Do you like the people who own your baseball teams? Do you hate them? Do you trust them? Do they make themselves available? Are they in any way responsive? Do you feel like their interests align with yours? Do they spend what you think is too little? Do they not seem to worry too much about the budget?
Out of a scale of 1 to 5, the Rays ownership did well. They received a 3.02 overall rating, 13th out of 30, and slightly above the Milwaukee Brewers.
But while their overall ranking was good, the Rays distribution of opinions showed a different story. Poll respondents were asked to rank the ownership among five grades:
- Very Good
- Pretty Good
- Average
- Pretty Bad
- Very Bad
Here is how the votes broke down for the Rays ownership:
The Rays were the only team with such a wide spread of results. No other team had double digits in both Very Bad and Very Good. The best team, the Giants, had 60% Very Good and 3% Very Bad and the worst team, the Marlins had 1% Very Good and 89% Very Bad. The results for most teams were in the middle.
For the graphically inclined:
Perhaps it depends what issue respondents focused on. If they looked at the playoff contenders, the array of all-stars, and the on-the-field talent, the Rays ownership has done very well, especially since 2008. If they looked at the stadium situation, attendance, and the inability of the Rays to capture their own market, ownership hasn't done well at all.
As Ben Kenobi once said, "many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view".
(Many thanks to twitter user @theaccountiuse for the heads up on the Fangraphs post.)