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.