What ex-Ballplayer Was Born at Sea?

So, I was playing around with some basic queries in the Lahman Database for the SABR101x course.  I decided to do a search on the birthCountry column.  Here's something that caught my eye:

Who is that?  Well:

Ed Porray pitched 10 innings for the Buffalo Buffeds in 1914.  The Buffeds were part of the Federal League.  He finished the season, and his big league career, with a 4.35 ERA and a 6.99 FIP.  And, he's a now the answer to a trivia question!

A WBC League (a whimsy)

Several years ago, I put together a custom OOTP baseball league file that was loosely based on the World Baseball Classic.  As I remember, it was a 28-team system (WBC teams, plus a bunch of others I added for fun), two leagues, 3 divisions each, and each team represented a different country.  It was awesome--custom team names, unis, logos, etc.  I think the file has probably vanished into the ether by now...

Anyway, with the news that the 3rd WBC has been expanded to 28 teams, I thought it would be fun to run through the exercise again.

The list of countries can be found in this post...it's a difficult task to make it work.  The main reason is that the teams divide pretty obviously into three major geographic groups: Western Hemisphere (11), Eastern Asia/Australia (8), and Europe/West Asia/Africa (9).  That invites the creation of three separate leagues, with occasional interleague play to keep things interesting outside of the playoffs.

Unfortunately, odd-numbered leagues don't work well scheduling-wise, so I opted to move South Africa from the Europe group over to the Western group.  This is justifiable: South Africa is roughly the same distance from Israel (closest in "Europe" group) as it is to Brazil (closest in Western group).  Unfortunately, the most distant flight will be 1000 miles greater for South Africa under this system.  Sorry, South Africa!  If they opt to withdraw from the league, they would probably either invite a new Western country or just add a second USA team.

So, that gives us three leagues with two to three divisions of 4 teams each.  Here's the layout:

Eastern League	Imperial League	Colonial League
Pacific Division Australia New Zealand Philippines Chinese Taipei	Eastern Division Czech Republic Germany Israel Netherlands	Caribbean Division Cuba Dominican Republic Panama Puerto Rico
Asian Division China Japan Korea Thailand	Western Division France Great Britain Italy Spain	Northern Division Canada Mexico Nicaragua USA
		Southern Division Brazil Colombia Venezuela South Africa

Here are the divisions visually:

Team Composition and Finances

• To keep the nationalistic flavor of the league intact, teams would be required to have at least 5 players from the home country on the 25-man team roster.  The other 20 could be from anywhere (still want very high quality of play).
• Eligibility for home country would follow rules similar to that used in the WBC (i.e. very permissive, but there has to be some legitimate claim).
• Allowances for temporary drops below this number would be permitted in cases of injury.
• Substantial revenue sharing would exist to subsidize the budgets of poorer teams.
• TV contracts would be run entirely by the governing body of the league, and profits would be distributed equitably across teams.
• The league would subsidize 10% of a player's salary when he signs with a home-country team.  If the TV contracts don't cover this, teams would need to pay into a revenue sharing system.

In-Season Play

• Teams would compete within their own league, with an unbalanced schedule favoring division rivals.  
• Because of the difficulty of travel, teams would face off in five-game series (Wed through Sun) throughout the season.  There would be two days off permitted between each series to allow for travel/acclimation.
• The basic schedule guidelines would be:
• 60 games within division (two rounds of 5 games home and 5 games away with each of the three teams within the division)
• 60 games outside of division (six rounds of 5 games home and 5 games away, spread across 4-8 teams)
• 20 games outside of league (two rounds of 5 games home and 5 games away, spread across three teams)
• This gives us 140 games across 28 weeks.  That spans roughly 6.5 months, and so would be a tad longer than MLB's season (although with 22 fewer games because of the off-days).
• The season would run from ~July through mid-January.  Teams in temperate countries, or countries with substantial wet/dry seasons, would need to play the majority of their home games when the whether is appropriate unless they build climate-controlled, covered stadiums (retractable roofs would be mandatory, of course).

Playoff Structure

• Each division winner would be guaranteed a playoff slot.  That gives us 7 playoff teams for a traditional three-stage playoffs.  
• The eighth team would be chosen from four wild card teams (based on best overall records of non-division winners), who would compete in a College World Series-style, two-losses-and-you're-out tournament in a single location (would rotate around the three leagues each year).  
• The remaining playoffs would be typical best-of-7 series, again with two days off in between each game for travel.

