Which MLB Team To Be?

[injury log]

Originally Posted by Bobble

I tried to model budget with market. Large payroll (30) times large market (1) = 30. Small payroll (1) times small market (30) = 30. That's one of the things that gets the Brewers up there. Middle of the road salary burden (15) but crappy market size (30) = 450.

What led you to use a product to rank these teams? Which of these two scenarios seems more challenging:

Team A: 6th best W/L record, 5th best minor league system
Team B: 1st best W/L record, 30th best minor league system

If you use a product, these teams are equally challenging, but since they're only separated by a handful of wins now, and Team A has a far brighter future, Team B should clearly rank as more challenging than A.

You're also using metrics that are correlated. Unless a front office is incompetent, boosting payroll should boost Wins. That's what teams are buying after all. So by penalizing teams for high payrolls, you're neutralizing the benefit of having a good W/L record. But what really matters is not payroll anyway; it's financial capacity. A team with a high payroll but $100m in budget room is in much better shape than a team with a low payroll that is already over budget. And of course if all your contracts come off the books in one year, your current payroll is barely a restriction.

I don't even think ranking values are very useful inputs. If you have teams with these W/L records at the bottom of your league:

50-112
61-101
62-102

then they're separated by 1 point apiece if you rank them, even though the first team is vastly worse than the other two. I think it would be better to use Pythagorean wins as an input, actual market size as another input, eliminate the salary column, and rank minor league systems along a curve (since the difference between the 1st and 10th systems is far greater than the difference between 21st and 30th systems).

[ezpkns34]

Originally Posted by injury log

What led you to use a product to rank these teams? Which of these two scenarios seems more challenging:

Team A: 6th best W/L record, 5th best minor league system
Team B: 1st best W/L record, 30th best minor league system

If you use a product, these teams are equally challenging, but since they're only separated by a handful of wins now, and Team A has a far brighter future, Team B should clearly rank as more challenging than A.

You're also using metrics that are correlated. Unless a front office is incompetent, boosting payroll should boost Wins. That's what teams are buying after all. So by penalizing teams for high payrolls, you're neutralizing the benefit of having a good W/L record. But what really matters is not payroll anyway; it's financial capacity. A team with a high payroll but $100m in budget room is in much better shape than a team with a low payroll that is already over budget. And of course if all your contracts come off the books in one year, your current payroll is barely a restriction.

I don't even think ranking values are very useful inputs. If you have teams with these W/L records at the bottom of your league:

50-112
61-101
62-102

then they're separated by 1 point apiece if you rank them, even though the first team is vastly worse than the other two. I think it would be better to use Pythagorean wins as an input, actual market size as another input, eliminate the salary column, and rank minor league systems along a curve (since the difference between the 1st and 10th systems is far greater than the difference between 21st and 30th systems).

Yeh, I was gonna suggest using tiers in the rankings instead of straight 1-30 rankings on each variable

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Honorable_Pawn

Fish! Pony! Hip, Hip Hop, Hip Hop anonymous? Damn you! You gave him the easy ones.

Electricity! Constitution! Philadelphia!

[Bobble]

Originally Posted by injury log

What led you to use a product to rank these teams? Which of these two scenarios seems more challenging:

Team A: 6th best W/L record, 5th best minor league system
Team B: 1st best W/L record, 30th best minor league system

If you use a product, these teams are equally challenging, but since they're only separated by a handful of wins now, and Team A has a far brighter future, Team B should clearly rank as more challenging than A.

You're also using metrics that are correlated. Unless a front office is incompetent, boosting payroll should boost Wins. That's what teams are buying after all. So by penalizing teams for high payrolls, you're neutralizing the benefit of having a good W/L record. But what really matters is not payroll anyway; it's financial capacity. A team with a high payroll but $100m in budget room is in much better shape than a team with a low payroll that is already over budget. And of course if all your contracts come off the books in one year, your current payroll is barely a restriction.

I don't even think ranking values are very useful inputs. If you have teams with these W/L records at the bottom of your league:

50-112
61-101
62-102

then they're separated by 1 point apiece if you rank them, even though the first team is vastly worse than the other two. I think it would be better to use Pythagorean wins as an input, actual market size as another input, eliminate the salary column, and rank minor league systems along a curve (since the difference between the 1st and 10th systems is far greater than the difference between 21st and 30th systems).

I was looking for what teams float to the top of the list, not an in-depth analysis of a refined "difficulty metric." All I'm trying to get at is a list of teams that should be more challenging than most, not a precise assessment of how much more challenging one team would be versus another. The individual rankings are shown so one could evaluate on their own which challenges (weak farm system, high payroll, etc.) they want to tackle.

One could certainly concoct a more complicated evaluation but it didn't seem worth it to me since it's all opinion anyway.

Originally Posted by injury log

What led you to use a product to rank these teams? Which of these two scenarios seems more challenging:

Team A: 6th best W/L record, 5th best minor league system
Team B: 1st best W/L record, 30th best minor league system

But neither of those would likely float to the top of the list.

I thought a better example was #15 and #15 vs. #1 and #30. Seemed to me that already having the #1 team in practically anything should move that team down the list significantly.

The sum of the rankings are in the table as well for those who want it.

[Cowboys3356]

If human players the team with the smallest market size and the lowest payroll is always going to be the most challenging. Regardless of how bad a team's roster is, as long as the human player has money to spend then it will take very little time to outsmart the AI with some lopsided trades, sign a few free agents, and make some good moves in the draft. Then in a short period of time you have a long term winner. However, when you have no money you can not sign good FAs or even resign your own players. You are constantly forced to use young players or old washed up vets. Odds are the human player will still build a dynasty and dominate but it will be more difficult and you might even miss the playoffs once every 10 or 20 seasons!