Biggest Loser?

[RonCo]

While we're waiting for the sim...

If Louisville and Brooklyn both win at least one game this sim, every team in the league will have won at least 60 games this season. Yeah, I know...not the greatest feat ever. However, if that happens it would be the only 4th time in BBA history that this has happened. Without looking it up, when was the last time?

[RonCo]

Here's the answer:

2031

It also happened in 2017 and 2026

[Ted]

It's hard to lose 100+ games when half the teams in the league are hot garbage.

[bschr682]

It's hard to lose 100+ games when half the teams in the league are hot garbage.

#shotsfired

[RonCo]

It's hard to lose 100+ games when half the teams in the league are hot garbage.

I've been doing a mega-ton of work on this kind of thing, and there's truth to this, though our situation isn't too odd across historical times...and, of course, the language is too hyperbolic, of course. The difference in quality of teams this year don't appear to be as dramatic as you're saying--because the impact doesn't show up in most ways I've looked at it.

Ultimately, for example, looking at something like run differential for this year versus others, the top 10-12 teams in the league (are performing about where top 10-12 teams always have (so it's unlikely we've seen some kind of league-wide shift), the middle 8-10 teams are posting run differentials below what those teams have done, and the bottom 10 or so teams are performing better.

This seems to be a 1-season thing at present (meaning it's not a measure that seems to be systemically shifting in any direction over time).

[Ted]

It's hard to lose 100+ games when half the teams in the league are hot garbage.

I've been doing a mega-ton of work on this kind of thing, and there's truth to this, though our situation isn't too odd across historical times...and, of course, the language is too hyperbolic, of course. The difference in quality of teams this year don't appear to be as dramatic as you're saying--because the impact doesn't show up in most ways I've looked at it.

Ultimately, for example, looking at something like run differential for this year versus others, the top 10-12 teams in the league (are performing about where top 10-12 teams always have (so it's unlikely we've seen some kind of league-wide shift), the middle 8-10 teams are posting run differentials below what those teams have done, and the bottom 10 or so teams are performing better.

This seems to be a 1-season thing at present (meaning it's not a measure that seems to be systemically shifting in any direction over time).

Human perception can be very misleading. That being said, my perception is that we are becoming less and less competitive. Sometimes the raw numbers can hide the story. You could put up a bunch of numbers that show that this year isn't THAT unsual.

That's bupkis. This year is dull. In the 15+ season I've been here, there's never been a season like this. Right now, the Brewster, from a wins and losses perspective, feels like one of those old Yahoo rotisserie leagues where 2/3rds of the people ignore their teams after the second month of the season because they have no chance.

It just seems like it's been the same ten teams every year for about half a decade, and this year, while possibly an aberration, has been utterly dull and predictable. Outside of Twin Cities and Calgary being less competitive than expected, I'm not sure there's a single surprise team. Valencia is better than I thought, but I think we all knew they had the offense to do this if they got lucky with pitching (which they have). The Johnson league is pretty much exactly what you'd expect. Literally ZERO surprises and only one competitive division. Hell, only one division even has any wild card teams. This could be a one year thing, sure, but I'll bet it's not.

We'll cycle back the other way eventually assuming we ever get any stability, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is a pretty boring league for the next 2-3 years. The top teams are too good, too young, and have too many good prospects to go away anytime soon. You can make an argument that this is all part of a typical baseball cycle. I'd argue that's not the case. I feel the series of changes to the league operation over the last decade or so has made it too easy to stay on top, and too hard to build from the bottom. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll see.

[RonCo]

I agree that this year is less exciting than others, though there are interesting things going on.

I'm also sympathetic to your concerns--which is actually a lot of the reason I've been spending time trying to characterize how the league as a whole is performing. I'll hold my ammo until I can bake this season's final numbers into the mix, though.

[Ted]

I agree that this year is less exciting than others, though there are interesting things going on.

I'm also sympathetic to your concerns--which is actually a lot of the reason I've been spending time trying to characterize how the league as a whole is performing. I'll hold my ammo until I can bake this season's final numbers into the mix, though.

I do appreciate all the work and concern. It's entirely possible this is all just ebb and flow. It's also possible that you GB folks are addressing things the right way. I'd work differently, but frankly, as complex as a baseball environment as OOTP creates, it's not always easy to figure out what any given change will cause, or what the causes of a current trend are.

[felipe]

I'm gonna go ahead and disagree

When I first joined the BBA, it WAS impossible to get better if you were a 'have not' franchise...of course that was back in 1995

There have been many changes made over the years that have greatly helped competitive balance...

It won't be long before Wichita is a top team and stays there...

