Tuesday, October 06, 2009

If baseball were fair...

Tomorrow night, the Yankees and Twins open the AL playoffs. Both teams have deserving players, but so do some of the teams that were left out of this year's playoffs--that's bound to happen when a 30 team league only has 8 playoff spots. The problem with MLB though, is the disparity in teams' payroll.

What if baseball were fair? What if the playoffs were seeded according to the teams that earned their wins, rather than buying them? To find out, I seeded the teams according a new metric I call "final grade", calculated by dividing a team's number of wins at the season's end by the 4th root of team payroll.

Without further hesitation, here are your 2009 deserving Division winners:

AL East Tampa Bay
AL Central Minnesota
AL West Texas
AL Wild LA Angels

NL East Florida
NL Central St. Louis
NL West Colorado
NL Wild LA Dodgers


Interestingly, both LA teams deserve wild card spots, with the Dodgers and Angels finishing just ahead of the Padres and Red Sox, respectively. 5/8 of the deserving teams made the actual MLB playoffs. The players for the Devil Rays, Rangers, and Marlins are more deserving than those for the hulkishly-rich Yankees, Red Sox, and Phillies.

More interestingly, without needing any adjustments, the ratio produces a report card-type score that gives fair assessment of each team's season, punishing neither big nor small market teams. (I think most reasonable fans would actually agree with the final grades the system cranks out.) Pretty cool!

Other notes:
*** Again, final grade was calculated by the equation:
Final grade = Total Wins / (team payroll in dollars)^(1/4)
*** The Marlins won 2.36 games/million dollars spent, almost 5 times that of the Yankees, who led the majors in victories but still finished dead last in wins/million dollars spent at 0.51.
*** Obviously, the system does not take injuries into account, which played a large part in the Mets and Indians poor seasons.



Team Wins Wins/ "final grade"
$mil spent
Marlins 87 2.36 1.12 A++++
Rockies 92 1.22 0.99 A+
Twins 87 1.33 0.97 A+
Rangers 87 1.27 0.96 A
Dodgers 95 0.95 0.95 A
Rays 84 1.33 0.94 A
Angels 97 0.85 0.94 A
Cardinals 91 1.03 0.94 A
Padres 75 1.75 0.93 A
Giants 88 1.07 0.92 A-
Red Sox 95 0.77 0.90 A-
Phillies 93 0.82 0.90 A-
Braves 86 0.89 0.87 B+
Yankees 103 0.51 0.86 B
Mariners 85 0.86 0.85 B
Reds 78 1.10 0.85 B
Brewers 80 1.00 0.85 B
Athletics 75 1.20 0.84 B
Tigers 86 0.75 0.83 B
White Sox 79 0.82 0.80 B-
Blue Jays 75 0.93 0.79 C+
Cubs 83 0.61 0.77 C+
D-backs 70 0.95 0.76 C
Pirates 62 1.27 0.74 C
Astros 74 0.72 0.73 C
Royals 65 0.92 0.71 C-
Orioles 64 0.95 0.71 C-
Indians 65 0.80 0.68 D+
Nationals 59 0.99 0.67 D
Mets 70 0.52 0.65 D-


Oh yeah, and my world series prediciton:
I'm gonna go Angels over Rockies in 6.