Quote:
Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange
There's one aspect the article doesn't take into account, and it seems to me a rather important one: free agency.
If we divide baseball history into two eras, pre-free agency and post-free agency (with the last year of the former being 1976 and the first year of the latter being 1977), and then look at the Yankees, one finds the following.
During the reserve clause era, of the 73 World Series played between 1903-1976, the Yankees appeared in 30 of them, winning 20. Simple division tells us that the Yankees appeared in 41% of the World Series played in that time period. During the free agency period, of the 38 World Series played, the Yankees appeared in 10 of them, winning 7. The Yankees thus appeared in only 26% of the World Series in the latter time period.
It would seem the Yankees benefited greatly from the reserve clause era.
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I will ask: Is it too early to compare the current era since 35 years still must be played to consider all of the chances the Yankees had in the first 73 year sample?
It would be interesting (if your data covers it) to see how the Yankees fared in the first 38 years of the reserve clause era, and compare that to the last 38 years result.
Thanks for sharing that data though. Interesting stuff.