This ownership group has won three championships and you can't take that away from them
I've always wondered how much this means in baseball. I mean, the Sox are an evidence that you can go last to first to last without even tinkering with players/personnel much. Sometimes I think most baseball championships can be chiefly ascribed to simple volatility in performance.
If you look at the past winners and runners up, that's not really true.
The Giants have won 3 out of the last 5 Championships. The Cardinals have been to 4 of the last 10, winning twice, and have the league's best record this year. The Red Sox have won 3 times in 11 years. The Rangers were runners up in 2010 & 2011. The Phillies won in 2008 and were runners up in 2009.
Obviously, the Red Sox went 86 years without winning while the Yankees won 20+ times.
2013 was a bit of a fluke, but the team has been dysfunctionally built for the past several years with a lot of talent on the roster. The Royals are contenders now, but they have been on the rise for a few years.
Money might be the biggest factor in having a consistent contender, but a good front office isn't far behind.