from Amazon
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Why is the ballot 14-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 points?
Sky asks and proposes:
Using this WAR scale (9.4 points for a 1st place finish, 8.3 points for 2nd place...5.9 points for 10th place, and 5.5 points for unranked players) would probably be the most fair ballot weighting system. How does this compare with the system MLB actually uses? While the weights seem to be very different, this is mostly because the systems are on two different scales. To make them comparable, we can convert the WAR system to a scale where 0 points are given to a player left off the ballot and there are 59 total points doled out altogether. When we do this, we see that in fact the two balloting systems are extremely similar.
I can’t see the image from the office, but basically it comes out to 4.9 points for 1st place, 2.8 for 2nd ... 0.4 for last place. If you multiply by 3, you get: 14.7, 8.4 ... 1.2. It sounds like they got it right, presuming his 5.5 replacement level is correct of course.