Introduction

Once again Canadian Business Online has chosen the Best and Worst Values in baseball — the best and worst players and teams in 2008 on a per-dollar basis.

Our selections were guided by various stat-to-salary ratios, but we also considered factors like playing time and subjective impressions. The total payroll for our Worst Value team, with 11 members, is $154,495,000. Our Best Value team could be had for just $4,736,330.

In sum, the owners spent a staggering $2.7 billion on their players this past season, some of whom played dismally, and others hardly at all. The fan, meanwhile, had to spend on average $192 to take the family to a single game.

The best values in baseball are almost always players in their first three years of service, as teams are allowed to keep salaries artificially low for these indentured players. Thus, our Best and Worst Values are not truly comparing apples to apples, but illustrate the stark contrast between the different sources of "value" in baseball.

What's new this year

To our tables we added a ranking of teams by payroll, fan cost and fan value. We added a separate review of how the free agents signed last season performed. We also comment on the poor financial choices of the worst value team in all of baseball. Last, we couldn't resist offering some helpful advice for those pricey Toronto Blue Jays.

How to use these tables

The table of contents — with links to our data tables and articles — can be found further down this page. We recommend you start with The Best and worst players for the money for a general overview of our picks, then proceed to our tables.

Our overall best and worst picks drew from all players on team rosters this season. In our tables, however, we included only hitters with more than 501 plate appearances, and pitchers with 75 innings pitched or at least 5 saves.

If you like what you see, tell your friends. We invite you to link to our Baseball Salaries 2008 list from Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us, Stumble Upon, Newsvine and other sites.