In the
past , I have come under fire for suggesting the goal of the Padres should not be to win a world series, but instead, to be “consistently competitive.” My full argument can be read over at
Friar Forecast, but these are the two primary points:
1) In baseball there is not a fundamental difference between striving to win a world series and being consistently competitive.
2) I personally do not care too much about winning the World Series. What I actually care about is that the possibility of winning the World Series exists throughout the season.
Football is different than baseball. In football, I am not content with being consistently competitive. Building a team that is good enough to just make the playoffs is not enough. Instead, I demand my team be constructed with an eye towards the Super Bowl.
In explaining why my views differ across the two sports, it is helpful to examine the assumptions that made the baseball argument possible…
1) In baseball there is not a fundamental difference between striving to win a world series and being consistently competitive.
In baseball, once a team qualifies for the playoffs, it is nearly as likely to win the world series as any other team. This is because no playoff team actually has a very good of a chance of winning the world series. For example,
last season, James Holzhauer used a monte carlo simulation to generate the odds of each playoff team winning the world series. The Boston Red Sox were deemed most likely to win the championship. Their odds: 16.8% The Milwaukee Brewers were the least likely team to win it all. Their odds: 9.2%. Not a very big difference. In baseball, qualifying for the playoffs (ie. being competitive in the regular season) is important, but anything above that is unlikely to increase a team’s probability of winning a championship by very much.
The same analysis does not hold in football. There are two primary reasons. First, upsets in any given round are much less likely in football. Second, the structure of the playoffs are different, with the NFL granting two teams per conference first round byes.
In baseball, the probability of a team winning a given game can be approximated using Bill James’
log5 method. This probability can then be refined to adjust for home field advantage, and starting pitching match-ups. To determine the probability of a team winning a post season series (what we are interested in), you need to take the sum of the probabilities of all possible combinations of wins and losses. For example, a team can win a five game series by: WWW, or WWLW, or WLWLW, etc. In the 2008 post-season, the Tampa Bay Rays had a 62% chance of winning their first round draw, but no other team had more than a 54% chance of doing so.*
*Note: I am using James Holzhauer’s estimates. The probabilities are subject to change if the model or model assumptions are tweaked.
In football, a round in the playoffs is a single game. I was not able to find research that presented a relatively simple and accurate model for predicting single game win probabilities for football (similar to log5). The best models are those which include a bunch of significant variables (ie. rushing efficiency, passing efficiency, various defensive metrics….) and then use a logistic regression to calculate the probability of a win for the teams involved. Unlike baseball, where most teams had no more than a 50-55% chance of winning a given round, top football teams generally have a 60-70% chance of winning a given playoff game.
This difference is significant. Assuming a team needs to be victorious in three playoff rounds, a team with a 55% chance of progressing in each round will only win the championship 17% of the time (consistent with the Red Sox odds in 2008). A team with a 70% chance of progressing in each round will win a championship 34% of the time.
The difference in playoff structure between the two sports makes it all the more important to not only be good enough to get into the playoffs, but to truly be one of the best teams in the league. The NFL provides byes to the top two teams in each conference. Baseball does not. Although being one of the two most talented teams in a conference does not guarantee a bye (there are other factors such as strength of schedule and luck), it certainly helps. Teams that do not secure a first round bye must win four games rather than three. This greatly increases the incentive to be one of the top two teams.
If we define a “bad” playoff team as one that has a 35% chance of winning each game it plays, and a “great” playoff team as one that has a 65% chance of winning each game it plays, then the great playoff team, assuming it had a bye will win the Super Bowl 27% of the time.* The bad team, only 1.5% of the time. Recall, a great playoff team in baseball had only a 16.8% chance of winning the world series, while a bad playoff team still had a 9% chance. The difference is striking. In baseball, getting into the playoffs is all that’s important, whereas in football, actually being one of the top few teams is essential.
*Note: yes, I recognize that a static 65% chance of winning each round is unrealistic, that the quality of opposition typically increases in each subsequent round. However, even if you adjust the numbers a bit, the conclusion still holds.
2) I personally do not care too much about winning the World Series. What I actually care about is that the possibility of winning the World Series exists throughout the season.
This same argument can actually be translated to football, but the implications are different. I do not care too much about winning the Super Bowl. What I actually care about is that the possibility of winning the Super Bowl exists throughout the season. Think about it. What is really the difference between winning in the Super Bowl and losing in it? A few minutes of celebration, and a bit of bragging rights for a few days. Then it’s time to get ready for the draft, and training camp, and a whole new season. Fans of the losing team had just as much fun for all but a few days after the big game. The important thing was that the possibility of winning the Super Bowl existed.
However, we have already determined that the elite teams in the league are the only ones that actually have a realistic chance of winning the super bowl. The less talented teams, even if they make the playoffs, would require a miracle to win it all. For them, a realistic possibility of winning the Super Bowl does not exist throughout the season. That is why being “consistently competitive” in the NFL is not enough. Your team actually has to be built better than nearly all others. If it is not, then you better be working to get there.
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