I love this time of year.  Spring brings sunshine, warm temperatures, flowers, leaves on the trees, beautiful green grass, and baseball.  As of Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010 Major League Baseball is officially back in the swing.

Thirty Major League Baseball teams begin the season hoping to play in the World Series late October.  I am going to discuss what it takes to build a successful major league team capable of making it to the World Series.

As in any business, if you want to win at a high level you have to have talented employees, incredible management, and a desire to achieve a common goal.  The responsibility of the management of a professional baseball team is to put together a talented team of players.  These players must be able to work together to give them the best chance of making it to the World Series.  Successful managers must make numerous player transactions every season.  These transactions are changes made to the roster of a major league team during or after the season.  These transactions may include drafting, waiving, releasing, and trading players, as well as assigning players to minor league teams.  With all of these transactions (except releasing) there also comes the huge expense and responsibility of developing the players.

Each Major League Baseball team maintains both a 25-man roster and a 40-man roster of players. Players on the 25-man roster are eligible to play in official major league games throughout the season. The 40-man roster includes the players on the 25-man roster plus as many as 15 players who are either on the team’s 15-day disabled list or who are in the team’s minor league system.

As a season progresses, teams observe places that they can make improvements to their 25-man roster.  Over the 162+ game season there are many things that require management to modify their rosters.  Players who start the season hot may not keep the momentum for the entire season.  Players that started slow may improve quickly and may earn a position on the 25-man roster.  Because of injuries and other performance reasons, teams will make trades amongst each other to try to improve their teams’ chance to make it to the World Series.

Like them or not, during the last 15-years the New York Yankees have appeared in 7-World Series and have been World Series Champions 5-times.  A lot of experts will tell you that the Yankees have accomplished this because of free agency.  New York has gone out and purchased some of the most talented players that money can buy.  You need to understand that New York outsourced this talent.  They allowed other teams to develop the talent and then when the players were at the top of their game New York simply signed them to their roster for the purpose of competing for another World Series Championship.

In normal businesses, just like in professional baseball, you need to find out what you are great at and stick to that.  George Steinbrenner the owner of the New York Yankees has proved that he is great at winning World Series Championships.  His secret is simple, he outsources talented players.  What can your business do better by outsourcing?  You can build a more successful company by not doing everything yourself.  Spend more time on what you do great and outsource the things that you are simply good at!