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Tuesday, December 01, 2009
What does the Redsox owner know about competitive balance?
He said:
The World Series should be determined by fully competitive teams on the field - not by how much particular clubs can afford to spend. A better solution is to address competition directly so that clubs can generate revenue more equally as teams become competitive across baseball.... Baseball is also a sport that needs competitive balance in order to prosper.
Most of Henry’s points in the article are good. The above is not. Every time an owner has to make a proposal, he has to throw in this competitive balance business. The following is the winning percentage of the best and worst teams by decade.
Decade best worst gap
1880 0.657 0.437 0.220
1890 0.631 0.366 0.266
1900 0.636 0.366 0.270
1910 0.598 0.401 0.197
1920 0.608 0.370 0.237
1930 0.636 0.378 0.258
1940 0.623 0.380 0.243
1950 0.621 0.400 0.221
1960 0.566 0.382 0.184
1970 0.592 0.415 0.177
1980 0.547 0.430 0.117
1990 0.595 0.442 0.153
2000 0.597 0.415 0.182
The first thing to note is that baseball’s been played for a long time. So, it’s prospered pretty well. I don’t buy Henry’s argument that baseball “needs” competitive balance to prosper. What baseball needs to prosper is for the game to be played. That’s pretty much it. Hockey, football, basketball, soccer, baseball. Those games don’t need “competitive balance” to prosper. They just need for the game to be exposed (that means, shove the blackout rules up someone’s a$$, and let one of the greatest creations of our time, the MLB Network, prosper… that’s how you get MLB to prosper.... that, and get the gasbags that are polluting the MLB Network to talk less).
Now, the next thing to notice is that the average win% of each decade’s best team is .598 since the 1910s, which is the same as the current decade’s best team’s winning %.
The third thing to notice is that it is since the 1950s that the bottom teams have stopped being so crappy. Indeed, since the 1950s, the overall win% of the best (.586) and worst (.414) teams of the decades is very similar to the current decade (.597, .415 respectively).
So, I don’t know what Henry is really after here in terms of “competitive balance”. But, a tax is not necessarily the way to go. It would be much better if Henry were to list his objectives, and then let the discussions evolve as to the pros/cons as to address each of his objective.
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