Is the Giants' status dictating A's moves?
by UncleLeo on Dec 11, 2007 4:45 PM PST
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PrintNot literally every year, of course, but as a general concept since 1968 it has seemed to me that the Giants and A's have always fed off each other. When one team gets good and starts drawing attention and attendance, the other team suddenly starts doing things to get better. Maybe to keep their market share, or media attention, or whatever. Could be any number of reasons. I've always wondered if maybe it's a subconscious thing, but is it mere coincidence that both teams are generally pretty good or pretty bad at around the same times?
Now, the Giants have fallen to "suck" status. Their meal-ticket star is gone. All the trendiness and glitter has faded and attendance will surely drop as the "non-fans" find other places to be seen. How does this affect the A's, you say? Well, they no longer have the literal need to work so hard to maintain what status they have. They can relax without fear of being overshadowed into obscurity. They only have to be as good as the Giants, not necessarily better. Is it possible that this is affecting the team's thought process about whether to tear down the team and rebuild or to 'go for it'? After all, if the Giants can't hope to contend again until 2010 or later (as some observers suggest), then the A's may feel they have the luxury of time to do things before the new ballpark opens around the same time.
Just thinkin' out loud. Agree or disagree, that's fine, but I'd be interested in other's thoughts.
I do think that an exception to this may be the Finley era. I have no doubt he wanted to be bigger than Stoneham, but he was also pretty in dependant in having his own motivations, too.
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I theorize ...
that it's actually the other way around. The A's have all the incentive in the world to win right now, to kick they Giants while they're down, so to speak and to try to shift the balance of power in the region.
Your idea would make more sense for the Giants -- they're winning, so it's in their interest to preserve the status quo.
Logically...
...what you say makes absolute sense. That's why I wonder about the possibility of it being subconscious.
Anyone need to write a paper for Stats class?
Figure out the correlation coefficient of records of teams in two (or in the case of 1901-1958 New York, three) team markets. Are they related? And is there a way to control for the actual talent level of the teams? (Perhaps you could measure the correlation coefficient of the CHANGE in records from year to year?)
I would definitely be highly interested to read about this.
You're not getting a paper ...
but I ran a quick regression, the results:
y = -0.0535x + 0.5542
R2 = 0.0041
show that there is an entirely meaningless negative correlation between one team's record and their regionally competition's record.
If you omit the first three year's of the Mets' existence:
y = -0.0019x + 0.5274
R2 = 5E-06
the negative correlation basically disappears but regression becomes ever more meaningless.
(From 1960-2006, Chicago, LA/Ana, New York, Oak/SF)
Well, so much for that theory
Meaningless as in GWRBI meaningless?
In lay terms? Other than "meaningless", of course.
Meaningless ...
R-Squared indicates how much of the story the numbers fed into the regression explains.
The first equation represents 4/10 of a percent of the story. The second equation represents 5/10000 of a percent of the story.
For decades...
...the NFL had two teams in Chicago, the Bears and the Cardinals. When the AAFC started in 1946 the owner of their Chicago team stated publicly that he was going to drive the Cardinals out of town. The Cardinals' owner found a new resolve to put a good team together (they had almost always sucked) and within 2 years they were in the championship game. After the threat folded, they started to suck again.
That's only one anecdote, but interesting nonetheless. How that relates to the Bears/Cardinals relationship, which contradicts my theory, I don't know. Maybe it's the era, as the Cardinals eventually did move not too long afterward.
Even in baseball, on the surface it doesn't seem to be as much of an issue until after World War 2. Maybe it was then that money became an overriding factor. The A's/Phillies, Braves/Red Sox, and Cardinals/Browns all coexisted where one team was usually much better then the other and all seemingly did at least ok financially. The 50s seemed to change all that, though I suspect the seeds were planted in the late 40s.
I personally think
That Billy Beane doesn't care what the Giants are doing. He always seems to what he wants regardless of what other people think or are doing.
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