It is very possible to win now; you can be slow and systematic and take four or five years, or you can go the trade fleece route for quicker returns

To say the league is uncompetitive is unfair

I think that when you get so many capable GMs, they realize when to go for it, and when to be patient

So maybe it seems boring, but I think it's just the GMs are that much better as a group

[Ted]

I'm gonna go ahead and disagree

When I first joined the BBA, it WAS impossible to get better if you were a 'have not' franchise...of course that was back in 1995

There have been many changes made over the years that have greatly helped competitive balance...

It won't be long before Wichita is a top team and stays there...

It is very possible to win now; you can be slow and systematic and take four or five years, or you can go the trade fleece route for quicker returns

To say the league is uncompetitive is unfair

I think that when you get so many capable GMs, they realize when to go for it, and when to be patient

So maybe it seems boring, but I think it's just the GMs are that much better as a group

You definitely have the long term experience on me. And I agree the GMs are better than when I got here. But writing the previews every season, I take a long look at every team. (I look at both conferences, because I like to see the differences between what Aaron writes and what I write). I really do go through the entire farm for each one when I do it. I'm seeing little to no progress out of upwards of ten franchises that are haven't competed at all for five years. That's a third of the league or so that wasn't competitive five seasons ago, and still doesn't appear to have picked up much (if any) ground. Another five to six franchises have been kind of sort of competitive, but seem to be losing ground. If those guys are losing ground, some of the bottom dwellers should be coming up. They aren't. The top teams are improving instead.

I even did an analysis piece that showed that the league has split into three groups of "have's", "have nots", and "sometimes haves" that are pretty much the same teams over the past seven seasons. There is a lot of objective evidence that we are less competitive, if you look past win totals and start to look at win differential between teams and previous versions of themselves, and win differential within divisions.

This could all be part of a natural cycle. Or it could just be randomness. I can't honestly say I know. But objectively, we've been less competitive.

There are a multitude of reasons I don't think we are set up for this to improve any time soon. One really quick and easy way to look at it is to look at the top farm system list. Yes, it's bloated with 17 and 18 year olds that won't develop, but those guys won't develop at the same rate across all teams if we did this thousands of times. And yes, that list is too short to be a good judge of farm systems. However, the BAD teams should be even CLOSER to the top of a list with those flaws. And they aren't. The top ten systems only include 3 last place teams (and I mean last place for several seasons, not just one year). That would be Wichita, Charm City, and Des Moines. That top ten includes two teams that are among the best in the league, and who haven't been bad for a while. Yellow Springs and Edmonton. Before you mention Edmonton is only recently good, I'd point out that Edmonton should have competed five years ago, and only didn't through incompetent GMs or outright tanking. The top ten also includes Calgary at the top, who hasn't been bad in over a decade. You can throw out this year and call Valencia a bad team in recent years, and make the top ten only slightly weighted towards truly bad teams.

That's awful. Yes, the minor league system rankings aren't everything. But the fact that they look they way they do should tell you something. The way talent is coming into this league is fundamentally deranged and has been. Vancouver and Boise are outside the top ten. How? What has either of those teams done in the last five years besides ostensibly suck and accumulate good picks? Nashville and Hawaii haven't made the playoffs in as long as I can remember, and both are in the bottom third.

I mean, maybe ONE of those guys (and I mean hypothetically, I'm not picking a person) is a horrible GM who keeps trading his prospects for a bag of beans. But not all of them.

[ae37jr]

I think Stu is right about teams picking their spots. The jla is a prime example. I think we are all good GM's. But Rockville is so good that none of use want to waste a push. I tried last year cause I knew the path to the playoffs was easy.. but in the end we still ran into rockville

[Ted]

I'm gonna go ahead and disagree

When I first joined the BBA, it WAS impossible to get better if you were a 'have not' franchise...of course that was back in 1995

There have been many changes made over the years that have greatly helped competitive balance...

It won't be long before Wichita is a top team and stays there...

It is very possible to win now; you can be slow and systematic and take four or five years, or you can go the trade fleece route for quicker returns

To say the league is uncompetitive is unfair

I think that when you get so many capable GMs, they realize when to go for it, and when to be patient

So maybe it seems boring, but I think it's just the GMs are that much better as a group

I'm not trying to pile on, but rather point out that I think the losing teams haven't had enough talent funneled towards them. I just spent about thirty minutes re-evaluating Wichita to make sure my memory of your team is correct. If you instantly developed every player in your top 30 prospects and put them on your roster, I don't think you are a playoff team. I'm not even sure you are a .500 team. You certainly wouldn't be close to Rockville or Jacksonville. And I think Vegas, Mexico City, and Phoenix would beat you cleanly with their current rosters.

