San Diego and Colorado barely miss qualifying based on average wins.

I have a bunch of interesting ideas on the back burner in regards to rating general managers by their payroll and talent on the team, but one thing I'm missing is something like BPro's third-order wins for historical seasons. Any suggestions? Any ideas on a relatively simple way to build such a measure? I'd want to use something like team wOBA and team baserunning for offense, then park-adjusted FIP/tRA and UZR for defense, plus strength of schedule adjustments.