![]() Note that I am comparing this standard deviation to that of previous years’ projections, not final standings, so as to compare apples to apples (the spread of the projected standings will be smaller than that of the actual standings since the projected standings represent average outcomes, as Ben Clemens noted here). Oddly enough, the “ About MLB” page on MLB.com boasts that the league “currently features record levels of competitive balance,” but whether they mean record highs or record lows is not specified.Īnyway, let’s dive into those projections, where we’ll find good news: the standard deviation of all teams’ projected winning percentages is ticking down in 2023 to its lowest level since 2016. Over time, the league has implemented a number of systems to promote competitive balance, to varying levels of success. Rob Manfred continues to address it in the press, though he has a tendency to cite the variety of league champions, which has more to do with playoff randomness than league parity, as evidence. Owners have stressed competitive balance as a key issue in today’s game. A wider spread means fewer tight playoff races and more teams with known playoff fates in the latter months of the regular season. ![]() Left unchecked, this could pose a risk to the delicate balance of maintaining an exciting and marketable 162-game regular season. ![]() 098 in 2019 before effectively leveling out around. After a seven-year low in 2014, disparity spiked over the next five years to a peak standard deviation of. With that in mind, here’s a look at the disparity in team winning percentage at the end of each season since 1960:Ī few things are clear: measures of parity are pretty susceptible to swings in either direction, and as for right now, we are playing through a particularly disparate era. On the other side of the standings, prior to 2019, there had been just one season in which as many as four teams lost 100 games then four clubs did so in each of the 2019, ’21, and ’22 seasons. In the five full seasons since 2017, 17 teams have reached 100 victories just five did so in the previous 11 years. Competitive parity in MLB has been a hot topic for the better part of a decade as we’ve started to see megateams like the Dodgers and Astros routinely eclipsing 100 wins, and others getting more comfortable with finishing somewhere around 60. Just ask last year’s 87-win Phillies and 86-win Brewers, who finished their seasons with extremely different tastes in their mouths.Īll this to say: competitive balance is, well, a delicate balance, and with the debut of our 2023 playoff odds last week, there’s no time like the present to evaluate the state of the league from a parity perspective. It is part of what makes us all tune in so faithfully for this marathon over a long summer, the margins between the playoff-bound and the homebound can be paper thin. That such a long race can come down to the final days is part of what makes our sport brilliant, like some amplified version of Monday’s UAE Tour cycling photo finish my colleague Michael Baumann shared on Twitter. ![]() ![]() It’s a marathon of unparalleled scale in American professional sports, and when all is said and done, some of those teams may be separated by as little as one or two wins - or, though it hasn’t happened since the tragic assassination of Game 163 last winter, any of a series of tiebreakers buried somewhere in the season standings. With players and team personnel reporting to their spring camps, the 2023 season is almost upon us, with 30 teams set to play over 2,000 games in an effort to qualify just for a chance to reach the ultimate goal of a World Series. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |