Marginal Wins

There is a statistic called "Marginal Payroll/Marginal Wins" which determines how much teams pay for each of their wins. The formula for any team is

(total payroll - (28 x (league minimum payroll)))/((win percentage - 0.300)*162)

The numerator is the "marginal payroll" -- the payroll amount above the absolute minimum payroll, the cost of a team filled entirely with AAA replacement players, "pure substitutes" without any particular elan.

The denominator is "marginal wins" -- the number of wins above a .300 winning percentage. The big assumption is that a team filled entirely with average AAA players would have a win percentage of about .300, or about 48 wins.

For any season...or for any period of time...you can grade teams based on a) how many wins they had, and b) what the marginal cost/marginal win was.

If a team has a high win percentage and a low MW/MC ratio, it is an efficient team. It spends its money wisely.
If a team has a high win percentage and a high MW/MC ratio, it has spent its way to the top.
If a team has a low win percentage and a low MW/MC ratio, it is not spending enough to be competitive.
If a team has a low win percentage and a high MW/MC ratio, it is a poorly run team.

I went ahead and calculated those ratios for all the 2007 teams. Teams in the top ten in any ranking -- wins or MW/MC -- were given a "high" designation; teams in the bottom ten were given a "low" designation.

The 2007 results:

Efficient teams: Indians, Diamondbacks, Rockies, Padres, Phillies.
Not spending enough: Nationals, Marlins, Pirates, Devil Rays.
Spent their way to the top: Red Sox, Yankees
Poorly run teams: Astros, White Sox, Giants, Royals, Orioles

The funny thing is that the list sort of matches up with most people's perceptions. There are a lot of people who believe the Marlins, Pirates, and Devil Rays need to spend their way to the top. There have been years of complaints that the Yanks and Red Sox just open their pocketbooks to buy championships. The White Sox have taken the hit for questionable acquisitions and the Orioles haven't been the image of a well-run team for years.

This stat might be of use for people who are playing in on-line leagues, at least in that it might give a sign as to who is tanking.

(P. S. Sorry I haven't posted in a week. Three words: in. laws. visting.

The Best Dynasty Resource...Ever?!?

I've just discovered a brand new dynasty resource that might be invaluable to those looking for historical versimillitude in creating a baseball dynasty. It's called http://www.paperofrecord.com.

The idea behind paperofrecord.com is to create a searchable database of newspapers spanning from the 19th century to today. The database includes newspapers from the United States, the UK, Canada, Mexico, and other countries. Some papers extend back to the mid-19th century.

Yes, you will have to register, but since I don't have a phone (wink) I put a placeholder phone number of the "555" type. But what's really great about this site is that THE ENTIRE ARCHIVE OF "THE SPORTING NEWS" is on the site.

If you noticed the picture, this was obtained from the paperofrecord.com website and a version of the image composition software I use known as "The Gimp". This is the masthead for the very first "The Sporting News" ever, printed in 1886.

And the important part is that this is a searchable database. Want to read articles about the 1897 baseball season as it takes place? Or the 1917 season? Or the 1937 season? Or the 1978 season? It's all here!

And if you're running a Canadian dynasty, hey, just go to one of the Canadian newspapers, search for "baseball" and enjoy the power of paperofrecord.com! I'll be adding this as a "side link" under the "history" section.

legendsport's "The Completely Fictional History of Baseball" has own website!

You can find this spectacularly detailed dynasty here as well as on OOTP. I'll be adding it to the "cool links" on the left.

Apparently, legendsport plans on turning this dynasty into an online OOTP league -- I know at least of one other dynasty that became an online league in OOTP. However, he'll still be reporting the progress of this several-player dynasty, so I recommend it to anyone interested.

Which is the Better Sim for Historical Leagues: BM or OOTP?

In my last post, I introduced a measure called the Noll-Scully measure. The concept behind the Noll-Scully measure is that a perfectly competitive league would be a league where every team was the same -- had the same strength of pitching talent, batting talent, fielding talent, managing talent, etc.

In such a league, you would expect a team to finish at 81-81 for the year -- after all, it is playing against teams as evenly matched as it is, and trying to determine who would be most likely to win any particular game would be similiar to flipping a coin.

However, not every team would finish 81-81 in this league. There would be some random chance along the way. After all, if you flip a coin ten straight times, you don't always get five heads and five tails. Sometimes, you get four heads or six heads -- or an even greater "deviation" from the mean. So there would be some deviations from an 81-81 record.

