Graph of the Day: Are Rich Teams Dominating?
by JinAZ on Aug 9, 2009 6:00 AM EDT
in Graph of the Day
28 comments
Buster Olney thinks so. As another look, here are expected winning percentages from the BtB Power Rankings (as of Tuesday 4 August) plotted against current payrolls, as reported by Cot's.
A fun sidebar to this is that you can use the residual (vertical distance from the data point to the best fit line) as an (imperfect) indicator of how efficiently a team is run.
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I assume this is the non-league adjusted winning percentage?
Also, what’s the correlation?
F*** Billy Beane... actually, I kinda like Holliday
by vivaelpujols on Aug 9, 2009 6:02 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs
No, it’s the league adjusted win percentage which is why, unsuprisingly, the NL teams are mostly underperforming compared to the AL teams. So it seems to be saying that NL teams are run less effectively because they’re in the NL.
Proud parent of Waldis Joaquin!
by GiantFan on Aug 9, 2009 6:54 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
NL teams, on average, spend less than AL teams, so they get that "advantage" in this chart.
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by Sky Kalkman on Aug 9, 2009 8:00 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
True, although how much of an advantage that is out of the extremes is probably not a huge amount. The problem is, as a whole, the graph is biased in that that total number of AL wins available is much higher than the total number of NL wins. So you’re always going to have that seperation and can’t really make any conclusions based on it aside from the fact that AL teams are better than NL teams which is an inbuilt bias you’ve already added. If you don’t want to ignore the fact that AL teams have it harder you’d be much better simply separting it into two graphs otherwise you’re simply muddying the real conclusions that you’re interested in making.
Proud parent of Waldis Joaquin!
by GiantFan on Aug 9, 2009 8:54 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Is that a bad bias, though?
An NL team can still rank well if they beat up on the other NL teams.
I’d argue we’d ideally like to include more strength of schedule adjustments to something like this, so that an AL East team gets a boost relative to an AL Central team. Without the adjustments (“biases”) you’re actually biased against good teams who play a strong schedule.
Are we on a different page here? I’m looking at this graph as comparing “how much money was spent?” and “how good of a team did the money buy?” If you want to know how good a team is, you need to adjust for who they play against.
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by Sky Kalkman on Aug 9, 2009 9:05 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Right
I chose to use the expected winning percentage, after league adjustments, because it is (or should be) a better description of team quality. Since AL teams are spending more, they should get that bonus in the description of team quality, since they play against better teams.
To the extremes: Let’s say we put a AAA team on here. The total salary for a AAA team might be $1 million. But they’re playing against inferior competition. Let’s say they’re a good AAA team, so they have a 0.600 winning percentage. Do we say that they’re the best-run team in baseball? Because that’s what we’d conclude if you don’t consider differences in quality of competition.
It’s worth noting that the Dodgers and Rockies appear among the best five teams. It’s just that there are a bunch of crappily-run teams in the NL. My Reds included.
-j
My blog: Basement-Dwellers.com
Also: Beyond the Boxscore
by JinAZ on Aug 9, 2009 9:23 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
The AAA example isn’t particularly relevent though, as the NL, whilst a weaker league is still at the same level and come with the same financial rewards (attendences, other revenues), sporting rewards (a world series place) & costs (major league players, stadiums, etc).
And that’s why NL clubs are run more inefficienctly, because on an theoretical level they should be run more effectively, but on a practical level they don’t really care as they’re still run on the same cost/benefit scale.
Proud parent of Waldis Joaquin!
by GiantFan on Aug 9, 2009 11:52 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
It's a good point that raw wins are still significant for many things, because they get equal billing no matter the league.
But I’d argue that NL teams should still care about being more efficient, because more efficiency equals more wins.
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by Sky Kalkman on Aug 9, 2009 12:07 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Yeah, i’d certainly agree that they should be more efficienct and my Giants have at times been a great example of how to use your payroll inefficienctly.
Proud parent of Waldis Joaquin!
by GiantFan on Aug 9, 2009 12:12 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
I’m not saying it’s a bad bias, it may well be totally fair, it’s just it somewhat overpowers the other things you’re interested in.
I don’t think we’re on a different page, so much as that’s what the graph is showing. The main conclusion you can draw from it is that NL teams generally get less value for money because they pay similar amounts, for similar results but in an easier environment. That’s correct & there’s nothing wrong with that, but it mainly just tells us what we already know, and that knowledge is inputed (in the form of the easier schedule at least) into the results.
I guess what i’d be more interested in, and perhaps that’s a personal thing, is the indivdual variations between teams outside of that general trend and whilst you can obviously still see that information in the plot, it’s somewhat overpowered by the general trend of relative NL overpending.
Proud parent of Waldis Joaquin!
by GiantFan on Aug 9, 2009 11:18 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
FWIW
If you use eW%lg, here are the top-5 and bottom-5 best run teams:
Best 5 Residuals: TB (0.124), LAN (0.103), COL (0.100), BOS (0.055), and TOR (0.0536).
Worst (6) Residuals: CIN (-0.106), NYN (-0.081), SD (-0.0674), KC (-0.0644), SEA (0.063), and HOU (-0.060).