And that just doesn't seem right. Four years of top drafts should have enough in your system that if every player developed perfectly, you should compete (assuming your current team isn't replacement level). And you don't have it. You have exactly one batter and one pitcher I'd be honestly afraid of in your minors. You have one young position player that is a blue chip. There are a bunch of nice filler guys in there, but not enough oomph to get over the hump. And since I know you are a good GM, I have to think there is something wrong with the system.

There is more to winning than simply drafting and waiting for your kids to develop, but that's a good start, and it seems to have gotten Wichita nowhere. I really do think a bunch of you guys who think your rebuild is coming along nicely have seriously underestimated how much more talented the league is as a whole since the last time you competed.

And I'm not trying to pick you you, Stu. I see the same thing with Boise (more bats but no arms). You could put every kid in their system on their current roster and they might be .500. Ditto Vancouver. Ditto Hawaii.

And guess what, all those kids WON'T develop. And some of your current players will age or won't be around. Something isn't working right in the Brewster right now and hasn't been for awhile.

[Ted]

I think Stu is right about teams picking their spots. The jla is a prime example. I think we are all good GM's. But Rockville is so good that none of use want to waste a push. I tried last year cause I knew the path to the playoffs was easy.. but in the end we still ran into rockville

Could be. I'll admit I think it's a bad idea to try to pick a spot. You lose momentum doing that, or at least don't build momentum. And having a winning franchise is all about winning momentum. It's a LOT easier and more common to go 60-70-80-90 wins than it is to go 60-60-60-90 wins. I think so anyway.

[Ted]

Sorry for the string of posts, but here's something I've been wondering about. OOTP has been getting more and more "realistic". Part of that realism is more injuries and less reliable drafts.

There is a school of thought that says that we are all wrong about well managed teams versus poorly managed teams, that success in sports is in the overwhelming majority of cases more about luck in player acquisition than management, especially in capped leagues (where one team can't just pummel the others to death with resources). In that light, all of our accolades for certain organizations are simply bias benefiting from hindsight.

So if OOTP gets more and more "real", do we just get more and more random where success just happens to some teams and not to others? What that would mean is that the teams that were on top before OOTP "got real" have a huge advantage. Over time as those teams lose their older players, that advantage will fade. And then we'll be like the NFL, where the team that gets lucky enough to draft a franchise quarterback (or in our case have a lower rate of injury to prospects and get a couple bumpers or a scout find) dominates for a decade?

Anyway, maybe I'm wrong about all of this and we'll be fine. Whatever.

[RonCo]

I'm gonna go ahead and disagree

When I first joined the BBA, it WAS impossible to get better if you were a 'have not' franchise...of course that was back in 1995

There have been many changes made over the years that have greatly helped competitive balance...

It won't be long before Wichita is a top team and stays there...

It is very possible to win now; you can be slow and systematic and take four or five years, or you can go the trade fleece route for quicker returns

To say the league is uncompetitive is unfair

I think that when you get so many capable GMs, they realize when to go for it, and when to be patient

So maybe it seems boring, but I think it's just the GMs are that much better as a group

- There is a lot of data that concurs with the idea that the base competitive environment is better today than it was in the 1995-2015 range.

- There's some decent data that suggests this is likely due to both structural changes the board put in place some time ago, and also due to GMs likely getting better.

- There is also data that shows expansion warps the environment, but that the warpage "repairs itself" in 2-4 seasons.

-----------------

That said, Ted is 100% right about his sense that this year's environment is wacky relative to others. At present all I can say is that this year's oddity is not borne out as some kind of systemic shift over time and that it is not tied to expansion--at least not directly--since it's a stair-step that's four seasons after expansion, and in other cases we've seen very predictable warps.

In my own inimitable style, I'll eventually release a really boring report that no one will read, but has been much fun to look at.

[RonCo]

I'll admit I think it's a bad idea to try to pick a spot. You lose momentum doing that, or at least don't build momentum. And having a winning franchise is all about winning momentum. It's a LOT easier and more common to go 60-70-80-90 wins than it is to go 60-60-60-90 wins. I think so anyway.

I agree with some of your concerns, Ted. But I also think you have a tendency to get upset at GMs who don't run their teams with your view of hording talent.

Among the many most interesting things I've found in my work these past couple weeks is that we've seeing a huge increase in organizations who win 90+ games for two seasons, then drop back.

