I was thinking about how the league stands in terms of Participation Points. We all know some folks are more prolific than others, but how does the league as a whole shape up? Who's an outlier one way or other? Do more people clump together in a certain range? And does that even matter?
I'm going to open this by noting that I am not calling anyone out here, one way or the other. I'm not listing team names in any of this. But I do think it's clear that there's a rather large gap, as we'll see, in terms of how PPs spread across GMs. And that, in turn, definitely has an impact on how things go in the league, especially when you think about total PP earned and how they can be used.
So...how do you find out more about Participation Points?
Well, let's ask our friends mean (average), median (central number), and mode (most frequent number) and see what they have to say:
Here's a look at 2059, our just completed season:
If you want to get really geeky, here's how our quartiles broke down in 2059:Mean 66.25
Median 32.625
Mode 23.5
Lowest PP: 4.5
Highest PP: 305.75
Just for fun, I also ran 2058:Quartile One (the median of our lowest set of PP teams): 19.75
Quartile Two (our overall median): 32.625
Quartile Three (the median of our highest set of PP teams): 91.5
Five teams "broke" the quartiles by being well over 1.5X the range between Q1 and Q3. All had over 200 Participation Points.
The disparity is a bit lower two season ago, but the pattern is the same.Mean: 60.45625
Median: 30.25
Mode: 30.25
Lowest PP: 3.75
Highest PP: 372
Quartile One: 20.5
Quartile Two: 30.25
Quartile Three: 77.25
Only 4 teams broke things, with scores of 171, 190, 230.5, 372
So what does this tell us? Well, it means that that I don't really like using mean as a way to see how things are going. Let's use 2059 only to talk about why, because otherwise this will become a novel instead of a post.
Our average of 66.25 isn't really a good baseline, because it's thrown off by the five 200+ point folks. (Outlier data tells us that the folks who struggled to generate PPs did not impact the overall data as much as those whose points flowed like water.)
I think the median and mode are far more interesting and reflective of how the league is doing, PP-wise. The man in the middle earned 32 PP. That's enough to get a few million bucks in cash to help pay for your stadium, convert a reliever, and/or make a few improvements to a player's skills. The mode, 23.5, nets even less.
Looking at it this way, what I see is that the people on the high side of the 32.625 divide really get a leg up in terms of what they can do to improve their team, either by working on their players or ensuring they have the cash to pay for things like draft picks. It enables them to acquire talented but troubled players and look to "fix" them via skill adjustments.
By no means am I calling this out to say there's something wrong with the PP system. Far from it! I'm providing this to show that a good chunk of the league, basically half of it, have a huge opportunity to make changes to their teams by involving themselves more in the PP system. Meanwhile the other half, let's call them them "Gay 90s" because I'm feeling really silly and a bit tired, put themselves in a position to be a bit more aggressive or take chances because they have PP to work with every off-season.
In other words: Writing another 5-10 team news each season could make a big difference. Those 10-20 extra points are out there, and it's no coincidence to me that some of the GMs who are the most successful are also those in the 200 club. I hope this review will help you when you're thinking about whether or not to take advantage of the PP system.
