Over on PrawfsBlawg, Matt Bodie has a thoughtful post on the oddity of Major League Baseball teams and many of their fans being so openly obsessed with nuanced, sometimes esoteric, statistical measurements of players while being tolerant or at least less vocal towards glaring inequities between teams (thanks to Octagon associate general counsel Ryan Rodenberg for the link). Here is an excerpt from Bodie's post:Sports are supposed to be played on an even playing field. For example, every team should have an equal chance of making it to the playoffs. But there is one league that defies this logic. In this league, 20 teams have a 20% chance of winning their division, 4 teams have a 25% chance, and 6 teams have a 16.7% chance. In addition, 14 teams have a 7% chance of winning a wild card entry to the playoffs, while 16 teams have only a 6.25% chance of winning it. What league is this? Major League Baseball.To read the rest of the post, click here.* * *Why would any team or any sport allow for this unfairness? I'm sure there was some discussion of it at the time of realignment, and there are occasional posts about it on the Internet. But in a league newly obsessed with the smallest statistical advantages, you would think that these glaring differences would get more attention.
* * *So is the current breakdown unfair? Statistically, it is undoubtedly unfair. But perhaps the relative silence on this issue means that the reality is somewhat grayer.