They say money can’t buy you love, happiness, or championships.
This is most evident in baseball, which was born, sculpted, and mastered in New York City. Despite annually being home to two of the highest payrolls, memories of past glory have faded.
As I took time off my social schedule to watch the Mets playoff run, I explained to friends, family, and colleagues that “this is literally a once in a decade occurrence.” With a median age of 38.8 in New York City, half of all residents have zero memory of a Mets World Series victory.
After both New York teams got steamrolled by a former New York team, is there a chance we won’t ever see a World Series champion in New York City for the rest of our lifetimes? As we approach the spooky season (Halloween or Election Day, you choose), 2xParked aims to answer this spooky question
Whether it is baseball, football, basketball, or hockey, there are (1) a lot of teams in each league and (2) each team has the same objective: winning.
MLB has 30 teams. If every team’s success in a given season is completely random, each team has a 1 in 30 (3.3%) chance of winning a championship. Over the course of our life’s remainder, the odds of us seeing our favorite MLB team win — assuming there is no expansion — is not a guarantee. In the next 50 years, the probability of us not seeing our favorite team win a World Series would be roughly 18%. That is basically the same as not rolling a “1” on a standard single six-faced dice.
Baseball has no salary cap. A team can increase or decrease its odds of winning by spending relatively more or less on talent than it’s competition. Since 2011, 14 of the 15 World Series winners have had payrolls in the top half of the league, and 6 of the 15 have been in the top 5 — including 2024.
New York City is a pressure-filled expensive place, and our teams are expected to spend more. Over the past decade, the Yankees have consistently been a top-3 spender and the Mets have been a top-10. When we account for spending more — even if ownership or ownership philosophy changes — the Mets and the Yankees should have a higher than average chance of winning. If we assume the correlation between spend and likelihood to win is causal, Yankees would have a roughly 9.6% chance and the Mets would have a 7.2% chance of winning a championship each season in the future as opposed to 3.3%. This is what their future winning curves look like over time:
Our likely chances of seeing our favorite NYC team winning are much higher than a random team, but there still is a chance they won’t win.
I looked at the Social Security Administration actuarial life table and combined with these percentages to provide the likelihood of seeing a Mets or Yankees championships in the remainder of our lifetimes. (Note: I split by male and female since females generally live longer).
For the median New Yorker (38.8), there is roughly a 95% chance of seeing a Mets World Series win and a 98% chance of seeing a Yankees victory. For many in data analyses community, 95% chance is good enough. For others, including most Mets fans, this might feel like doom.
As you cast your ballot on Tuesday, remember that if a candidate says they will bring home a championship for your favorite team during their term, they clearly are not a Mets or Yankees or statistics fan.
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