With a lot of games, the "number of wins" variable approaches a bell curve distribution. One could expect that our "average" team would win between 74.7 and 87.3 games about 68.2 percent of the time. We could expect that it would win between 68.4 and 93.6 games about 95 percent of the time! The chances of one of these even teams in an even league winning less than 69 or more than 93 games are very small indeed: only 4.6 percent.

What the Noll-Scully measure does it that it compares the "scatter" of a perfectly matched league to the "scatter" of any league you give it. The actual measure is (standard deviation of wins in given league)/(standard deviation of wins in perfect league) = (standard deviation of wins in given league)/[(1/2)*(square root of games played)]. The denominator comes from what one would expect in a binomial, or "coin-flip" distribution.

A "perfectly competitive" league would have a Noll-Scully measure of 1.0, since the numerator would be equal to the denominator. I gave a list of Noll-Scully measures for various sports leagues in an earlier posts.

CatKnight then did an interesting experiment. He performed historical simulations for a number of years, and then he compared how well Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP) did with Baseball Mogul (BM). His results follow, and I quote the private message he sent me:

(* * *)

Hi, petrel: I said I'd do some experiments and get back to you on this. Interesting tidings - not entirely surprising.

First, here are the values you took from that article - modern values which we more or less instinctively expect:

National Basketball Association: 2.89

American League: 1.78

National League: 1.76

National Hockey League: 1.70

National Football Legue: 1.48

*******

Now, I ran both OOTP and BM through the years 1901-1925. League balance was still kinda fragile at that time, so it's useful to look at what really happened:

MLB (1901-1925): Average 2.52

Most Competitive: 1.87 (1918)

Least Competitive: 3.39 (1909)

OOTP first: Fictional setup, but everyone in the correct cities with hopefully correct demographics and statistical patterns for that time.

OOTP (1901-1925): Average 1.60

Most Competitive: 1.12 (1913)

Least Competitive: 2.04 (1903)

So...far more competitive - even a bit more so than modern day baseball, but purists might wonder if it's realistic for the time.

BM (1901-1925): Average 2.39

Most Competitive: 1.74 (1906)

Least Competitive: 3.16 (1922)

BM's numbers are much closer to what really happened, though a little more draconian than we modern day fans may be used to.

*****

One of the main questions BM's raised is whether the financial model unbalances the game over time - so Year 1-2 may go smoothly, but by Year 10 competitive balance is gone. Let's look:

OOTP (1901-05) 1.91

(1906-1910) 1.61

(1911-1915) 1.40

(1916-1920) 1.63

(1921-1925) 1.43

So pretty uniform. OOTP actually settled down once the AIs got moving after a few years.

BM (1901-05) 2.10

(1906-10) 2.00

(1911-15) 2.45

(1916-20) 2.47

(1921-25) 2.96

BM did fine for about ten years. After 1920 the situation descended rapidly, partially because the Braves tanked (.299 or worse record) for four straight years and the Phils for two.

No team 'tanked' during the OOTP run. It happened twelve times (7 with the Braves) during BM.

*******

The last indicator of competition is how often one can expect to win the pennant. Here are the results:

Real Major Leagues

10: New York Giants

6: Boston Red Sox, Philadelphia Athletics

5: Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago Cubs

4: Chicago White Sox

3: New York Yankees, Detroit Tigers

2: Washington Senators, Brooklyn Dodgers

1: Cleveland Indians, Philadelphia Phillies, Boston Braves, Cincinnati Reds

0: St Louis Browns, St Louis Cardinals

OOTP
10: New York Yankees

8: Chicago Cubs

4: St Louis Cardinals, St Louis Browns, Washington Senators

3: Philadelphia Athletics, Cincinnati Reds, Brooklyn Dodgers

2: Detroit Tigers, New York Giants, Pittsburgh Pirates, Philadelphia Phillies

1: Cleveland Indians, Chicago White Sox, Boston Braves

0: Boston Red Sox

A little more inclusive, but not much. Two teams dominating for so long (NYY, CHC) is interesting.

BM
8: New York Giants

7: Cleveland Indians

5: Washington Senators, Chicago Cubs

4: Brooklyn Dodgers

3: Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates, Philadelphia Athletics, St Louis Browns, New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox

2: St Louis Cardinals

1: Chicago White Sox

0: Detroit Tigers, Philadelphia Phillies, Boston Braves

More domination here, and more teams left out - but not our usual suspects. The NY Giants almost always dominate and are directly responsible for a rise in Noll-Scully in the mid-late 1910s, and Washington is (interestingly) the big AL market, but Cleveland's not that large. The Cubs don't usually benefit from Chicago's size.

