Let's imagine for a second an alternative universe where MLB pools all revenues and has a hard salary cap. Bizarro MLB realizes that they make a lot more money on games played in New York than on games played in Tampa Bay. So, they decide that all the big market teams will play 100 games at home and all the small market teams will play 60 games at home (and let's assume that there'd be some kind of similar breakdown in the playoffs). Obviously, this would give the big market teams an advantage because home teams win about 55% of the time in baseball. But some small market teams would still succeed because the advantage wouldn't be huge - assuming that 55% rate, big market teams would win an average of 83 games and small market teams would win 79 games. Even though the edge would be small, we'd all recognize the basic unfairness.
How does that compare to what currently goes on in MLB? Here's my attempt at figuring out how big an edge the rich teams have had - I collected three pieces of data for each franchise for the last 10 years: payroll, wins, and playoff appearances. The 10 highest payroll teams have averaged 86.6 wins per season and 4.5 playoff appearances over the last 10 seasons. The 10 middle payroll teams have averaged 80.7 wins and 2.1 playoff appearances. The bottom 10 payroll teams (which include the very successful A's and Twins) averaged 75.8 wins and 1.4 playoff appearances. Each of the top 10 teams has at least one playoff appearance (Texas is the only one without two) and 8 of the 10 have winning records (Texas and the Cubs are the exceptions). 4 of the bottom 10 teams have failed to make the playoffs at all, while another 3 have only one appearance each. Three of the teams have averaged less than 70 wins a season; only 3 have more wins than the Rangers, the worst of the rich teams.
I don't think there's any way to look at this data and conclude that payroll doesn't make a significant difference in teams' ability to compete.
{For stats nerds - for this sample, the the coeffiecient of determination (r-squared) for payroll and wins is .47, which means that 47% of winning percentage can be predicted by payroll; for playoff appearances, it's 50%.}
Image above courtesy of Coachie Ballgames.
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6 comments:
Wow, truly giving life to Prodigy's words "If it aint gettin mathematics then somethins gotta give."
I agree, payroll disparity has an effect on competitiveness, and the higher payrolls tend to correspond to the biggest markets.
Couple of things I would like to bring up
MLB has more teams in bigger markets than the NBA and the NFL.
But more importantly, unless you are a fan of one of the poor/unsuccessful teams, does it matter if the playing field is not evil? Does it bring the entire sport down if there are a handful of small towns that constitute dead weight?
With the supposed level playing fields of the NBA and the NFL there still exist teams that are terrible year after year. College football, despite all the rancor, is insanely popular even though there are bottom-feeders in the BCS conferences that never do well and there are entire conferences that can never provide a national champion.
Now, the bottom-feeders in MLB may be primarily in the small markets as opposed to the NBA (clippers) and the NFL (detroit), but why should that effect the enjoyment for the rest of us?
The bigger issue regarding the long-term health of baseball versus the other sports is the "watchability" of the game itself. The casual fan will watch a game between the top teams in hoops or football even if it doesn't involve his own team. The same does not hold true for baseball. And I really don't think it's because of the small market issue.
"Does it matter if the playing field is not evil?"
I think it's an individual choice. It can matter to a Yankees or Red Sox fan. It seems that most of them seem perfectly happy winning as a result of outspending most of the competition, but some fans will find it somewhat less satisfying than if they won in a league where the rules were truly the same for all teams.
Hypothetical - what if the league really wanted the Mets to win, so they only gave their opponents 8 innings to score in every game. Would we feel the same sense of pride and accomplishment if the Mets won the World Series in those circumstances?
Really, this is a lot like life. We all achieve based on our own skills and hard work, but some of us received a lot more of a boost based on family resources, connections, etc.
Over the past decade, if you are a fan of the Yankees (1 W.S.), Red Sox (2 W.S.), Devil Rays(1 W.S.A.), Tigers (1 W.S.A.), White Sox (1 W.S.), Twins (A.L.C.S.), Indians A.L.C.S.)playoffs, Angels(1 W.S.), Phils (1 W.S.), Marlins 1 W.S.), Mets(debatable), Braves (playoffs), Cubs(N.L.C.S.), Cards (1 W.S.), Brewers (playoffs), Astros (1 W.S.A.), Dodgers (N.L.C.S.), Padres (playoffs), Giants (1 W.S.A.), and Rockies (1 W.S.A.), life isn't too terrible.
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