Last week we published the newest edition of Mister-Baseball’s European Top 50 Club Rankings. Josh Chetwynd, the editor of the rankings, was so kind to answer a few questions about them. He did the Rankings for the third year in a row and also devised the used formula.
Mister-Baseball: What are the main difficulties with the rankings?
Josh Chetwynd: There are three particularly difficult elements to the rankings. The first is there are only a handful of teams in the rankings which actually play head-to-head with other ranked teams from different countries. And, if they do play each other it’s usually a single game, which isn’t an ideal sample size to compare teams (although we do take those games into account).
The second major issue is assessing country strength in as fair a way as possible. For example, a key component in country strength is the international performance of national teams. In many ways national team performance reflects domestic strength. But this is not always the case. In recent European Championships, Italy hasn’t performed nearly as well as, in my subjective opinion, the IBL’s quality. In contrast, the Great Britain national team has vastly outperformed the quality of its national league. My goal is to make these rankings as objective as possible, but I do try to tweak the formula to address these issues as best I can.
Finally, it’s hard to differentiate country strength for some of the countries in the lower end of country strength spectrum. Some of these nations do not compete in European Championships or European Cups regularly and, if they do, they perform at the lower end of the qualification pool. I’ve made some strides on this, but figuring out this problem – like the other difficulties –remains a work in progress.
MRBB: Is it possible to get updates of the rankings more often throughout the year and would it even make sense?
JC: Personally, I’d choose to do the rankings once a year at the end of the season. The reason for this is that each domestic season runs on a different time frame. One country could be just a handful of games into a season, while another could be halfway done. It’s much easier to compare clubs once all their seasons are finished.
MRBB: What is more important, domestic competition or European Cups/Qualifiers?
JC: Both performances in domestic competitions and European Cup play are very important. But in terms of which is more valuable, it depends. In Cup competition head-to-head play is considered. So if a team knocks off a number of top clubs on the way to a European Cup title, it will enhance a point total. Clearly, winning or placing well in a Euro Cup or qualifier will earn points at varying levels. That said winning a national championship – particularly in one of the more established baseball countries – is very important in earning a high ranking. Although, obviously, based on the country strength of the Netherlands and Italy, a team can make the semi-finals in national play in those countries and still place highly depending on other factors.
MRBB: How much worth has a single win for the rankings in domestic competition or European Cup depending on country strength? For an example: Let’s say Nettuno has two victories more in comparison to Bologna in the IBL. What would be the difference in the Top 50?
JC: It’s difficult to make a broad statement on how much one regular season win impacts the rankings because we use winning percentages rather than the raw win totals in our calculations. Winning percentage allows better comparison between leagues with different schedule lengths. Clearly, a 20-win season in a 25-game schedule doesn’t’ mean the same thing as 20 wins in a 50-game schedule. That said, it’s worth noting that length of season is a factor in country strength, which gives some additional points to leagues with longer seasons.
MRBB: Would you consider using the IBAF rankings to rank the countries?
JC: I’d consider anything, but at this point I haven’t integrated in the IBAF rankings. In terms of country strength, I’ve opted to use European Championship (and qualifier) performances over time because they include the greatest number of European teams, have extensive head-to-head competition and there is some continuity (we look at performance over a series of ECs in order to lessen the value of a single unexpected performance). Still, keep in mind EC performance is just one of a handful of factors used in determining country strength. The IBAF rankings (as I understand them) give point totals for both performance and participation largely for events that only a handful of European teams participate in. I’m not sure that’s as valuable an indicator in the European context – especially considering there haven’t really been any examples of European teams performing out of character in a non-European event. In other words, we haven’t seen a country performing far worse or far better than their EC performance in terms of comparative strength. Still, I’m open to being convinced otherwise.
MRBB: Would it be possible to do a country ranking, based on the results from the Top 50 Club Rankings?
JC: In terms of ranking countries, the country strength totals effectively does this. Country strength totals have varied slightly from year to year based on a number of factors, but for the most part, the top six countries have been the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Germany, France and the Czech Republic.
MRBB: Wouldn’t it be better to rank the leagues instead ranking them on results from the European Championships?
JC: European championship results are only one part of determining country strength. The hope is that the combination of factors determining country strength (including EC performance and certain league characteristics – like the number of players competing in a country) represent the league strength. Simply put, the leagues are ranked by a combination of factors – one of which happens to be EC performance. There are some flaws, but I’m striving to find an objective formula so that a subjective opinion is not the determining factor. As a result, I’m continually looking at the formula and asking myself how to make this as accurate a reflection as possible. Needless to say it is continually a work in progress.
MRBB: How do you respond to critics of the rankings, who say that even the lower ranked Dutch or Italian teams would beat the clubs ranked well ahead of them?
JC: My answer is this isn’t meant to be a list of the best teams in Europe per se. It is meant to be a snapshot of performance in a given season, keeping in mind the different levels of performance of various leagues. In many ways it’s meant to be similar to college football rankings in the US. These rankings do not simply list the best teams from the best conference but take into account both the record of teams and the competition those teams played to get to that record. This is essentially what we’re trying to do. As a result, in some cases, teams that dominated in a less competitive league will rank higher than teams that suffered through a weaker performance in an elite league.
2009 Final Standings Mister-Baseball European Top 50
Still questions? Use the comment section and we’ll try to answer them.
