Big thanks to bruinsfan911 for the idea and getting the discussions started on updating the 2018 World Rankings thread. He was also a good help in gathering the list of active worlds and quite a few of the world data. After some discussion between the two of us, I jumped right in and started a spreadsheet; looking for a way to make future updates easier on us. We'll still have to go world by world, but with the formatting done, it takes about 5-6 mins a world to update and easy enough to do once a year to see what changes the worlds have made. We also wanted to make a few adjustments to the previous rankings. I know one reason he wanted to look into updated rankings was to discuss a possibility for worlds to merge or fold, in an effort to have less worlds and make it easier for those worlds to fill.

Without further ado, let's jump right in.

Similar to the last rankings, we looked at the previous 4 seasons of each world. Some worlds had just turned over, others where in the playoffs, but we did our best! There are 11 categories of varying weight that we took into consideration. So to answer the first question, yes we weighed some categories heavier than others. Partially because there is some overlap but also because one may carry more importance over another.
Turnover - Number of replacement owners a league had to fill within 4 seasons. One thing to keep in mind is, there are 128 teams in 4 seasons. The world average to replace is 15 owners. I like to look at this as loyalty to the world as well.
Seasons a World was required to fill 3+ teams - Similar to turnover, but this one takes into account how many seasons out of 4, did a world have to replace 3+ owners. The previous rankings looked at the wait time, but there are reasons as pointed out in that thread why a league might take their time filling a slot. Our theory is, if there are more than 3 owners that need to be replaced every season, then the turnover rate would slow down between seasons.
Number of different franchises to win their Division - Our of the 32 division titles within a four season window, how many unique teams were able to claim their division? This gives us a glimpse into the world and if the same teams are sitting a top each division or not. The last rankings took into account the Wildcard, we decided to keep the focus on winning the division; even though plenty of teams have won the World Series as Wildcard teams. The HBD average is 17 different teams over 4 seasons.
Number of different franchises to make the World Series - Similar to the 2018 rankings, we wanted to look at how many different teams within a world made it to their World Series over four seasons. Highest possibility would be 8 teams, meaning two different teams make it each of the four seasons. The HBD world average is 6 different teams.
100+ Win teams - How many 100+ win teams during the last 4 seasons. HBD world average is 14.
110+ Win teams - How many 110+ win teams during the last 4 seasons. HBD world average is 4.
100+ Loss teams - How many 100+ loss teams during the last 4 seasons. HBD world average is 13.
110+ Loss teams - How many 110+ loss teams during the last 4 seasons. HBD world average is 3.
Average run differential between top 3 and bottom 3 teams - Rather than looking at the second highest and lowest win total as they did in the 2018 rankings, we wanted to look at the run differential between the top 3 teams and the bottom 3 teams of each league. The small the number the closer the standings typically are, and thus the more competitive the league. HBD world average is 1041.
Number of franchises to miss division by less than 8 games - In the spirit of competitiveness, we wanted to look at how close division games were. A more competitive league would see division games close and likely exciting up through the end of the season. HBD world average is 17 out of 96 teams.
Number of franchises to miss division by more than 25 games - A less competitive league would see division champs determined by or before the trade deadline. This one specifically looks at how far a part the rebuilding teams are from the champs of the league. HBD world average is 33 out of 96 teams. That's basically a third of the league is 25 games out of the division.
Active blog - We tossed a couple of points to those leagues with active blogs because we both felt they added a bit of value but the focus should still remain on the competitiveness and the stats above.

We ran each league through our spreadsheet to find their stats and compared them to the HBD average before resolving the final rankings. With 131 worlds, we split them into roughly 7 different tiers, trying to find natural breaks in their point total. In future updates, we might add previous ranking as well to see if worlds are moving up or down.

Tier List - Part 1
Tier List - Part 2

Sorry guys, the images are not loading on the forum correctly. Appearing TINY!

Nice. Thanks for putting this together.

This is awesome - thanks for all the hard work on this.

Go Gibson!

Thanks. This is really useful, not so much for the rankings but because you can use these data to choose your type of world. Just as a random example, CAPB appears in these data to have turnover consistent with Tier 4-5 but balance consistent with tier 1; perfect world if you don't mind one that seems to (most of the time) wait for the right owners to fill.

Thank you so much for doing this! Great stuff, and sounds like a great idea to include previous rankings in future iterations.

Really great work done on this. Thank you so much for putting this together.

Before I start getting many more 'Your rankings are wrong, my world is better than you listed' private messages, any and all rankings are subjective. Just because you ranked high on the 2018 list, doesn't mean 5 real life years later the world is in the same spot. That's generally 16-20 seasons later in HBD. A lot can change in a world over that many seasons. And the rankings aren't meant to gauge how much fun or enjoyment the current owners have with the league. It was purely a look at turnover and competitiveness. Those aren't always directly tied together. As for turnover, it also doesn't take into account those worlds with Min Win Rules; where an owner might get booted out; in an effort to keep the overall league more competitive. No ranking system can be perfect, and not everyone is going to be happy seeing the world they enjoy in the bottom half of the rankings. If you're having fun, then keep at it!

And like dedelman said, it gives owners some insight into each world and they can decide what pieces are important to them. One owner might prefer quick turnovers, even if a world is a little less competitive. Another might not care about waiting longer timeframes for a world to find the right owner if its in the name of competition.

If people don't like the rankings they can happily make their own.

I've long said an owner should, for their own enjoyment, play in worlds with other owners of a similar mindset toward competition, rules, and ideologies of fair play. How you arrived at your rankings would therefore be more important than the final rankings themselves.

FWIW, I looked at these data and identified a few worlds I might prioritize for my future participation. These worlds were not all clustered at the top; they ranged from "Tier 1" to "Tier 4," but as best as I could tell they fit my personality.

(useless?) Stat of the day - leaving room for counting errors and double ups because I automated it - there are roughly 980 unique HBD users filling 131 worlds. That's just enough to uniquely fill 30 worlds without anyone having multiple teams. Yes, there are plenty of people who are in 5-6 worlds. 131 worlds (technically there are 133 I believe - two were not listed because they only have 2 seasons completed) would require 4,192 users. So on average everyone needs to be in at least 4-5 different leagues to keep current worlds full.

I’m technically in 3. Two on my own and one with my dad with a seperate account. So I’m not doing my part.

Thank you for the rankings. I'm commish in strawberry/Gooden. I'm happy to see us at 61. I remember our world before we merged was ranked near the bottom of all worlds

This is great. I'm commish of Upper Deck. Glad to see that we are so high.

Around the same time next year, we'll try to make another update for 2024. Might even track how teams have moved up or down in the ratings.