I initially created Baseball Graphs to develop new and better ways of presenting baseball statistics. The 2003 season was my first full-season attempt, and it turned out pretty well. I now spend a lot of my time creating and formatting the baseball stats at The Hardball Times.

Along the way, I've also picked up the writing bug. I spend most of my energy writing for THT, but sometimes I like to write about more geeky stuff, baseball research and things like that. That's what this blog is for.

I'm very interested in graphics and other information display, so I'll probably post links to creative stuff like that. I also plan to write historical articles that complement the historical graphs. And I have inexplicably developed an interest in baseball win-related stats, such as Bill James's Win Shares and something called Win Probability Added. So you can expect a few posts about that stuff too.

If you're interested, I've created a complex spreadsheet full of WPA logic, which you can download at ftp.baseballgraphs.com/wpa. If you'd like to read more about Win Shares, try these links:

Win Shares Intro
What They're Good For
Mathematical Details
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November, 2006
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December, 2004
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If there is any aspect of WPA, Win Shares or baseball graphics you're interested in, drop me an e-mail and I'll look into it. Syndicate Baseball Graphs:

The Win Business

December 22, 2003

Baseball is all about entertainment, plain and simple.  Even for people like you and me, it’s entertainment.  Okay, it’s serious entertainment for you and me.  But entertainment nevertheless.  Like the movies.

Going to a game is like going to a movie, only it’s more expensive and the parking is harder.  See your team lose in a lousy ballpark, that’s like watching Ishtar.  See them win, or play in a good ballpark, that’s maybe Anger Management.  Put a win and good ballpark together, you’ve got The Princess Bride.  Win the World Series, Lord of the Rings.

Just as better movies make more money, better baseball experiences make more money.  And it’s winning that makes a baseball experience great.  See where I’m going with this?

In the May, 2003 Journal of Sports Economics (no, I don’t subscribe), a couple of Loyola College professors—Stephen Walters and John Burger—analyzed the revenue dynamics of a win.  They particularly wanted to calculate the incremental revenue generated by a win, based on three key variables: where the team played, the team’s ballpark, and whether the team was in contention or not (defined as 84 wins and above).

Based on data from 1995 to 1999, here’s what they found:
- Wins are worth more in the largest metropolitan areas.  In fact, a win in New York is about six times more valuable than a win in Milwaukee.
- A new stadium adds a lot of revenue the first year it opens, which subsequently declines by a couple of million each year thereafter.
- Teams that are in contention (84 wins) make about about six times more per win than teams that are not in contention (regardless of the size of the metropolitan area).

So the worst thing to be is a non-contending team in Milwaukee.

Oops.

Now, this analysis was based on data from the 1990’s, before the new Collective Bargaining Agreement.  Hopefully, the disparity between small-market teams and large-market teams has been diminished.  So let’s just stick to the big picture.

Across all teams, a win is worth about $1.5 million to a contending team, but $250 thousand to a non-contending team (this is in 1999 dollars, by the way, though inflation has been unusually low in the period since).

So what’s a player worth?

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