OOTP - 1901 through 1925 v 2.0

(I then) attempted to recreate what would have been correct financially for this time period:

No free agency

Arbitration after 1 yr (to force the AI to think about a player's true value, as contracts were only 1 yr in this time period)

No revenue sharing

No salary cap

OOTP with corrections above
1901-25: 1.71

1901-05: 1.71

1906-10: 1.88

1911-15: 1.78

1916-20: 1.64

1921-25: 1.55

Best Year: 1.20 (1921)

Worst Year: 2.23 (1910)

This league showed more signs of "have" and "have not" syndrome than the original run of OOTP. Still, while these ratings are more competitive than early 20th century ball, they're comparable to modern figures.

Again, no team 'tanked.' The worst record belonged to the 1903 Tigers (47-93 .335) followed by the 1915 Yankees (52-102 .337). The best record belonged to the 1915 White Sox (109-45 .707). In all, only one team recorded 100 losses, and three recorded 100 wins.

Upward mobility within the league suffered compared to OOTP or even BM, possibly because of the lack of player mobility. Teams would stay down for a decade or more before recovering. Using my current franchise relocation rules, FOUR teams would have moved: Cincinnati and Detroit in 1916, the Yankees in 1918, and Braves in 1925. This is higher than I'd intended and, again, suggests teams in a rut are going to stay there, and those on or near the top aren't going to fall far.

Pennants by Team:
11) Chicago White Sox

9) Pittsburgh Pirates

6) Brooklyn Dodgers

5) Boston Red Sox

4) St. Louis Browns

3) St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Athletics, Philadelphia Phillies

2) Cincinnati Reds, New York Giants

1) Cleveland Indians, New York Yankees

0) Washington Senators, Boston Braves, Chicago Cubs, Detroit Tigers

Again, a bit top heavy with the White Sox and Pirates dominating their leagues.

--CatKnight

(* * *)

Thanks once again to CatKnight for all the hard work.

After reading all of the above, I am forced to conclude that OOTP simply does a better job of historical simulation than BM does. After a while, BM "degenerates", with large market teams dominating, and if one doesn't decide to play by some set of "house rules" balance becomes farcical.

This leads to two questions: 1) how come BM hasn't been knocked out of the market yet, and 2) how come BM doesn't change their engine to be a bit more realistic over the long run?

As for BM and the market, both CatKnight and I agree on one thing: Baseball Mogul's ease of set-up and play simply blows OOTP out of the water. The OOTP curve is sharp, and even though I've purchased OOTP, I rarely play it. There's so much going on in OOTP, the menus are hard to find and you never know exactly where to find what you're looking for. Baseball Mogul's menus are simple, and you can just breeze right through and get started, although with none of the options in setting up leagues that OOTP offers.

In some quarters, BM is damned for its simplicity. However, with Baseball Mogul, at least you don't have to read a 500 page manual to get started.

So how come BM doesn't change their historical engine to be more realistic? CatKnight came up with some theories with which I agree. Either a) Clay Dreslough simply isn't aware of how unbalanced the game becomes over a long period of time, b) he simply doesn't care that it becomes unbalanced, as he figures that most people just want to play in the 2007-plus era with big-market teams dominating, or c) he doesn't intend to make it a priority at this time.

What can I conclude? For dynasty makers, you still have the same choice: BM or OOTP. Making a choice between one or the other has always involved trade-offs. OOTP is actually "tighter" than reality, in that it's actually more competitive than is historically appropriate. BM is "looser" than reality -- it is less competitive than a real league over time. The question -- as always -- is "what do you want"?

How to Write a Good Dynasty

Boy, that's a tough question. It's sort of like asking, "boy, how do I become as popular as Ronald Reagan?"

If someone were to ask me the question as to how to attain Ronald Reagan's facility with people, my first answer would probably be "don't imitate Ronald Reagan". Imitation is something that needs to be broken -- the people who were really "great" sort of found a way to be comfortable in their own skin.

So, if you want to write a good dynasty, the first answer would be "be comfortable". Find a format that interests you. If you want to report day-by-day, do that. If you want to make your reports weekly, monthly, or even yearly, do that as well. You decide how often you care to report on what's going on.

The next step is to answer the question, "what interests you about baseball?" Because if you center on the part of baseball you find interesting, you'll write interesting stories. You won't be able to help writing interesting stories, your enthusiasm will bubble over and it will be contagious.

My interest is in baseball history, and history in general. So my dynasties tend to be rich on background. It's what I like writing about. Another good historical dynasty is CatKnight's "Cardinal Sins" and there are plenty of good historical dynasties on OOTP.

