The Stats Geek

The Stats Geek opens today's column with:

Why can't pro football or basketball have the parity baseball enjoys?

I realize I'm singing off key here, but a couple of recent baseball books back me up. So let's begin with a premise I've mentioned before.

Off key is right. He cites things like this as reason that baseball has the best parity of any sport:

Perfect parity in baseball would mean each of the 30 teams would win the World Series once every 30 years. What has baseball's record been in that time?

Twenty-two different teams went to the World Series between 1975 and 2004, and 18 teams have won it. Not bad, considering that the strike took the '94 Series away and three of the eight teams on the October-shy list haven't even been around three decades.

The Seattle Mariners were born in 1977, the Colorado Rockies in 1993 and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 1998. That means only the following five teams have gone 0 for 30: Houston, the Chicago teams, the Washington/Montreal franchise and Texas.

Even among these outcasts, every team but Tampa Bay has played in a post-season series in the past three decades.

He then compares those numbers to those in football, basketball, and hockey, and concludes that baseball has the best parity. He's forgetting a key stat. 1975 was only the first year of free agency. The players union had only a fraction of the power they have now. George Steinbrenner had only owned the Yankees for two years and had never even been to a World Series. Sure the seeds were planted, but to compare 1975 with 1995 or 2005 is ridiculous, it's apples, oranges, and bananas. The climate in every sport has changed infinitely in the last thirty years. I'm not saying the Pirates World Series in 1979 didn't count, all I'm saying is that we shouldn't say to ourselves "Oh, we aren't due a World Series until 2009 now, so who cares if we win or not." This year, both the Bengals and the Arizona Cardinals have realistic shots at making the playoffs in the NFL. The Clippers made a run at the playoffs this year in the NBA, and could make it next year. The Calgary Flames made it to the last NHL Final. Despite that, the Pirates, Devil Rays, Brewers, Reds, Tigers, Royals, and Rockies all entered Spring Training this year with almost no hope of even making the playoffs. That's not parity.