As a fan of the Reds and the Rays, I’ve got a built-in inferiority complex. An essential element of my baseball fandom consists of complaining that the baseball gods hate small markets. Of course, my Yankee and Red Sox-loving friends usually ignore my carefully-constructed arguments on how to improve baseball parity while enjoying their championships and drinking the tears of us losers.

Complaints about disparity in the sport are nothing new, of course (“Did you know those Cincinnati Red Stockings pay all their players? How unfair!”). In the past two decades, however, many fans of Major League Baseball have perceived the system as fundamentally broken, as they witness big-market teams like the Red Sox, Yankees, Dodgers, and Cubs dominate and small-market teams like the Royals, Pirates, Twins, and Reds often struggle to stay relevant. But, in the spirit of new-school analytic fans questioning all our assumptions about the game, I need to ask: Is there actually disparity in the league, or is that just a myth?

Before we examine the status of baseball’s parity (and even define what “parity” entails), let’s be clear about one thing: it’s obvious that having more money is an advantage. This is as true for the Yankees as it is for Bill Gates. A rich team can outbid other teams for top free agents, weather injuries better by buying new players, and even afford better training facilities and better coaches. But saying that certain teams have an advantage over others doesn’t necessarily mean those advantages destroy parity.

What is Parity?

So let’s look at baseball’s parity (or the lack of it) in the past twenty years. But first, we first need to define what we mean by “parity.” Does it mean different World Series winners each year? Or different division winners? How do you determine what’s parity and what’s disparity?

I would argue that parity occurs when every team in the league is capable of enjoying sustained success. The key phrase in that definition is “sustained success,” so let’s break down that phrase:

Success: I define success as making the playoffs (which includes a Wild Card berth). Why not World Series appearances or championships? Because the playoffs, as Billy Beane will tell you, are a crapshoot. You can build a great team, win your division, and be eliminated in three games in October due to back luck and untimely slumps. You can’t blame disparate payrolls for that. So if you make the playoffs, your season was a success.

Sustained: To be sustained, you have to reach the playoffs more than once in a certain timeframe, such as a decade. Sometimes a poorly-constructed team built on the cheap can strike lightning in a bottle and make a run at the Wild Card (I’m looking at you, Marlins). But that doesn’t mean that parity has been achieved; it just means a team got lucky.

So a team has sustained success if it reaches the playoff multiple times over a relatively small period of time. I’ll say a decade, as even well-off teams can have down periods lasting 3-5 years.

MLB Postseason Diversity

Let’s now look at the actual data. I examined playoff berths (both division winners and wild cards) in the ten years from 2009-2018 and compared it to the ten years 1999-2008. Here’s what I found:

1999-2008 2009-2018 Teams with Postseason Berths 24 26 Teams with Multiple Postseason Berths 18 26 Teams to Win Their Division 20 24 Percent of Playoff Berths from Top 4 Teams 35% 27% Teams with World Series Appearances 15 13 Teams with World Series Victories 8 7

So, what do we see here? Critics might immediately note that the diversity of teams reaching and winning the World Series has declined this decade. Only 13 teams made the World Series in the past decade, down from 15 the previous decade. But remember that only 20 different World Series participants are possible, so 13 is still a good 65% of the possible maximum. And seven different World Series Champions out of a possible ten different winners is a healthy diversity. Further, as I’ve already mentioned, limiting success to a World Series appearance or championship ignores the randomness of baseball playoffs.

More important is the breadth of teams with playoff berths. 26 teams (out of 30) have made the playoffs in the past decade, refuting the claim sometimes heard that the same teams are always in the playoffs. But it’s not just that 26 teams have made the playoffs—all 26 have made it more than once in the past 10 years. That’s 86% of the teams!

Some might argue that the Wild Card, especially the current system of two Wild Card teams per league, juices the numbers. Perhaps, but I’d argue that a team that gets the Wild Card still had a successful season, and there have still been 24 teams (80%) that have won their division in the past decade. That’s up from 20 over the previous decade.

We can also see that it’s getting harder to have sustained dominance (as opposed to sustained success). From 1999-2008, the top four teams accounted for 35% of all playoff appearances. But from 2009-2018, the top four teams were only 27% of all appearances (note: the Yankees and Cardinals, unsurprisingly, were in the top four both decades). The gap between the top teams and the bottom-dwellers is shrinking.

Busting the Myth

It seems clear to me that Major League Baseball currently enjoys incredible parity, despite what my small-market instincts want to believe. Why this parity exists can be debated—revenue sharing and the luxury tax has leveled the field, smaller-market teams have gotten smarter, etc.—but the fact remains that almost every team has enjoyed at least a moderate level of sustained success in recent years. If your small-market team is bad, don’t blame the system, blame the front office.

Photo credit: V.J. Lovero, Sports Illustrated

Eric Sammons is a lifelong baseball fan, a youth baseball coach, and a father of seven children (just two more for a full team!). His favorite team is the Cincinnati Reds, and his all-time favorite players are Eric Davis and Ken Griffey, Jr.

Tags: Boston Red Sox