If you like the idea of being a GM more than writing about baseball history, you might choose the format from abben's "Moneyball 1988 Brewers Style" that I heartily recommend -- you write up your dynasty from that point of view. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your team? What decisions should you (as GM) make? Who is hot? Who is cold? What were you thinking when you made that decision? If you're taking the role of GM, people want to know those things.

If you like players a lot more, then you might just want to follow a player. "A-Rod's Incredible Dynasty" could be an idea -- follow Alex Rodriguez through his development as a player, starting with the first season and continuing until his retirement. Can he break The Bighead's record?

If you like the idea of being a player a lot more, you might like the idea of Big Six's "The Base Ball Life of Patrick O'Farrell" which is an OOTP dynasty. He created a player called Patrick O'Farrell in 1904, and told his story through letters O'Farrell writes, newspaper articles, and omnipotent "third person" posts. You could create a player, name him after yourself (or someone else) and tell his story -- and of course, report how he's doing. A modern dynasty might really be cool, because pro baseball players lead lives that make the orgies of Rome look tame.

If you like the idea of being GOD a lot more, you might want to write a dynasty like legendsports's, "The Completely Fictional History of Baseball". You would start the league in 1901, use entirely imaginary players, and tell the story of the league from then on. What teams and players dominated? Which teams and player turned out to be real disappointments?

So I suppose the hints for writing a good dynasty are:

1. Don't imitate anyone, unless you like their formats a lot -- I get all kinds of inspiration reading other people's posts.

2. Write about the aspect of baseball that interests you.

3. Use the spellchecker -- don't let bad grammar give the reader displeasure.

4. Stick with it, even when no one is reading or commenting -- it takes time to build a readership.

What Competitive Balance?

I was looking on the internet for a tool by which I could measure the "competitive balance" of a league -- in other words, what was the tendency of certain teams to dominate play? In short, an ideal statistic would reveal how much of the season would be a "foregone conclusion".

I found such a statistic on the "The Wages of Wins" website at http://www.wagesofwins.com.

It's called the Noll-Scully measure. To explain it in words, Noll-Scully divides the standard deviation of wins for a league during a year by the "ideal standard deviation" of wins in a league where all teams are equal -- that is, over time, each team will have a .500 record each year.

Here are some examples of Noll-Scully measures from the authors, measured in 2005. The higher the measure, the less competitive a league is over the years. All the measures are average measures for the time indicated.

National Basketball Association: 2.89 from 1986-2005

American League: 1.78 from 1986-2005

National League: 1.76 from 1986-2005

National Hockey League: 1.70 from 1984-2004

National Football League: 1.48 from 1985-2004

Therefore, I applied the measure to the years of my "Even The Braves" dynasty, which is a "Baseball Mogul" dynasty. Note that the Noll-Scully measures:

a) are not split into different leagues -- in general, the American League seems less balanced than the National in my league,
b) do not note franchise relocations or infusions of money when teams change owners, or other cases.

The dynasty is now in 1968, having started in 1953. The numbers from 1953 to 1957 are listed below:

1953: 1.74

1954: 2.18

1955: 2.24

1956: 2.36

1957: 2.51

1958: 2.82 (expansion to 20 teams from 16)

1959: 2.78

1960: 2.54

1961: 2.99 (egad! The NBA is more competitive)

1962: 3.12

1963: 3.28

1964: 3.69

1965: 3.85 (expansion to 24 teams from 20)

1966: 4.22 (!!!)

1967: 3.26

Note how dramatically non-competitive the ETB league became in the 1960s. The New York Yankees and New York Giants got a grip on the championships and never let them go. The Yankees have won nine straight American League pennants.

Also note the drop from 1966 to 1967. A penalty on overspending was enacted at the end of the 1965 season. Since it was enacted in December after free agent signing, the New York teams were able to sign even more top-notch free agents -- "the rich get richer!"

However, I suspect that in 1967, non Giants-Yankees teams had a better chance of signing free agents with the money they received from penalties, and also from the fact that both the Giants and Yankees were in debt and only able to sign their own players. However, we've only seen one year of the Petrel luxury tax house rules.

I'll be interested in finding out how 1968 turns out.

Franchise Relocation House Rules

If you run a dynasty, you might have the situation where there's one team that is not only doing very, very badly, but which never seems to recover. Hundred-loss season follows hundred-loss season.

The question you might ask yourself is, "Should I relocate the team?" Maybe moving the team to another city will give it a chance to revitalize its fortunes. But what rules should you use to determine which teams get to go and which teams have to say?

CatKnight was kind enough to provide me his house rules for franchise relocation, and I am happy to host them at this link. As soon as I get enough house rules, there will be a link at the left hand side of the page that points you to the "master list" of house rules.