Competitive Balance in the Aftermath of the 1994 Players’ Strike

Abstract

A new interseasonal measure of competitive balance in a sports league is presented. It is based on a Markov model of a team’s probability of qualifying for postseason play given the performance of the team in the previous season. Transitional probabilities are estimated for Major League Baseball teams before and after the 1994 players’ strike. The results indicate that there has been a significant deterioration in competitive balance for the seasons following the strike. Probability density functions for the prestrike and poststrike eras are also presented.