Last May, I was listening to the CBS Fantasy Baseball Today podcast when I heard an interesting question posed to the analysts. Blake from Santa Barbara asked, “Which team is most worthy of fandom?” In order to find the answer to this question, Blake planned to set up roto format that would determine which team was most deserving of loyalty, with categories such as price of beer, salary paid per wins, and price of tickets per cost of living index. I heard this and couldn’t wait for Blake to email the gang at CBS back with his findings. Unfortunately, that day never came. Therefore, I have taken it upon myself to take up the project. This one is for you Blake.
Using Blake’s original categories along with a few suggestions from the CBS gang and some of my own, I have determined which MLB team is most worthy of fandom. But first, the process. I used eight categories to determine worthiness-of-fandom. Those categories were: price of beer in the stadium, salary paid per win over the past three years, 2017 ticket prices per cost of living index in the host city, home attendance over the past three years, percentage of homegrown players on their 40-man roster, number of all stars in the past three years, number of hall of fame players in the organization’s history, and (since this was written for r/baseball’s Offseason Symposium) the total population of the team’s subreddit. All of these statistics were collected and organized individually from best to worst, the best receiving thirty points in that category while the worst received one point in that category. All the points from the eight categories were then totaled. The results are listed in this Google Sheet.
As a Braves fan, these results made me very sad. As a Cubs bandwagoner living in Central Illinois, which is split pretty evenly between Cubs and Cardinals fans, this made me groan. According to the research, the Cardinals are by far the most fan-worthy team. They boast cheap beer, amazing home attendance, the most homegrown players, along with plenty of all stars, hall of famers, and redditors. The Cards (180) are followed in the top five by the Giants (164), the Dodgers (161), the Indians (157), and the Pirates (155). The least fan-worthy teams are the Rays (87), the Braves (91 [Ugh…]), the Padres (96), the Phillies (97), and the Brewers (102).
