MLB: Greater parity than the NFL?

MakMan44 · Feb 3, 2014

It would be interesting to see how it compared to the other sports as well. I know nothing about the NHL's salary limitations and very little about the NBA's but it does seem a little silly to limit to a straight NFL-MLB comparison.

Curll · Feb 3, 2014

Nate Silver was talking about this recently.

Basically, the stats show the in the MLB, there's a better chance that the best team over the year will win the championship. In the NFL, there's more likelihood that the best team gets knocked out of the playoffs.

Thus, the NFL looks like it has more parity.

However, the stats bear out that the MLB has a higher variance factor of champions/franchise. I just made up "variance factor", so don't google that shit.

Dan to Theo to Ben · Feb 3, 2014

Playoff absence rate is what I would go on. How many years does it take for the most non-competitive teams to end a drought?
Find the bell curves/SD, etc.

It's difficult to compare football with the 7 game series sports, though.

Dan to Theo to Ben · Feb 3, 2014

MentalDisabldLst said:
Well, sure, that's why I think "making the playoffs" vs "not making the playoffs" is the limit to how snobby you should get. Anything beyond that is a farcically small sample size to draw any conclusions about. But despite the 16-game season, I think the NFL can be compared to the other leagues in that regard, normalizing for how many playoff spots there are.

I don't see how you can compared NFL with the other 3 sports. NFL has few games, they each mean a ton, but once you're in, you only need to win 3 or 4. Other 3 leagues, each game means little (at least in NBA/MLB, you can argue that NHL each game is important due to the scoring of the overtime losses and very low difference between team 8 and 9, sometimes just a tiebreaker) But once you're in, it's tough to win the title (at least for NBA)

isn't there a consensus, that in order of parity, it's:

NFL (very team-oriented, best salary system)

NHL (effect of goalie influence)

MLB (effect of pitcher influence)

NBA (Stars A, B, C, position indifference)

singaporesoxfan · Feb 3, 2014

I don't think that consensus exists at all - I would argue based on parity of results in terms of playoff appearances, MLB tends to fare pretty well.

Even if you prefer parity-of-opportunity, such as a salary cap system, parity isn't necessarily the be-all and end-all of how a league should be organized. Otherwise, you might as well flip a coin to see which teams make it in. You also want a system that rewards good management - e.g. the fact that Toronto is one of the few MLB teams not to make it in the playoffs in recent years I would argue is a good reflection of a team that had money and didn't spend it. You might also want a system that rewards the ability to cultivate fan loyalty - e.g. the Miami Marlins have a huge population base that they have been pitiful at converting into attendance and revenue dollars - should they have the benefit of having the same pot to spend as a team with a similar-sized population base like Boston or Atlanta?

Also, an emphasis on parity achieved through the salary cap can change the velocity of transactions - I know there's no such thing as team loyalty any more, but the fact that even superstars often stay only a couple of years with each team in the NFL is not to my taste (though I fully admit that is a matter of personal taste, and that this may be a function of the nature of the sport rather than the salary structure).

TomRicardo · Feb 3, 2014

MLB does not have as great a disparity between teams as the NFL. Most teams in MLB have a winning percentage between 40%-60% in any given year. Good teams in the NFL can win 70% to 80% of the time.

dbn · Feb 3, 2014

Compute the relative variance in regular-season games won over the past X years for each team in each league. The league with the smaller median relative variance has less parity.

Edit: Out of interest, I just did this for the Patriots and Red Sox only, over the years 2000-2014. The Red Sox averaged 90.36 wins with a standard deviation of 7.86. The Patriots numbers are 11.64 +/- 2.71. So the Red Sox win total varied by 9% of their average win total or by 5% of games played. For the Patriots the numbers are 23% and 17%.

This century, the Red Sox have been more consistent than the Patriots. Think about that. The difference is only a bit less if we eliminate 2000.

Rasputin · Feb 3, 2014

You know what's funny?

The entirety of the difference could be that the Patriots have managed to be so good for so long and no baseball team can say the same over the same time period.

kieckeredinthehead · Feb 3, 2014

dbn said:
Compute the relative variance in regular-season games won over the past X years for each team in each league. The league with the smaller median relative variance has less parity.

