The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Tampa Bay Rays in five games to win the first World Series in franchise history. Both clubs carry two of baseball's smaller payrolls, about $125 million and $90 million. The New York Mets spent the most in the sport and finished 74–88. What the low-payroll winners have in common is people: Milwaukee employs an estimated 46 full-time analytics staff and Tampa Bay 39, against a league average of about 28. Rival owners have noticed. One club's owners asked their general manager, Sports Illustrated reports, "What do we need to do to be like the Brewers?"

A college athletic department now makes the same calls a baseball front office does: who to pay and how much, whom to retain and develop, and whom to replace.

With the House settlement barely into its second year, many departments are still deciding how to staff around revenue sharing. A program that cannot match its conference's biggest spenders on roster pay may still be able to out-build them on the operation that decides how that money gets spent. Milwaukee, Tampa Bay and Cleveland have done exactly that for two decades, ranking sixth, seventh and eighth in MLB regular-season wins since 2005.

Our interactive report looks at what these analysts actually do day to day, what 12 MLB clubs are hiring for this fall, whether the lessons carry over to football and basketball, and what a "Brewers-lite" athletic department might look like.

CLICK HERE to Explore the Interactive Report >>

Inside the report: Six analytics roles explained, highlights from 23 real MLB job postings, and a calculator comparing the cost of a small analytics group to a revenue-share budget.

Key Takeaways: 

 ➤ Data Comes First: The clubs that win collect clean data and keep it in one place. About 65% of one Rays analyst job posted in October is checking that data arrives complete and accurate.

 ➤ Head Count Isn't Enough: The Phillies reportedly have baseball's largest analytics staff. The winners stand out for putting analysts next to coaches and keeping the message to players small.

 ➤ Develop, Don't Just Buy: Both World Series teams turned late draft picks and trade pickups into front-line starters. Sixty-two players were drafted ahead of Brewers starter Jacob Misiorowski.

 ➤ It's Not Just Baseball: An MIT study of NBA teams found that about 0.8 of an analyst was worth one extra win per season, roughly the same as $9.6 million in player salary.

These are observations, not rules. They are the habits the low-payroll MLB clubs share, put in college terms, for departments weighing where an edge might come from.