[GoldenOne]

We'll cycle back the other way eventually assuming we ever get any stability, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is a pretty boring league for the next 2-3 years. The top teams are too good, too young, and have too many good prospects to go away anytime soon. You can make an argument that this is all part of a typical baseball cycle. I'd argue that's not the case. I feel the series of changes to the league operation over the last decade or so has made it too easy to stay on top, and too hard to build from the bottom. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll see.

Let's have some fun with Ted.....

Expansion should help with the "top teams are too good, too young, and have too many good prospects to go away anytime soon."

[Ted]

We'll cycle back the other way eventually assuming we ever get any stability, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is a pretty boring league for the next 2-3 years. The top teams are too good, too young, and have too many good prospects to go away anytime soon. You can make an argument that this is all part of a typical baseball cycle. I'd argue that's not the case. I feel the series of changes to the league operation over the last decade or so has made it too easy to stay on top, and too hard to build from the bottom. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll see.

Let's have some fun with Ted.....

Expansion should help with the "top teams are too good, too young, and have too many good prospects to go away anytime soon."

You know I'll take the bait. Anyway, expansion will not affect this at all, as the overwhelming majority of these kids won't be eligible. The handful that are will certainly be protected.

[GoldenOne]

You know I'll take the bait. Anyway, expansion will not affect this at all, as the overwhelming majority of these kids won't be eligible. The handful that are will certainly be protected.

Well, that wasnt as fun as I thought it would be.

Personally, I think a lot also boils down to finances. I tried to spend a little more, while already in a tight financial situation, but my bullpen just was a mess. That overspending is going to cost me next season. And while the salary cap is at $110M, we just all cant afford to get there. Sure, there are a couple of teams with budgets less than the $110M that are putting it together but will they be able to manage those younger guys as they hit their arbitration years with that budget? Smaller budgets mean you have to grow it mostly at the same time, getting those 1-2 players that develop every year or two isnt going to be enough. If you can play it right and get to 4-5 players developing within the same 3-year time span or so, you've got a better shot. But, when those 3 years are up, all those nice players will be hitting their arbitration years around the same time and get too expensive way too quickly.

I'm sure there are a few of you out there that will be more than happy to shoot down my theories with your stats, but remember, sometimes perception is everything. Right Andre?

[Ted]

I'll admit I think it's a bad idea to try to pick a spot. You lose momentum doing that, or at least don't build momentum. And having a winning franchise is all about winning momentum. It's a LOT easier and more common to go 60-70-80-90 wins than it is to go 60-60-60-90 wins. I think so anyway.

I agree with some of your concerns, Ted. But I also think you have a tendency to get upset at GMs who don't run their teams with your view of hording talent.

Among the many most interesting things I've found in my work these past couple weeks is that we've seeing a huge increase in organizations who win 90+ games for two seasons, then drop back.

Hmm. If I come across as upset at GMs who don't operate the way I do, I need to re-evaluate my rhetoric. I don't care how individual GMs operate. At all. All I care about is having a league structure that allows for fair competition among teams.

Again regarding your claim about my tendency to become upset, I'd state that my comments about people making bad decisions have nothing to do with whether or not I am "bothered or upset" by those decisions. Rather, I propose the idea that your interpretation of me as "upset" has to do with the fact that we live in a society where people are conditioned to view any sort of criticism as an attack on their character. In other words, people can't deal with being told they are wrong. So no one ever simply comes out and says that anymore. When I do this, you assume that I MUST be upset to be so critical, when I am in fact, not. I'm trying to help. I refuse to operate such that I cannot tell someone who I think is making a bad choice that they are making a bad choice simply because no one is used to being criticized anymore. That's a stupid way to live, both on the giving and receiving end of the criticism. I don't care that our society has accepted it as normal or acts like anyone being critical of anyone else's choices is a jerk. Again, that's a stupid-ass way to live. Some choices are bad. Some opinions are not of equal value. Some beliefs are wrong. Many of mine have been, and I am glad to have found out they were. I am better for it. Heck, I could he wrong about this belief about how I should act, but I'm probably not. You'd have to prove it to me.

If anything, the only thing I'm upset about is that we live in the society I just described. When I lose it an have the occasional ragey post, it's often because I decide (probably incorrectly most of the time) that people are refusing to accept any criticism for the reasons above. Also. because in modern America, everyone is right, because everyone's opinion is valid no matter how nonfactual, because they have a right to their own beliefs. IT doesn't matter if the person who disagrees with you has vastly more experience or skill about the subject at hand. My blood pressure went up just writing those sentences. If you don't think that's how we work, go read five minutes worth of any public debate on anything.

Regarding OOTP? Run your team however the hell you like. I'm a bit of a know it all, so I may have some unsolicited advice at times. It may even be bad advice. But I don't think it is, so I'm going to try to help.