Edit: Out of interest, I just did this for the Patriots and Red Sox only, over the years 2000-2014. The Red Sox averaged 90.36 wins with a standard deviation of 7.86. The Patriots numbers are 11.64 +/- 2.71. So the Red Sox win total varied by 9% of their average win total or by 5% of games played. For the Patriots the numbers are 23% and 17%.

This century, the Red Sox have been more consistent than the Patriots. Think about that. The difference is only a bit less if we eliminate 2000.

You can't really compare variances drawn from non-normal populations with sample sizes that differ by an order of magnitude.

twibnotes · Feb 3, 2014

I think this is kind of a silly discussion bc of the QB factor. The NFL clearly goes much further to make its game more fair (salary cap, schedule adjustments, draft order), but having a great QB is like having a great starting pitcher who can pitch every day.

Stark's talk of the "NFL propaganda machine" makes it sound like MLB is running an equally fair league, and that's just BS. The NFL is more fair, but it's a different sport.

Morgan's Magic Snowplow · Feb 3, 2014

Since 1999, the only team to win the World Series with a payroll in the bottom half of the league is the 2003 Marlins. That counts for something.

Rough Carrigan · Feb 4, 2014

twibnotes said:
I think this is kind of a silly discussion bc of the QB factor. The NFL clearly goes much further to make its game more fair (salary cap, schedule adjustments, draft order), but having a great QB is like having a great starting pitcher who can pitch every day.

Stark's talk of the "NFL propaganda machine" makes it sound like MLB is running an equally fair league, and that's just BS. The NFL is more fair, but it's a different sport.

The new CBA in the NFL just started but over the course of the last CBA there was a pretty good argument to be made that it was anti-competitive. How? Well, the NFL's insane salary structure where guys who hadn't even played in the NFL like Jemarcus Russell "quarterback" for the Raiders. Teams were nearly forced to pay top draft picks as much as veteran all stars. But, the frequency of those top draft picks being busts was very high. So the draft system that was supposed to create parity by directing new talent to the bad teams often ended up crushing those teams with huge unproductive contracts.

The competitive thing about the NFL is that the payrolls are fairly close.
But the rules have put such an insane premium on quarterback play as to be somewhat anticompetitive. There used to be NFL teams that tried to run on you. Remember those 1990 Giants? Is there any team remotely like that today? No, of course not. You can't play a style that independent of the quality of your quarterback because the rules favor teams whose success revolves around the quarterback. And, how many good quarterbacks are there in the NFL, 10? If you don't have one of those 10 you are very likely fucked especially with the way the modern NFL rules so completely favor the offense and the passing game. I don't know that that kind of absolute position premium exists in any other sport. You could argue that a starting pitcher in MLB is analogous. But he's one of 5 on his team. Steve Carlton of the 1972 Phillies was the best pitcher in the league and won 27 games but his team sucked and only won 59 total. Obviously that's a pretty extreme example but Steve Carlton only got to help his team out every 4th or 5th game while Tom Brady gets to help his team every game.

I don't know. I deeply want to find the NFL wanting in any comparison with MLB. I could type pages about why I find myself more and more repelled by it. But I'll stop here.

Rough Carrigan · Feb 4, 2014

Morgan's Magic Snowplow said:
Since 1999, the only team to win the World Series with a payroll in the bottom half of the league is the 2003 Marlins. That counts for something.

So we could categorize the Marlins as a bit of a cinderella.
Okay but in that same time, what NFL cinderella champions have there been?
Broncos in 1999? Nope
Rams in 2000? Kind of
Ravens in 2001? Ehh, nope.
Patriots in 2002? Kind of (because we didn't know what this was the start of)
Tampa in 2003? Nope
Patriots in 2004? Nope
Patriots in 2005? Nope
Steelers in 2006? Nope
Colts in 2007? Nope
Giants in 2008? Nope
Steelers in 2009? Nope
Saints in 2010? Nope
Packers in 2011? Nope
Giants in 2012? Nope
Ravens in 2013? Nope
Seattle in 2014? Nope

Sure, these are subjective calls but do surprise teams really win in the NFL? The surprise mostly seems to be that it's the first year of a dynastic or near dynastic run and we don't yet realize what that team really has. Does the NFL really have that much going for it just because the payrolls are more even if the results are just as predictable or more so?

