Ranking Teams in a League with Two Divisions of t Teams

A league with an equal number of teams in each of two divisions is considered.Each team plays every other one in its division g 1 times and every team in the other division g 2 times.Using the numbers of wins and losses in games between each pair of teams, several methods of ranking all of the teams are discussed and compared.A nonparametric ranking method based on the numbers of iterated wins and losses of each team is shown to have suitable theoretical properties.Analysis of National League baseball data (1973.1988) suggests that this method performs well in relation to ranking based on the classic Bradley.Terry parametric procedure.The nonparametric ranking method has the advantage of ease of computation and simplicity of explanation.