Ok, some comments on the above:
I’ve seen a crazy number of low budget staffs outperform a lot of money spent by fellow competitors.
Well, if they are, then it's a combination of park, D, usage and luck. Obviously if you spend more on pitching, you have better pitchers. If, however, you're in a hitter's park, or you don't get your settings right, or you have a D that gets taken advantage of, then you can overperform your salary (or rating). Then, of course, there's just the plain ol' luck factor that is present with a Small Sample Size.
Although my team is performing well, it hasn’t kept pace with my homage to Axelrod.
Well, first, this team spent 28 mil on pitching so that's a little low, but not extremely so, second, they have outstanding defense which makes up for some of the deficit. He did a decent job of utilizing the pen and minimizing the SPs (only 55% of the IP). I would also suggest that this team is VERY weak against LHP and is extremely vulnerable to injury. They must have gotten really lucky in both categories to win 100+ games. But, good timing on your homers (this is a low OB team) will make up for a lot of deficiencies. The team does rate well despite these shortcomings. I would also suggest that Velazquez and Fried would be expected to give up more HRs playing in that park.
So while I get the “rankings” based on the salaries, there is a HUGE disconnect on the actual performances
Not sure what you mean by this. If you're talking about my player rankings, they don't have anything to do with salary. How many you can fit on your team does, of course, have to take salary into consideration. I would suggest that teams with sub $1 SPs are not pitching them many innings and probably have good defense/park for them, or just out hit the other teams.
why can a team with $20 mil spent on pitching so outperform $40 mil spent
Do you mean they actually pitch better? Well, D and park are factors as is usage. Finally there is luck. Of course, it could be the case, perhaps, that better pitchers are over priced versus the difference for what you get. You'd have to talk to BB about how they are priced, I just usually check to make sure guys are, more or less, in the correct order.
can give you a massive number of innings
Yes, relief usage is completely broken. Not as broken as it was in the beginning, but still broken. John is going to address that, but I don't it will happen for this season. And, you're right, the R3s probably need to be more expensive.
Nuno and Strahm combined for 600 innings and about a 3 era.
And they have up almost 100 home runs. I would suggest they were lucky to have ERAs that low.
My question then for Joe, is if his ratings are at all picking up on this value/usage...
The team ratings factor in the number of IP each pitcher has thrown if that's what you mean.
If the ratings are not a method of assigning value
Well, certainly you can compare different players and their salaries and find guys that look like bargains.