The question: How likely is it that some team will be able to match what the L.A. Dodgers did in the ‘70s when they ran out the same four infielders (Steve Garvey at first, Davey Lopes at second, Ron Cey at third, and Bill Russell at short) for eight consecutive seasons? (Eight-and-a-half, to be precise; if they ever make a film about those teams, I’ve got just the title.) Explanations and clarifications are here, in part one, as is the data for both the A.L. and N.L.
What I’m getting from those numbers is exactly what I expected to get: to say “extremely unlikely” doesn’t even begin to capture the magnitude of just how unlikely it is. Looking at data for all 30 teams from the last four seasons prior to this one, 120 data points in all, a few basic findings:
1) no team kept the same infield intact for all four seasons;
2) no team kept the same infield intact for three seasons in a row;
3) four teams--the 2023 Guardians, both the Braves and the Angels in 2024, and the 2025 Phillies--managed to keep their infields intact for two consecutive seasons.
So, with four teams pulling it off in 120 opportunities, the odds for any one team maintaining their infield in any one season-to-season changeover are 30 to 1. That’s for keeping an infield together across two seasons; to do it three seasons in a row, it’d be 1/30-squared, or 1/900; 1/30-cubed for four seasons (1/27,000); all the way up to eight seasons (we’ll forget about the half-season the Dodger four were together in 1973), where the odds would be 1/30 raised to the seventh power, or 1/21,870,000,000--20 billion to one, basically.
There are no doubt all sorts of mitigating factors I’m missing that would reduce those odds. The Dodgers had the good fortune of having four good young players arrive at the same time; maybe those are the odds that need to be calculated, the odds of that happening, and you proceed from there, instead of looking at a bunch of teams that are throwing random players together who are all at different points in their careers. If I cut some slack and changed the 2024 Padres (the team where the same four infielders returned, but with two of them swapping positions) to a 0 instead of a 2, the odds would be 1/24 raised to the seventh power, or 4,586,471,424 to one. Only four-and-a-half billion to one; the difference between winning a worldwide lottery and winning, I don’t know, an intergalactic lottery.
Players move around too much nowadays for any team to come even close to what that Dodger infield managed to do. For all 30 teams from 2021-2025, there was an average of 2.05 changes per season; half of every team’s infield turned over. (The N.L. was slightly more stable, averaging 1.93 changes per team against the A.L.’s 2.17.) I was thinking of breaking down the numbers according to team success, but I’m not sure even that matters (plus it would be a lot of work…) Of the four infields that stayed intact, the 2023 Guardians were coming off 92 wins, the 2024 Braves 104, the 2025 Phillies 95…and the 2024 Angels, 73. One great team, two that were very good, and one lousy one. The Dodgers, easily the best team over that stretch, made 9 changes in total, over the league average; same as the White Sox and more than the Rockies, both of whom have been terrible the last couple of seasons. It does look like bad teams make more changes overall, as you would expect--the A’s (14) and Marlins (13) made the most--so maybe those astronomical odds are much lower for good teams. However: success also creates changeover in today’s market, as the good teams with the good players inevitably lose some of them to free agency, since you can’t afford to re-sign everybody in perpetuity. This year’s Blue Jays are a perfect example of what routinely happens: you have two guys facing free agency at the same time, in Toronto’s case Vladimir Guerrero and Bo Bichette, so you commit to one and--even when making a nominal attempt to retain both--accept that the other will move on. The most successful teams don’t necessarily keep all their best players, they’re just really good at finding new (and generally cheaper) ones to replace those who leave.
There’s another way I want to look at this, more of a fun thing appealing to the Blue Jays fan in me. I should have that ready in a week or so.
No comments:
Post a Comment