After reviewing the Franchise Rankings that I posted earlier in the week, I decided that I had made several small errors in the process, and that I ought to take the trouble to amend these things now. 

            Specifically, I made six changes to the system.

1)      I double-counted the team’s Season Success, for one season only.  In other words, for the 2018 rankings, I put the team’s season success number in twice, but then took one of them out before figuring the 2018 carryover into 2019.  This enables a team having a good season to move up a little bit before they otherwise would.

2)      Before, I was giving one point for each 500,000 attendance (rounded down).  I changed that to one for 400,000, thus making attendance a little bit more important as an indicator of franchise strength.

3)     Of course, in doing this I eliminated the 1 point for the (first) 400,000 fans, as this would be redundant. 

4)     I changed the "relocation penalty" from 15% to 10%.

5)     I changed the decay rate from 3.5% to 3.75%. 

6)     I changed the starting numbers for all franchises starting 1901 or after. 

The starting numbers for teams after 1900 were changed to:

1901               170 points

1961-62         280 points

1969               280 points

1977               280 points

1990s             320 points

Average franchise strength did not grow from 1961 to 1977, so it made no sense to keep increasing the starting point number. 

Also, I arbitrarily added 5 points to each American League team in 1902, 1903, 1904, 1905 and 1906, to show the American League teams catching up to the NL more rapidly, since I am certain that they actually did.

Refiguring then the Franchise Strength Indexes for all teams, we get very minor changes for the most part.   These are the current Franchise Strength Indexes, revised:

It’s pretty minor changes.  The top 9 are the same as they were, then Cleveland drops from 10^th to 12^th, with Philadelphia moving up, and then there are more changes down the list.  Tampa Bay moves from 29^th to 25^th, as we have more respect for their recent good seasons this way.  The gap between the American League and the National League in the years 1901 to 1920 is mostly removed, but not entirely. 

Probably the most significant change over time is that the year the Yankees became the number one franchise in baseball moves back from 1938 to 1932, so the Yankees have now ranked as the number one franchise in baseball since 1932.  I believe this is probably a better estimate, but actually, in the version the Yankees and Giants traded the number one position back and forth for ten years before then, the Giants being ranked #1 from 1919 to 1922, the Yankees for one year after winning their first World Series in 1923, the Giants for two years 1924-1925, then the Yankees for four years 1926-1929, then the Giants 1930-1931, then the Yankees took over the top spot in 1932. 

The system was re-designed to make it a little more volatile, and it does, and I’m not unhappy with that.  It is very reasonable to say that the Yankees and Giants were neck and neck from 1920 to 1931, and either could be seen as the number one franchise in that era. 

I wanted to address one issue that came up in the reader comments.  When a team moves, and also when a team has a new stadium, there is a "newness effect" of a large number of casual fans coming out to one or two games a year to see the new park or the new team, just to see what it is like.  This causes attendance to soar—for a short period of time.   

The San Francisco Giants, in their first 7 years in San Francisco, averaged 1.51 million fans.  In their next 7 years, although their teams were actually BETTER overall, they averaged 1.14 million.

The Milwaukee Braves, in their first 7 years in Milwaukee, averaged 1.99 million fans.  In their last 7 years there, they averaged 1.02 million.  (Since the Braves were only in Milwaukee for 13 years, one season is part of both groups.)

In their first seven years in Atlanta, they averaged 1.19 million.  In the next seven years, they averaged 812,000.

The Kansas City A’s, in their first seven years in Kansas City, averaged 951,000 fans per season.  In their last seven years there they averaged 679,000.  (Again, they were only in KC for 13 years, so one season overlaps.)

When they moved again, to Oakland, the Oakland franchise averaged 868,000 in their first seven years.  In their next seven years, they averaged 762,000. 

The Orioles, in their first seven years in Baltimore, averaged 965,000 fans per year.  In their second seven years, although their teams were dramatically better, 15 games a year better on average. . . but even though the teams were dramatically better, attendance fell to 939,000 fans per season.

The Minnesota Twins, in their first seven years in Minnesota, averaged 1.36 million fans.  In their next seven years, they averaged 1.01 million. 

Even the Dodgers, although they opened a beautiful new stadium in their fifth season in LA, still saw a significant drop in attendance in the second seven seasons, from 2.21 million per season to 1.99 million. 

The only exceptions to the rule that a re-located franchise’s attendance drops in their second seven years are the Washington ones, the Texas Rangers and the Washington Nationals.  Both of those had really terrible teams in their first few seasons after moving, and both were playing their first few seasons in sub-standard stadiums.

 A lot of people attend games in the early years, but they’re not actually FANS of the team.  It takes 40 years to build a fan base—at least, maybe 50 to 60.  Short term attendance is not a reliable measure of the size of the fan base. 

The story I am telling here is an important one, because major league owners did not understand this in the years when franchises were hopping around the country—and most fans still don’t get it today.  When the Braves moved to Milwaukee and saw a huge, immediate jump in attendance, franchises from 1952 to 1973 tried to re-create that, blind to the cost of it.  Exactly like a junkie, teams were seeking that jolt of novelty attendance that would line their pockets for a few years.  In some cases, teams WERE better off moving, but in many cases they were not.  In many cases they were trading the future for the rush of a few good years.   It was damaging the game of baseball, driving major league attendance per game steadily downward.   Eventually baseball got organized and put a stop to it.

When a franchise has good attendance, even for one year, that immediately feeds into the Franchise Strength Index, so they are immediately credited with that.  But the whole point of this exercise is to see THROUGH what is transitory, temporary, illusory, and to try to discern the underlying strength of the organization—the permanent, stable foundation.  When a franchise says goodbye to their fan base, there IS a cost to that.  It would be totally inappropriate to treat the illusion of a strong fan base as if it was a real thing.  To do so would be a direct contradiction of the purpose of the study.

These are the average Franchise Strength Indexes, over time, revised version:

1900   216

1910   264     Up 22%

1920   294     Up 11%

1930  325      Up 11%

1940   343     Up 6%

1950   368     Up 7%

1960  375      Up 2%

1970  369      Down 2%

1980   387     Up 5%

1990  410     Up 6%

2000  425      Up 4%

2010  453      Up 6%

2019  470

2020  441      Down 3% due to the pandemic

2021  453      Still in recovery mode

            Thank you all for reading, and I appreciate your generous comments on the previous article.