The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed by J.C. Bradbury Page B
Authors: J.C. Bradbury
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favorite small-market club, don’t just jump to blame the inherent inequities of the league. Small minds can be just as dangerous as small markets.
According to the Blue Ribbon Panel, the owners feel that it is important for every team to have “at least periodic opportunities for success,” in order to keep maximum interest in the game. If some teams have inherent advantages due to the markets they serve, this standard may be in jeopardy. I can use the previous analysis to generate metrics that separate out the influence of market size on winning.
Using the estimate that every 1.58 million people in a city generate an additional win for the teams in that city, let’s subtract the total number of wins due to the population from each team’s actual average win total to create population-adjusted wins per season. Population-adjusted wins are the estimated wins of teams due to factors other than population size. I also calculate predicted wins, which is the number of wins a team should have based solely on the impact of market size. From this I calculate a third metric, wins above predicted, which is the difference between actual wins and predicted wins. This metric measures how well teams performed above/below the wins predicted by population size.
Table 13 lists MLB teams ranked according to population-adjusted wins and includes the other metrics and total postseason appearances from 1995 to 2004. It is as if each team played in a locality of equal size and, outside of luck, only the skill of the owners, managers, coaches,
and players determines the outcome. The Yankees cannot gain more population-adjusted wins than other teams because of a market-size advantage, only due to skill or luck.
Even without their big-market advantage, the Yankees are fourth. While the Yankees may be second in average total wins, it is clear that any big-market advantage is only a small part of the success of this organization in modern baseball history. The Bronx Bombers have won 8.5 more games than predicted given the population of New York. It’s true that the Yankees operate in a big market, but they have done many other good things to attain success, just as the small-market Royals have done many bad things that have contributed to their failure. In contrast to the Yankees, the Royals have won 8.4 games below their population-predicted wins. In fact, the top and bottom clubs in population-adjusted wins, Atlanta and Detroit, have nearly equal predicted wins. And the eight clubs that never made the playoffs during the sample years are clustered at the bottom of population-adjusted wins.
Though the overall picture seems to indicate that market size had a very real but small impact on the performance of teams, small changes in wins can make huge differences in terms of making the playoffs. After all, baseball is a game of inches. Using the population-adjusted wins for every team in every season over the sample, we can see if any teams missed the playoffs due to differences in market size. When we look at each team’s population-adjusted wins by season, it turns out that market size was a factor in keeping some teams out of the playoffs. Twelve times teams that missed the playoffs would have qualified if the cities were equally sized. Table 14 lists these teams along with their league, population ranks, and the number of post-season appearances over the sample period.
Again there is a counterintuitive story here. The losers are not necessarily the bottom-dwellers of the leagues or small-market clubs. Of these teams, only Montreal never made it to the postseason during this time period. And only the Braves and Yankees appeared more frequently in the playoffs than Cleveland, Houston, Oakland, San Francisco, and Seattle. Boston made five playoff appearances and won
the 2004 World Series. Cincinnati is a small-market team that has not been very successful compared to the others in this group; however, the Reds did win the World Series in
According to the Blue Ribbon Panel, the owners feel that it is important for every team to have “at least periodic opportunities for success,” in order to keep maximum interest in the game. If some teams have inherent advantages due to the markets they serve, this standard may be in jeopardy. I can use the previous analysis to generate metrics that separate out the influence of market size on winning.
Using the estimate that every 1.58 million people in a city generate an additional win for the teams in that city, let’s subtract the total number of wins due to the population from each team’s actual average win total to create population-adjusted wins per season. Population-adjusted wins are the estimated wins of teams due to factors other than population size. I also calculate predicted wins, which is the number of wins a team should have based solely on the impact of market size. From this I calculate a third metric, wins above predicted, which is the difference between actual wins and predicted wins. This metric measures how well teams performed above/below the wins predicted by population size.
Table 13 lists MLB teams ranked according to population-adjusted wins and includes the other metrics and total postseason appearances from 1995 to 2004. It is as if each team played in a locality of equal size and, outside of luck, only the skill of the owners, managers, coaches,
and players determines the outcome. The Yankees cannot gain more population-adjusted wins than other teams because of a market-size advantage, only due to skill or luck.
Even without their big-market advantage, the Yankees are fourth. While the Yankees may be second in average total wins, it is clear that any big-market advantage is only a small part of the success of this organization in modern baseball history. The Bronx Bombers have won 8.5 more games than predicted given the population of New York. It’s true that the Yankees operate in a big market, but they have done many other good things to attain success, just as the small-market Royals have done many bad things that have contributed to their failure. In contrast to the Yankees, the Royals have won 8.4 games below their population-predicted wins. In fact, the top and bottom clubs in population-adjusted wins, Atlanta and Detroit, have nearly equal predicted wins. And the eight clubs that never made the playoffs during the sample years are clustered at the bottom of population-adjusted wins.
Though the overall picture seems to indicate that market size had a very real but small impact on the performance of teams, small changes in wins can make huge differences in terms of making the playoffs. After all, baseball is a game of inches. Using the population-adjusted wins for every team in every season over the sample, we can see if any teams missed the playoffs due to differences in market size. When we look at each team’s population-adjusted wins by season, it turns out that market size was a factor in keeping some teams out of the playoffs. Twelve times teams that missed the playoffs would have qualified if the cities were equally sized. Table 14 lists these teams along with their league, population ranks, and the number of post-season appearances over the sample period.
Again there is a counterintuitive story here. The losers are not necessarily the bottom-dwellers of the leagues or small-market clubs. Of these teams, only Montreal never made it to the postseason during this time period. And only the Braves and Yankees appeared more frequently in the playoffs than Cleveland, Houston, Oakland, San Francisco, and Seattle. Boston made five playoff appearances and won
the 2004 World Series. Cincinnati is a small-market team that has not been very successful compared to the others in this group; however, the Reds did win the World Series in
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