Morgan's Magic Snowplow · Feb 4, 2014

I'm thinking less in terms of "Cinderella" than in terms of equal opportunity. One of the great things about the NFL is that market size is pretty irrelevant - if you have a good organization in Pittsburgh or Green Bay or Indianapolis or Baltimore you can be better than anybody. In baseball, if you have an elite organization as a small market team then you might be able to make the playoffs a few times but you'll probably still be an underdog and it's going to be hard to sustain your success. People love to trumpet the achievements of orgs like TB and Oakland but the reality is that the deck is ridiculously stacked against small market teams and even the success stories haven't actually won titles (except the Marlins).

dbn · Feb 4, 2014

kieckeredinthehead said:
You can't really compare variances drawn from non-normal populations with sample sizes that differ by an order of magnitude.

That is demonstrably false. I just did compare them.

Kidding aside, you are probably correct about the statistical issue. I was just doing a quick thinking aloud sort of thing.

Sampo Gida · Feb 4, 2014

Morgan's Magic Snowplow said:
Since 1999, the only team to win the World Series with a payroll in the bottom half of the league is the 2003 Marlins. That counts for something.

Yeah, that convinces me. It is actually 19 years according to this

http://www.piratesprospects.com/2013/10/first-pitch-mlb-parity-is-a-parody.html

He points out 3 teams have won 70% of the World Series over the last 10 years.

In fact, over the last 17 years 2 teams from the AL East have won almost 50% of the World Series, Those 2 teams had the top 2 payrolls over these 17 years.

Pretty sure winning in the NFL is pretty much independent of market size. The lack of winners is probably due more the shortage of good coaches which seems more important to winning than in MLB, and the fact they stay for a long time with the same team

Spacemans Bong · Feb 4, 2014

Other than sharing TV money equally I can't really see what can be done. At some level fans of teams like Cleveland or Pittsburgh have to accept that not a lot of people are going to want to play there, if they object to that then they should ask themselves why a player has to stick around while they decamped to the Sun Belt years ago.

Also, they should maybe object a bit more to their owners. The Raiders have sucked for a decade, yet people have no problem figuring out it's the Davis family (or Ralph Wilson in Buffalo, or Mike Brown in Cincinnati - although they've been OK). When David Glass pockets revenue sharing money it's BECAUSE KANSAS CITY CAN'T COMPETE BECAUSE OF THE YANKEES!!!!

Anything else is just fucking over the players and will probably backfire anyway. Make it not about money and players are even less likely to choose a small market team, because the lifestyle and endorsements aren't there.

dynomite · Feb 4, 2014

Rough Carrigan said:
So we could categorize the Marlins as a bit of a cinderella.
Okay but in that same time, what NFL cinderella champions have there been?
Broncos in 1999? Nope
Rams in 2000? Kind of
Ravens in 2001? Ehh, nope.
Patriots in 2002? Kind of (because we didn't know what this was the start of)
Tampa in 2003? Nope
Patriots in 2004? Nope
Patriots in 2005? Nope
Steelers in 2006? Nope
Colts in 2007? Nope
Giants in 2008? Nope
Steelers in 2009? Nope
Saints in 2010? Nope
Packers in 2011? Nope
Giants in 2012? Nope
Ravens in 2013? Nope
Seattle in 2014? Nope

Maybe this is just me, but when I look at that list I'm stunned by the number of champions who play in what MLB would consider "small markets," or even AAA markets.

Green Bay, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, New Orleans: none of those cities are higher than 23rd on the list of biggest TV markets.

Since the Kansas City Royals won the World Series in 1985, the smallest TV markets to win in baseball are all higher than that except for Cincinnati in 1990, I think. (Miami and Minneapolis are in the teens)

Maybe there's no correlation there; I haven't done much (any) research beyond looking up those numbers, and it's a small sample size. Off the top of my head, there also aren't as many small market MLB teams as NFL teams, right? Maybe that's part of the point? (Sorry for not doing more research before posting -- on mobile)

Morgan's Magic Snowplow · Feb 4, 2014

Spacemans Bong said:
Other than sharing TV money equally I can't really see what can be done. At some level fans of teams like Cleveland or Pittsburgh have to accept that not a lot of people are going to want to play there, if they object to that then they should ask themselves why a player has to stick around while they decamped to the Sun Belt years ago.

