As of yesterday, Buster Posey, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Ryan Howard were each ranked between 90th and 100th in OPS among all MLB baseball players. That threesome is making $58 million in 2014 alone, with a whopping $338 million owed to them by their teams after this season ends.

Such a trifecta of seemingly awful contracts got me thinking about team performance in the post steroid era. Bad & expensive contracts have always been a part of sports, in particular baseball, but with performance perhaps more variable now than in prior era’s, are general managers with cash to spend having a more difficult time doing so?

Here’s a graph of team payroll and win percentages for each team in the 2004, 2009, and 2014 seasons.

MLB Win percentage by salary

Teams spending money in 2004 posted much higher win percentages, on average, than frugal teams. This association was weaker in 2009, and there is…