Some notes & implications

• Pitching rotations would be interesting.  I suspect that many teams would attempt to throw their ace starter in the first game and then on short rest in the 5th game during important series.  This could be done every third series to give the starter (alternately) three days rest, four days rest, and seven days rest.
• Because the season is shorter, it would take a bit less skill to win a division than in MLB.  That said, the talent disparities may be greater among teams than in MLB because of the 5 home country player requirement.  I would expect better teams to win more often than not.
• Some divisions will feature lower levels of competition than others.  The Northern, Carribean, and Asian Divisions should be very competitive.  The Imperial League divisions will probably be less so.

Regarding Mudgate: I will read from a prepared statement

I did it. It's all my fault. Yes, the attendant rubbed the balls correctly and thoroughly. But I cleaned them. With soap. And a Snuggie.

I deeply regret my actions and apologise to my family, friends, and the baseball community. I will accept any consequences that MLB/Dave Duncan/Tony La Russa deem appropriate.

This concludes my statement. On the advice of my lawyer, I will not be taking questions.

Thank you.
Justin

Can a Ballclub's Record Justify It's Beer Prices?

I did a little article for the Wall Street Journal, appearing today, about beer costs. It's an extension of the fan value post I did at BtB a few weeks back. Fun!

This led us to wonder: Does quality have anything to do with beer prices?

Surprisingly, it does. A team with a .600 winning percentage charges, on average, about $1.30 more for a 16-ounce beer than does a team with a .400 percentage.

A trend

FWIW.

I moved to Phoenix to attend grad school in 2001, and that fall the Diamondbacks won their first world series title when Luis Gonzalez blooped a single to center off of Mariano Rivera to score Jay Bell.

I moved to Altoona for work in 2008, and that winter the Steelers won the Superbowl when Roethlisberger somehow found Santonio Holmes four times in the last 2 1/2 minutes to erase the Cardinals' new 23-20 lead.

There are 30 MLB teams, which means that, all things being equal, the chances of a given team winning in a particular year is ~3%. There are 32 NFL teams, which means that the chances of a given team winning in a particular year is also ~3%.

Therefore, the probabiliy that the Diamondbacks would win during my first year in Phoenix and that the Steelers would win my first year in PA is 3% * 3% = 0.1%.

Just sayin'.

If you're interested in having your own home town team win it all, I'm currently accepting relocation proposals. :)

Fun with realignment ideas

File this one under "mostly just for fun..."

I enjoy thinking about league realignment. While I think the 3-division format has been very successful, I also don't feel like the various divisions (and leagues, really) have a lot of individual identity anymore. It also demonstrated that change can often be a good thing. And so, more and more, I've been thinking that constantly changing around leagues and divisions would bring a lot of excitement to the game. It would also help get rid of some of the inequities we're seeing between leagues these days--or, depending on how you do it, it might formalize those inequities in an interesting way.

Tango checked in with some new ideas about realignment recently. His idea is to take the top 6 teams over the past 4-year period and let them pick their division rivals (6 divisions, maybe across two leagues, but maybe not). Or, take the top-6 teams and assign other teams in groups of 6 based on geographic proximity. Then, after 4 years, toss out the old divisions and draw them up again based on recent performance. Sounds exciting and fun to me!

Here's a quick scenario along those lines, based on a combination of the past three-years' win totals (2005-2007; 4-years provided too much of a legacy effect for some teams). I'm going to combine Tango's idea with one from David Pinto and use five six-team divisions within one league. Each division will play two of the other divisions during a season, chosen on a rotating basis. This gets rid of the 16/14-team league imbalance we currently have, and has some other scheduling advantages as well as some exciting playoff scenarios. DH would be home manager preference, announced prior to the start of every series. And like Tango's proposal, I'm grouping teams in sets of five based on their win totals and proximity. I am keeping teams from the same metropolitan area away from one another so they don't interfere with each others' markets.

A	B	C	D	E
NYY	ANA	BOS	NYM	CLE
STL	SDP	PHI	CHW	MIN
ATL	OAK	TOR	DET	HOU
TEX	SEA	MIL	ARI	LAD
CIN	COL	WSN	FLA	CHC
TBD	KCR	PIT	BAL	SFG

And a map of the above divisions:
















You can get division ranges to be smaller if you allow teams in the same metro area to be in the same division, but this isn't too bad. Maybe not as tight as the divisions currently are, but certainly no worse than they were when the Reds were in the NL West.

And while this system does try to keep teams lumped by proximity, it also strives to keep the divisions balanced from a competitive standpoint. I think it does this really well. There are some divisions with teams on the rise and on the decline, but they often seem to balance each other out. The weakest division is probably "B," with San Diego, Oakland, Seattle, and the Rockies all apparently declining a bit this season. But even in that case, all of those teams have been playoff teams in recent years. Pretty darn solid. And, of course, it would get revised every few years to remain current.

Anyway, fun stuff. Again, I don't expect that something like this will actually happen, but I think it would probably be a good thing if it did.