Also, they should maybe object a bit more to their owners. The Raiders have sucked for a decade, yet people have no problem figuring out it's the Davis family (or Ralph Wilson in Buffalo, or Mike Brown in Cincinnati - although they've been OK). When David Glass pockets revenue sharing money it's BECAUSE KANSAS CITY CAN'T COMPETE BECAUSE OF THE YANKEES!!!!

Anything else is just fucking over the players and will probably backfire anyway. Make it not about money and players are even less likely to choose a small market team, because the lifestyle and endorsements aren't there.

Nothing can realistically be done and arguably nothing should be done. But lets still call out the bullshit of people like Jayson Stark who want to pretend like the financial disparities in MLB don't have a massive effect on competitive balance.

terrisus · Feb 4, 2014

I'm totally fine with the current imbalance of success in Baseball

Champagne Shower For Gabe · Feb 4, 2014

dynomite said:
Maybe this is just me, but when I look at that list I'm stunned by the number of champions who play in what MLB would consider "small markets," or even AAA markets.

Green Bay, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, New Orleans: none of those cities are higher than 23rd on the list of biggest TV markets.

Since the Kansas City Royals won the World Series in 1985, the smallest TV markets to win in baseball are all higher than that except for Cincinnati in 1990, I think. (Miami and Minneapolis are in the teens)

Maybe there's no correlation there; I haven't done much (any) research beyond looking up those numbers, and it's a small sample size. Off the top of my head, there also aren't as many small market MLB teams as NFL teams, right? Maybe that's part of the point? (Sorry for not doing more research before posting -- on mobile)

I've said for a while you can't really compare the sucess of NFL franchises (not only on the field but on the business side as well) with any other sport. It is much easier for a small market to succede because more people are willing to follow a team because of the time commitment to follow an NFL team is far less than any other sport.

If you watch every NFL game for your hometown team all season long and through the playoffs it will take around 60 hours (two and a half days) out of your entire year but in the MLB putting in the same amount of time you would't even get to watch 15% of the regular season (nevermind playoffs).

For this reason alone all the other sports are at a disadvantage to the NFL in being able to get the support they need in smaller markets.

trekfan55 · Feb 4, 2014

The NFL is famous (or was) for the "Any Given Sunday" mantra.

A 16 game schedule, plus every game meaning something, means the NFL is completely different than any other league. Like has been said here, it is usual to see a team going 14-2 or 13-3 (.875 and .813), in baseball, the elusive 100 win season means a .617 percentage. Over a 16 game season a .617 percentage means less than 10 wins, in the NFL 10 wins means you may miss the playoffs. In other words it is impossible to compare the two sports (and I won't even get into the NBA).

Also, following the NFL means watching games on Sunday, Monday night and now there's Thursday Night (although some of those games have been horrid). Playoff games are one and done, and there is always a chance that a "better team" is beaten in one game.

Using all this, the NFL has marketed itself nationally, and has become a money printing machine not only for itself but for all their franchises. There are no regional broadcasting contracts of NFL games, and the Super Bowl has become a must watch appointment TV event regardless of what team plays. Just for fun, how would the ratings be of a Seattle Mariners-Colorado Rockies World Series? A game 7? How much money does Fox get in advertising from these games?

As for the disparity, without any kind of salary cap, baseball will always have teams that simply cannot afford to compete for the big FA signings. Many teams today are signing their athletes long term, but those deals leave them limited on what talent they can afford to sign around them, not because of a league mandated cap, but because they simply cannot afford to, while a team like the Yankees and (gulp) Red Sox can.

John Marzano Olympic Hero · Feb 4, 2014

Joe Posnanski does a pretty good job on the parity thing on his blog.

