Checking In on Baseball's Middle Class
Plus: September Round Up!
Now that the baseball regular season has (mostly) ended, it seems like a good time to look at the competitive balance situation in Major League Baseball. If you recall, two years ago I pointed out that baseball was losing its middle class teams. The competitive balance situation was creating a rise in 100-win and 100-loss teams — there were four of each in 2022 — hollowing out the middle.
Well, I am happy to report that the situation seems to have mildly improved. Based on the definition I used two years ago, a “middle class team” was a team with between 75 and 90 wins. This cutoff is obviously somewhat arbitrary, but I was trying to describe teams that were somewhere between “decent” and “good.” Teams that were competitive, but not necessarily playoff-bound.
For a while, it seemed like teams were actively avoiding this zone. The conventional wisdom was that if you couldn’t win 100 games, you should lose 100 — there was no point being in the middle.
But in 2024, over half the league — 17 teams — fell into the “middle class” category. Last year, 18 teams fit the bill. This comes after a long stretch where only about 1/3 or 40% of the league fell into this category. Could this be the start of a new trend?
The obvious explanation for such a trend is the new playoff format, which not only expands how many Wild Card teams make the postseason, but actually seems to give those Wild Card teams a better shot, since their fate does not come down to a one-game play-in. Three of the four World Series teams since the new format was put in place have been Wild Card teams in this “middle class” category.
Now, this tradeoff might not be worth it. It certainly seems like the new format gives Wild Card teams TOO MUCH of an advantage, to the point that it cheapens the regular season. And we still had thee 100-loss teams this year, so I don’t think the league has really solved its tanking problem. But the point is that the league CAN make interventions that have a real effect.
Anyway, here’s everything from Undrafted this month…
Episode 50: The Lefty Specialists' 2024 NFL Preview!
The NFL regular season kicks off tonight! If you don’t know who to root for, either in this game or the 271 that will follow, then fear not, because James and John are here to to tell you which teams are on the side of worker power. Who has the vibes of a pro-labor team? Listen and find out!
James tried to walk me through his list of who leftists should root for this NFL season.
Why Did the NWSL Get Rid of the Draft?
Last month, the National Women’s Soccer League announced a new collective bargaining agreement, which will run through 2030. The deal includes a bunch of major victories for players, like a higher minimum salary and an increase in the league’s salary cap. But the thing that interests me the most in this agreement is that the NWSL will become (I believe)…
It IS actually possible to add amateurs to your pro sports league without an exploitive draft process. Will other teams follow suit? Probably not, but it’s still good that the NWSL is doing this!
The NFL and the Path from Private Equity to Full Communism
Last month, the NFL announced that it would allow private equity funds to buy stakes in teams. It was a small step: Only 10% of any team can be sold, and so far only to a handful of firms that have been pre-vetted by the league. It’s clear that the NFL still hopes to retain its traditional owner-operator model, whereby a single owner is responsible for …
Owners are pointless. Do you know who knows that better than anyone? Owners!
The White Sox and the End of Lovable Losers
Well, it finally happened: The 1962 Mets’ record for the most losses in the modern baseball era has finally fallen, with the Chicago White Sox losing their 121st game last night (after an ill-timed three-game win streak that frustrated the fans who wanted to see history — the 2024 White Sox can’t even lose right). It was a sad day, not just because it’s…
As I said, baseball has not totally fixed its competitive balance problem…