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Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Missing the big picture on the small idea that is realignment
In an ESPN article last year, I showed each team’s payroll relative to league average over a period of 12 seasons, along with how many times they won 89 games (a playoff-level number).
If you were to have two conferences split by payroll, you’d put the top 8 spending teams in one conference, and the other 22 teams in the other conference. That’s because you have a similar number of playoff-level teams as a result (48 in one and 52 in the other, over the 12 year period).
There’s a major, enormous inequity based on market size (represented as a proxy only for illustrative purposes by payroll). All the other stuff, the unbalanced schedule, the number of teams per division, the byes, the inter-conference games… all that stuff is tiny compared to the enormous structural advantage that simply existing in a large market confers to teams.
Payroll Index 89 Wins Team
214% 11 NYY
153% 9 BOS
143% 4 NYM
137% 3 LAD
130% 7 ATL
121% 3 CHC
118% 4 SEA
115% 7 ANA
114% 6 STL
111% 2 TEX
109% 0 BAL
106% 5 SFG
103% 5 HOU
103% 4 ARI
101% 3 PHI
99% 6 CLE
97% 3 CHW
95% 1 DET
94% 0 TOR
90% 2 COL
79% 1 SDP
76% 1 CIN
72% 1 MIL
67% 6 OAK
64% 4 MIN
64% 0 KCR
58% 1 TBD
57% 0 WSN
57% 0 PIT
52% 1 FLA
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