So the top-5 teams don’t change (though their order does a tad), bottom-5 teams get a few AL teams appearing. The Cubs go from 5th-worst to 10th-worst—probably the biggest movers.
-j
My blog: Basement-Dwellers.com
Also: Beyond the Boxscore
by JinAZ on Aug 9, 2009 10:21 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
r=0.42
Sqrt(MSE) = 0.064
-j
My blog: Basement-Dwellers.com
Also: Beyond the Boxscore
by JinAZ on Aug 9, 2009 10:02 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Tango got about .75 I think
It must be the small sample size or the fact that yours is adjusted for league.
F*** Billy Beane... actually, I kinda like Holliday
by vivaelpujols on Aug 9, 2009 10:54 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
How about tackling this non-linearly?
It might not be smart for the Yankees to spend $200M from a $$/win perspective, but given that they DO spend that much, how many games would we expect them to win?
Here’s the model I stole from Tango and Gassko:
ExpWin% = (P + 2*L) / (P + 5*L)
Where P = team payroll and L = league-average payroll
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by Sky Kalkman on Aug 9, 2009 9:38 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs
Putting it on the to-do list! :)
I think the key thing I wanted to look at, as far as the Olney/Posnanski declarations go, is how payroll affects team quality.
Clearly there is a relationship between payroll and success. But the median payroll right now is ~$81 million. Of the top-9 teams (according to eW%), four are below that mark (TB, TEX, COL, TOR), and five are above (CHA, LAN, LAA, BOS, NYA). So it’s possible to have some success with a lower payroll. Though it’s worth noting that in the case of TB, TEX, and COL, they all are having success after years of doing poorly—and at least in part on the backs of cheap, young players. So they’re right in line with Posnanski’s article.
-j
My blog: Basement-Dwellers.com
Also: Beyond the Boxscore
by JinAZ on Aug 9, 2009 10:14 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Isn't this a little too theoretical?
The fact of the matter is that the Dodgers, Phillies, Cardinals, Yankees, Tigers, and Angels are all currently in first place. With the Cubs and Red Sox within than 1 game of first or the Wild Card. Only the Rockies and Rays and Giants and maaaaaayyyyyybe the Rangers have a legitimate shot at making the playoffs. Of the top 5 teams in payroll, only the Mets are out of it. None of the bottom 5 are in it. Of the top 10 in payroll, 7 are either in 1st or within a game of the Wild Card. In the bottom 10, 1 are leading there division or within game of the Wild Card, and that’s the Rangers, with the 9th worst payroll. The rays are 1.5 games out with the 6th worst payroll. You can use eW% all you want, but in terms of actual, hard wins, the money spenders are going to be waving a lot more flags this year than those that didn’t spend.
by Str1fe5 on Aug 9, 2009 11:12 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs
I figured that...
…everyone was already looking at actual winning percentages and pythagorean winning percentages. eW% is something “new” that I could contribute to the debate. It’s not everything, but it’s something that I think adds to the debate.
-j
My blog: Basement-Dwellers.com
Also: Beyond the Boxscore
by JinAZ on Aug 9, 2009 11:24 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
On a tangent, I'll note that there's a correlation/causation issue here.
If the Rays weren’t this good, they’d spend less on minor upgrades. Same, likely, for the Angels, Dodgers, and some others. And if a team like the Pirates or A’s were doing better, they’d likely spend more to make a real run at it.
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by Sky Kalkman on Aug 9, 2009 11:29 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
I don't know if this makes a big difference...
…but I prefer looking at marginal dollar per marginal win. A team of players making the league minimum will pay about $10 million in payroll and have a win% around .300-.350. I think that’s a better baseline than looking at raw dollars per win;
by cwyers on Aug 9, 2009 11:51 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs
I ran that through...
…for the last ten seasons prior to this one, using marginal runs and Pythagorean expectation (so I believe that’s considered first-order wins). Hadn’t done a graph yet, but I figured we’d be looking at something like marginal team payroll vs. Runs/Wins above Replacement. Here’s what I got:
Haven’t figured out how to label the data points with team abbreviations and only some of them are obvious. R-squared of .524 from what Excel spit out at me.
by SFiercex4 on Aug 9, 2009 2:36 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
It's less of an issue looking at residuals vs. using a ratio
A lot of studies using marginal wins make use of ratios for their comparisons (marginal dollars / marginal wins). That approach is prone to serious misinterpretations, as I’m sure you’re aware.
Looking at marginal wins and marginal dollars would effectively just pull the graph down a bit, but wouldn’t change much of anything else. Pretty sure on that, anyway.
-j
My blog: Basement-Dwellers.com
Also: Beyond the Boxscore
by JinAZ on Aug 9, 2009 9:09 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
No.
Linear weights for offense. tRA converted to runs + fielding for defense.
It would be better to use base runs for offense, but it makes very little difference. A couple of runs here and there.
-j
My blog: Basement-Dwellers.com
Also: Beyond the Boxscore
by JinAZ on Aug 9, 2009 9:10 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Great graph
I’m surprised the Astros are on there. They have been playing above exspectations this year
Carlos Guillen, the Latino Nick Punto
by The_Fan on Aug 9, 2009 8:35 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
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