The 2023 New York Yankees paid $278 million for their worst season in a generation. Now, Yankees management must figure out how to turn around one of the most expensive failures in the modern history of sport. For a team long committed to the idea that money can buy superstars and success, it is an uncomfortable position.

For decades, big-market teams have made a habit of outspending the smaller guys for talent, and often winning because of it. Yet nothing is guaranteed. This year, the three top-spending franchises — the New York Mets, the Yankees and the San Diego Padres — failed to make the play-offs. Injuries, bad team chemistry and individual declines in performance are among the reasons why cutting big checks did not work.

Could those issues add up to a systematic failure in how the Yankees and other teams structure their payrolls? General managers employ data analysts to find the smallest statistical edges to improve on-field performance and win-loss records. So, either the Yankees and other free-spending teams have not asked their statisticians to look into it, or they have, and there’s nothing to it.

That's not surprising. In the tradition-bound world of baseball, amateurs and outsiders — not the pros — have long been responsible for innovating insight and analysis into the game.

History may be repeating itself.

In February, the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective, a group of undergraduates, graduate students and faculty, calculated that baseball teams that concentrate their payroll on a handful of big salaries are making themselves less competitive. The proof has broad consequences for how free-spending teams choose to operate.

The HSAC adapted the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, a common means of assessing how much market concentration exists in a given industry — often used in antitrust investigations. The HSAC’s version is an index ranging from a low of 0.025, representing a baseball team in which everyone is paid the same, to 1.000, representing a team in which one player is paid the entire payroll — and everybody else gets nothing.

The HSAC ran the numbers for all Major League Baseball teams between 2011 and 2022. The results are illuminating. “Teams that are top-heavy tend to have worse winning percentages,” explains Ben Meron, a recently graduated member of the HSAC who contributed to the analysis.

The highest HHI in the data set — 0.131 — belonged to the 2016 Arizona Diamondbacks, who had a losing record. Why? They paid roughly one third of their payroll to a single pitcher: Zach Greinke. He was injured during the season, missed games and never regained his superstar form. With so much payroll devoted to him, the team lacked players who could step up in his absence.

It’s a similar story with the 2023 New York Yankees. Aaron Judge, with a base salary of $40 million, and four other players account for more than half of the salary paid to the 40-man roster. Judge was injured during the season, and several other players failed to perform up to expectations. According to Meron, the Yankees’ 2023 HHI was 0.0784, or 16.6 per cent above league average from 2011 to 2022. The team barely eked out a winning record.

Of course, HHI alone cannot explain a disappointing season. Had Judge stayed healthy, the team’s HHI might not have mattered. But the metric can offer insight into whether a roster employing a superstar is balanced and resilient enough to prosper during his absence.

Most importantly, HHI offers an alternative route for roster construction. The Atlanta Braves are a good example. In recent years, they have avoided bidding wars for free-agent superstars and signed young players they have scouted and developed to long-term contracts early in their careers before they become overly pricey. It is still not cheap — emerging superstar Spencer Strider was signed for six years and $75 million. But this approach spreads out salaries and prevents payroll from becoming top-heavy. It also appears to be working. In 2023, the Braves have an HHI of 0.0611, or 9.08 per cent below all MLB teams from 2011 to 2022, and the best record in baseball, according to the HSAC’s Meron.

The Yankees cannot become the Braves instantly, even if they want to do it. Contracts need to run their course — Judge has another eight years on his $360 million contract. But they can avoid expensive free-agent bidding wars while investing more in scouting, developing and ultimately signing young players. That is much harder than signing, say, Shohei Ohtani in the off-season. But doing so will, ultimately, build a more durable team that can survive the loss or decline of a star or two.

That does not mean the Yankees must rein in their payroll. HHI is not a measure of how much is spent but rather how it’s spent. That means the Yankees could leverage their financial advantages to create and win bidding wars for lower-profile players crucial to rounding out a roster. That would be a route to sustainable, long-term success for fans and most players alike.

• Adam Minter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the business of sport. He is the author, most recently, of Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale