THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Here’s a function to determine the chance of making the playoffs, based on your payroll:

(P-0.50) x 8/15

P is the payroll index, where the average is 1.00. 

So, a team that spends double the average has an 80% chance of making the playoffs. 

This is of course simply a rough linear guide.  The historical data is based on endpoints of 62% and 165%.  Be careful in trying to extrapolate beyond those points.

Interesting ideas, lots of food for thought.

My first reaction was, why not base the divisions on actual revenue last year?  That way, if the team makes a lot of money, it has to play with the big boys even if the owner refuses to spend any of it.  I guarantee you that with no hope of making the playoffs against the Yankees and Red Sox, a high-revenue low-spending team would soon become a low-revenue low-spending team.

One drawback I see is that you’d get a fourth-division team going 81-81 and winning the series over the Yankees.  Fans would complain.  When the Cardinals win, at least their division was weak because of luck, not engineering.

Tango’s suggestions sound strange at first, but I think we could get used to them ... perhaps the union wouldn’t.

The NHL did this realignment in their first three years following expansion:
http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/leagues/seasons/nhl19271968.html

The put the 6 new expansion teams in the same division, and had unbalanced schedules.  This gave the expansion teams a fighting chance.

The playoff format I would have followed there would have been more like you see in international competition: team 1 in division A plays team 4 in division B, etc.  This way, if you have an unbalanced league, as they did, it didn’t carry through into the playoffs.  However, in this particular case, I probably would have left the first round of the playoffs the same (intradivision), and then when it’s the final four, do the cross-over idea.  It seems that the NHL implemented this idea 4 years later:
http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/leagues/seasons/nhl19271972.html

And the 4th division winner couldn’t go 81-81.  If you have 8 or 12 teams, and the schedule is unbalanced, it would likely be extremely difficult to get the division leader go 81-81 or worse.

Ah, okay, I missed the part about the unbalanced schedule.  Still, when a 4th division team goes 95-67, it’s not the same as the 1st division team going 95-67.

Sure, but it’s not supposed to be.  That’s why we’re giving the Premier Division more playoff spots to compensate.

The “alottment” system is used everywhere.  Isn’t how they do it in college basketball?  In the World Cup, a certain number of slots is held for Europeans, South America, etc.  In hockey, there are specific nations that get alotted in, based on other circumstances, etc.

4 team division? Unbalanced schedules? Do you know how utterly insane the Red Sox - Yankees rivalry would become? The Orioles have enough trouble competing as it is!

Who said the Orioles would be in the same division as those two?

I like it.  You could even adopt the EPL system of promotion/relegation so that the divisions aren’t constant.  If so, I think it’s more fair to do that on revenue, not spending.  Of course, then accounting gimmicks become a competitive part of the front office game, not just a tool to fleece taxpayers for better stadiums.

The divisions don’t have to be constant, but it wouldn’t be a promotion/relegation.  The only benefit you get from being in the wrong division is that if you can outspend your opponent due to your market size. 

The Yanks for example might *prefer* to be “relegated” to the 4th division, since even though they only have 1 chance in 8 of making it into the playoffs, could decimate all comers with their buying power of talent. 

On the flip side, the Rays wouldn’t want to go into the Premier division, since even though they’d have a 3 in 6 chance of making it into the playoffs, it’s really 0 in 5, since they couldn’t hope to compete with the rest of that division.

It just seems to me that there might eventually come some prestige from being in the top flight.  For example, consider the Tigers.  When they were horrible in the 90s and early 00s, they would have taken their chances in the lower leagues.  But, now they are showing signs of being willing to spend like the Yankees and Red Sox.  Maybe they could justify higher ticket prices to their fans if they were promoted from the lower tier to the top tier.

I am not an economist, but I really don’t see that Toronto has a markedly different “market” than Boston.  For park attendance, the Toronto area draws on the Golden Horseshoe with a population of roughly 8 million.  For cable revenues, they’ve got Canada with a population of about 30 million. 

At other times, Toronto has had a significantly larger payroll than Boston.  The current lower payroll reflects management decisions and a lower level of fan interest than in Boston.

As a Toronto fan, I don’t mind at all them competing with the Sox.

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Someone asked about the league imbalance on some other thread.  Here is my response:

There’s no question that the AL is the better league, and by a substantial margin.  You’d need to send about a dozen superstars, or some 30 stars from the AL to the NL to be balanced.

I don’t think the 16/14 balance has much to do with it.  It has to do with payroll.  In 2007, the AL payroll was 1.30 billion, while it was 1.18 in the NL.  Removing about 11 million$ per team (the minimum each team needs to pay), and you are left with 1.15 marginal billion dollars in the AL, and 1.00 in the NL.  Basically, you’ve got 150 million more dollars spent in the AL on players, every year.

Presuming that the average AL team is a true .52667 and the average NL team is .47667, and the replacement team is .300, we get this:
AL wins above replacement: (.52667-.300)*162*14 = 514 wins.  The NL wins above repl is 458 wins.

AL teams are spending 1.15 billion to acquire 514 wins, or 2.24 MM per win.  NL teams are spending 2.18MM per win, which is fairly close.  (Just move 13 million$ from the AL to the NL, and they are equals in terms of dollars spent per win.)

If you used a .318 replacement level instead, they’d both be equal in terms of dollars spent per win (2.43 MM).

***

Anyway, as long as this keeps up, the AL team will continue to be the dominating league.  Why does the NL have a fair shot at the World Series?  Throughout the world, there’s a rebalancing going on.  Think of the World Cup in soccer, where not every continent is equally represented in terms of nations at the World Cup.  Heck, even the Little League World Series guarantees that an American city makes it to the finals.  The same applies for the NCAA 64 basketball teams.  Better conferences send more teams.

As it stands, it’s ridiculous for the AL and NL to each send 4 teams to the playoffs.  The AL should send 5 and NL 3 (if not 6 and 2).