MLB Team Quiz
Who should you root for if you just can't decide?
If you’re starting from nothing, choosing your favorite team can be tough.
Although most fans root for their teams because of family and/or geography, some are not bound by such connections. So, for those looking for a team to start rooting for—or a team to root for in the league their current team isn’t in—look no further than this quick 5-question quiz.
Background
The five dimensions of the quiz are:
History
Market size
Pitching focus
Fielding focus
Time zone
The History question combines longevity of a ball club with how many World Series they’ve won over expected. For example, the Cubs are more historic than the Rays because they’ve been around much longer. However, the Cardinals are even more historic than the Cubs since they’ve also been around awhile and won more titles.
The Market size question uses the latest monetary valuations of each team to benchmark preferences for “big-market” or “small-market.” The Yankees have the largest monetary valuation, while the Marlins have the smallest. I figured this would be more appropriate than a salary/spending question since everyone naturally wanting their team to spend more would render that question moot.
The next two questions are powered by my Pitching and Fielding Dependency Ratings. Specifically, PDR compares value of pitchers vs position players, whereas FDR compares value of defense vs offense. The Royals sport the highest PDR post-integration, contrasting with the Giants who have the lowest. The highest FDR belongs to the Rockies (surprisingly?), and the lowest to the Yankees (unsurprisingly).
The last question is simply about which time zone each team plays in. If a team scores well for you in the first four questions, but their games start too early in the day or too late in the night for you to be able to watch them, that could make it hard to connect with that team if watching them a lot is a priority for you.
The Quiz
Before opening the document, please note that you cannot edit it, so you must make your own copy before doing anything (this is so everyone isn’t sharing the same one). To do so, click File → Make a copy. At that point you will have your own version which you can freely edit.
When answering each question, type a number (on a 0-100 scale) beside the first row. The second row will change automatically according to what you type in the first, so do not change the second row. For example, if I answer the History question with wanting my team to be relatively new, I would type a low number (let’s say 20) in the first row, so that the second row shows 80 beside the “relatively new” preference. This would make my results favor less historic teams.
Beyond that, each question asks you to weight how much you care about that particular dimension. For example, if you don’t care much about how fielding-dependent your team is, you can type a low number in the third row, which will cause your results to be impacted less by that question. If you type 0 there (or nothing at all), that question won’t impact your results at all, whereas it will carry full weight if you type 100.
Once you’ve answered and weighted all five questions, go to the “Results” tab to view your scores. To rank the teams from closest to your answers to furthest, sort the “FAN SCORE” column from lowest to highest. Lower scores are better, since that means the team is closer to your preferences.
Example:
This hypothetical person has a moderate preference for historic teams, cares a lot about being a slight underdog financially, values pitching greatly, doesn’t care much about offense over defense, and really wants to watch in the Central time zone. This set of answers gives them a top 2 of the Twins (0.93) and White Sox (1.02), with the Royals (2.03) and Cubs (2.29) also in consideration. Their results indicate they should probably avoid investing themselves in the Yankees (13.50) or Giants (11.42).
HERE IS THE QUIZ
I believe these five questions sufficiently capture the character and style of each team. Nevertheless, it doesn’t measure more coincidental avenues to fandom, such as liking a certain player, a color scheme, a stadium, etc. If the Red Sox score poorly for you but you just can’t get enough of the Green Monster, or you just really liked Johnny Damon’s hair back in the day, that’s perfectly valid. If the Orioles are low on your list but you’re from Aruba, five out of the six Arubans who have ever played in MLB being Orioles would give you a perfect excuse to root for them anyway.
And of course, if you live close to a stadium, the team that plays there will probably be the easiest one to start supporting. But if you have no such ties, this quiz could help point you in the right direction.
Let me know how your results shape up, and thanks for checking it out!