MLB's Competitive Imbalance Problem Is Making 2024 Season Strangely Unique (2024)

We're baseball fans, right? We can level with each other, right?

Between us, the 2024 MLB season is giving off a weird, generally uncool vibe.

Yeah, yeah. One is supposed to accentuate the positive. And this season does have positives worth accentuating. Aaron Judge vs. Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani vs. Bryce Harper make for dandy MVP races. And even with Mookie Betts out with a busted hand, it's been a banger of a year for shortstops.

Yet something is...off. Wrong, even. And it has everything to do with competitive balance.

Or, more accurately, the lack thereof.

Competitive Balance? What Competitive Balance?

Let's start with how weird the standings are, specifically by zeroing in on the 0.5-game gap between the New York Yankees and Baltimore Orioles in the AL East.

It's the smallest difference between first- and second-place teams by a mile, as no other division features a race closer than 6.0 games. By comparison, a total of 12 teams were that close to first on this same date in 2023.

If this feels unusual, that's because it is.

We can get a sense of competitive balance within MLB by considering the standard deviation of teams' winning percentages. This measures how close or far individual records are from the league average. Less deviation means more parity; more deviation means more disparity.

In 2024, the standard deviation of teams' winning percentages is 0.098. It ties 2019 for the highest mark in MLB's 30-team era.

What the Heck Is Causing This?

It would be convenient if there was a single, bullet-proof explanation for this much disparity, but nothing is ever that simple.

So, here are four theories.

1. Tankers Will Tank

The league and the MLB Players Association attempted to disincentivize teams from losing on purpose with the most recent CBA. The biggest change was to the draft, which got an NBA-style lottery.

Heck of a lot of good it's doing, though.

The Chicago White Sox are certainly the worst offender, but they're also one of just five teams with a realistic shot at 100 losses. That would set a new single-season record. And those teams are feeding easy wins to five teams at the top who have a shot at 100 wins. This, also, would set a single-season record.

This is happening on the heels of the Cleveland Guardians securing the No. 1 pick in the 2024 draft even in the face of long odds, so it seems teams are unafraid of or just downright indifferent to the consequences of tanking.

2. It's Been a Brutal Year for Injuries

You can never predict when the injury bug will strike. Least of all this year, as it's been determined to strike hard, fast and everywhere.

Just in the NL East, the New York Mets haven't had Kodai Senga all year and Atlanta didn't plan on losing Ronald Acuña Jr. and Spencer Strider. And for the San Diego Padres out in the NL West, Manny Machado is obviously not 100 percent following elbow surgery.

In the American League, the Texas Rangers have lost $49.7 million on Max Scherzer, Jacob deGrom and other injured luminaries. Injuries have also impacted the Houston Astros and Baltimore Orioles, both of whom have recently lost two key hurlers to Tommy John surgery.

Clearly, bad faith isn't the only thing dragging down competitive balance. Bad luck is, too.

3. A Hangover from a Weird Offseason

Looking back to the winter, it's hard to say what stands out more: the Los Angeles Dodgers spending $1 billion on free agents, or the next-best team barely cracking $200 million.

It was a weird offseason, albeit one in which the collapse of regional sports networks was the elephant in the room. Everyone but the Dodgers seemed afraid to spend, and one of the end results was a late rush to get discounts on Scott Boras clients.

Despite the discounts, none of those deals has been a winner. This has notably blunted the NL West race, where Blake Snell, Matt Chapman (San Francisco Giants), and Jordan Montgomery (Diamondbacks) have made minimal impact.

4. Too Many Teams Aiming for the Middle

In 1968, there were 20 teams vying for just two playoff spots. Now, there are 30 teams after 12 spots. That's a 50 percent increase in teams compared to a 500 percent increase in playoff spots.

Arguably, this has leveled the playing field in October. The first two iterations of the expanded playoffs saw the Philadelphia Phillies, Rangers and Diamondbacks advance to the World Series. Their regular-season wins: 90, 90 and 84, respectively.

Yet between this and how the first-round bye for the top teams in each league has proved to be a disadvantage, there's a certain sense in aiming for the middle and hoping it works out. We might as well call it the Jerry Dipoto Stratagem:

With 13 teams within five games on the positive or negative side of .500, this appears to be a popular strategy this year.

What Are the Implications for the Trade Deadline?

What if the biggest trade of the season has already happened?

With respect to the San Diego Padres' blockbuster deal for Luis Arraez in May, this should be an absurd premise. And maybe it will prove to be.

Depending on which way the wind blows, stars who could be available ahead of the July 30 deadline include Pete Alonso, Alex Bregman, Randy Arozarena and even Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette. As deadline piñatas go, this one would be loaded.

Yet the wind could just as easily blow the other way and effectively force those guys' teams to hold on. Hence the hurry-up-and-wait energy out there now.

"A lot of teams are not willing to make deals yet," Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer told Will Sammon, Patrick Mooney and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. "The teams that usually want to make trades right now are sort of willing to do it if you pay a massive premium, which, let's face it, for most people, it's hard to do that. You're doing something that's irrational."

If there is a shortage of bubble sellers by July 30, that would theoretically help the actual, no-doubt-about-it sellers.

Yet even then, enough buyers could be content to hold on to their best trade chips and let it ride in hopes of catching a Philadelphia-, Texas- or Arizona-style wave in October. That wouldn't make it easy for, say, the White Sox to command huge returns for Luis Robert Jr. or Garrett Crochet or for the A's to do the same with Mason Miller.

What About the Health of the Sport?

As for whether there's any good news unfolding in the face of MLB's competitive balance issues, there is.

In case anyone didn't hear, this past weekend was highlighted by an attendance boom:

And so it goes. According to Baseball Reference, average attendance has grown by 578 fans in 2024 after growing by 2,548 fans in 2023.

It's solid evidence that fans dig the pitch timer, the balanced schedule and other changes MLB implemented last season. And why wouldn't they? It's a better product, full stop.

And yet, MLB is still on track to draw under 30,000 fans per game.

The league hit that mark annually between 2004 and 2016, so it surely can be done. If the question is what's changed, "It's the economy, stupid" isn't the only practical answer.

Those 13 years marked a renaissance for competitive balance, as the standard deviation between winning percentages eclipsed the 0.07 threshold only three times. By comparison, it's done so annually since 2017.

It isn't a stretch to think MLB would draw even more fans if it had a better product and better teams to show it off. Sticks that could make it happen include a salary floor, even if it's in the form of a reverse luxury tax that would penalize overly thrifty owners. As for carrots, the expanded playoffs would work better if NBA-style seeding was introduced.

Whatever the case, competitive balance must be the next mountain for MLB and the MLBPA to conquer with the next collective bargaining agreement.

That won't happen until at least 2026, and yet it can't happen soon enough.