Using his metrics, which aren't very advanced but are good enough, the basic conclusion is that baseball has the most parity, followed by the NFL and the NHL, while the NBA is the absolute worst.

kieckeredinthehead · Feb 4, 2014

MentalDisabldLst said:
1) How are these populations non-normal? It's distributed pretty binomially around a .500 record.

2) The sample size issue goes away if you treat each team-season as its own data point (the WL% of that team-season), no? Sure, the NFL's ones will be less smoothly grained due to 16-game seasons, but therein lies part of the point: the NFL creates more variability in its team records as a matter of sport structure.

The variance was calculated based on number of wins, which is a counting stat. You're right, comparing win % would take care of the non-normality, but then each team-season would have to be a single data point, which means it would be better to calculate for every team in the league for those years to get to a reasonable sample size. One could also look at correlations in records between years, or as a time series. If anyone has the data handy I'd be happy to check it out.

smastroyin · Feb 4, 2014

All this thread has told me is that people have widely varying definitions of what parity means. Without an actual definition of what we are measuring, you can manipulate the data any way you want.

singaporesoxfan · Feb 5, 2014

I would argue that playoffs, rather than World Series champions, might be a better way to compare parity between the NFL and MLB, if only because World Series champions constitute such a small sample. If Tampa wins it all in 2008, the factoid about small-market teams changes, for example. For example, the breakdown between the share of the last 10 World Series winners between the top 10, middle 10, and bottom 10 markets by size is 50%:30%:20% - but that's because Boston won 3 of the last 10 (and in all three cases, the losing team was one of the bottom 10 teams in terms of market size). If we look at which teams have reached the final round of 8 or the final four teams, the parity records are very comparable between the NFL and MLB.

These are the smallest 10 MLB teams by size of their census metropolitan statistic area (or MSA, from smallest to largest, though Oakland might arguably be in this list except that it is in the SF-Oakland MSA): Milwaukee, KC, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, St Louis, Baltimore, Colorado, Tampa, San Diego, Minnesota, Seattle. (If you use combined statistical areas or CSAs the list is pretty much the same, except the order changes.)
By television market DMA size, the same list would be: Milwaukee, Cincinnati, KC, San Diego, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, St Louis, Colorado, Cleveland, Minnesota.

All of those teams have made the post season in the last 10 years except KC and Seattle, and both arguably failed to make the post season due to mismanagement and poor drafting / player development as much as their small markets. St Louis has been as successful as any MLB team can be in the last 10 years. Sure, that's partly because St Louis has managed to make entire chunks of the Midwest into Cardinals territory, but I don't know if you should penalize a team for being good at attracting fans outside its metro area. Just as you shouldn't reward big-market teams like Miami that do a poor job of attracting fans.

Also the list of the smallest markets suggests that MLB franchises in general tend to be in larger media markets than NFL ones - for example, the NFL seems comfortable with the fact that the people in the second-largest city in America have zero teams to root for. There's no equivalent of Green Bay or New Orleans.

Not to say that having money doesn't help, but 1) the correlation between market size and payroll is not that strong (R^2 = .33 according to a study), and 2) the correlation between payroll and success isn't that strong.

For comparison:
Top 10 MLB team markets by MSA, if you divide populations by two for two-team cities: NYY, NYM, Texas (DFW), LAD, LAA, Houston, Philly, Washington, Miami, Atlanta.
Top 10 markets by CSA: NYY, NYM, LAD, LAA, Boston, Philly, Texas, Miami, Houston, Atlanta.
Top 10 MLB teams by DMA: NYY, NYM, Philly, LAD, LAA, Texas (DFW), Boston, Washington, Atlanta, Houston.

That's a list of teams with respectable success over the last 10 years, and more so than the bottom 10, but I wouldn't say that much more.

In the end, the comparison of parity may come down to time horizons. I think the NFL gives cities a greater chance to turn it around and win in any given season. This is in part due to the salary cap but also the nature of the shorter season and maybe the nature of the sport, where players often need less time to develop and drafting an impact QB can change the fortunes of a team quickly. Baseball's parity record since revenue sharing and the luxury tax came in I think is pretty respectable, but you still need a multi-year plan to succeed, and success cycles come in multi-year waves (Tampa has been good for a while, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and KC may be coming into their own, and if Houston's plan pans out it will do so in the future).

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