Would an All-Star Sports Team be Guaranteed to always beat the actual current Championship Team?

The Game Room
1

Basically, if you took the winners of the All-Star/All-Pro game from the NBA, MLB, or NFL (or any other sports league that has a team made up of the best players of the entire league) and then had them compete against the actual winners of the World Series, Super Bowl, NBA Finals, would the All-Star team always win? Lets pretend in all scenarios each team has a month to practice and knows exactly what they’re up against.

Now we do have to make some different distinctions here (I’m using current baseball since it’s easiest for me, please don’t just use the teams I give as the only benchmark)

1a. Would the winners of the All-Star Game (for example the 2019 American League) beat the Current World Series Winners (for example the 2019 Washington Nationals)?
1b. If the league that wins the All-Star Game is the same league as wins the World Series, how much of an impact on the League team occurs to the League team for losing those players to their direct competitors? Could they still win if they had to deal with the alternates to those positions?

  1. Would an Amalgamated All-Star team using the best players from both leagues (so both 2019 All-Star Teams combined) completely crush the current World Series Winners even if they lose all their Washington Nationals players?

  2. If we were somehow able to grab players from an alternative universe, would the 2019 Amalgamated All-Star Team win against the 2019 Washington Nationals with cloned players every single time?

2

You said “guaranteed” in the title and “always” in your first paragraph. So I’m going to go way out on a limb and say “No.” Nothing is ever guaranteed in sports. Any team on any given day …

More seriously and sticking with baseball at first …

IMO All-star games are a waste of oxygen. Guys who don’t care playing with guys they don’t know. It’s a joke. MLB is a team sport and teamwork matters a lot; it’s not 9 individuals. Managing matters too and how well the manager & coaching staff “clicks” with the team.

You address part of that issue with your 30 days practice together. But that’s a far cry from a normal Spring training workup or from the cohesion of teammates who’ve worked together for several seasons.

Another practical obstacle is that (ignoring COVID and pretending 2020 is an ordinary 162 game season), the 2019 Nationals are a virtual team now too. Some folks have retired / traded, etc. The 2020 Nats are a different critter.

Again assuming no COVID, when are we going to play this game? At All-star time (mid-season), or back just after the World Series finished (a la NFL pro bowl)? Or at spring training time next season? Who’s rested & who’s worn out?

For any all-star team a problem is motivation. The player’s main interest is to not get hurt, get some resume’ fodder, and avoid making a fool of themselves. In that order. That’s not their same motivation as during a regular season game. I suppose your last year World Series winner would have the same problem; your proposed competition is still an exhibition game, not a no-shitter.

The various differences addressed in your sub-questions about necessary substitutes are small beer compared to the larger issues I raise.

In general though, I’ll take the real champion team over the all-star team almost every time. The only exceptions I would make are for outsized injuries to the champion team or for the champion team being gutted to staff the all-star team.

Turning to other sports …

NFL has much more elaborate & customized plays than MLB. So the advantage to the real, not virtual team is MUCH larger; 30 days to practice together means they’ll still be running training wheel plays, not the full razzle dazzle at full speed. Champions over All Stars almost every time.

NHL is about like baseball. Teamwork matters but it’s pretty standardized across the league.

I can barely spell NBA so I’ll not comment.

Turning to something you didn’t ask …

For an individual sport like e.g. track and field, golf, boxing, or swimming, that’s when I’d put money on an all-star team over a champion team.

3

In baseball, at least, if you put the best team in the league up against the worst team in the league, the best team still only has about a 2 in 3 chance of winning (this is part of why baseball has multi-game series where it counts, to increase the chance of the better team winning). I’d have to think that the difference between best team and worst team is a lot bigger than the difference between all-star team and best team.

4

So let’s say you provide a winner-take-all monetary incentive so the all-star team plays like it means something.

And it’s one game.

I’d say for basketball and hockey, it would be more likely that the all-stars would beat the championship team.

In baseball and football, less likely.

Because in basketball and hockey, the all star team would have better subs coming off the bench as well as no dead spots in the starting lineup. And there’s nothing much the champ team can do about that.

In baseball, if you’re the champs, you have at least two really good starting pitchers and one reliever. The all-stars would too, so it’s more a matter of which pitchers have their stuff that day. Subs don’t play much in baseball, so it’s not much of an advantage for the all-stars.

In football, you can do almost infinite scheming to get around individual matchups. And if you’re the champs, you’ve played against probably close to half the all-stars during the regular season.

5

As an aside: A real championship team is likely to have multiple star-level players. What’s the highest representation any single team has ever had on an all-star team? I mean, hypothetically, in a sport without salary caps, I can imagine a single team recruiting all of the all-stars. I don’t imagine that’s ever happened, but who’s come closest?

6

Absolutely not. Baseball doesn’t work that way. Even with a vastly better team, if the Nationals’ starting pitcher has a really good day, the Nats will probably win.

Baseball requires an All Star from every team, and even the richest teams can’t acquire all the best players anyway, because

  1. The amateur draft is designed to prevent that and players can’t become free agents prior to six years of service,

  2. You don’t always know for sure who’s going to be thhe best players ahead of time, and

  3. No one is that rich anyway.

The 1961 Yankees had eight All Stars, and I can find a lot of examples of a single team having seven All Stars in one year, but that’s on a team with like 30-32 guys. All Star rosters are larger than normal rosters.

7

Broadly speaking the AS team will have a vast advantage over the championship team. There are no guarantees in sport, of course, but the AS team is one without ‘holes’. Every position will have a player who is one of the very best in the league. I’ll list the sports below in order from least to most advantage.

In baseball, every batter from 1-9 is excellent, every starting pitcher an Ace, every reliever a lock down closer or setup guy. However, on the pitching side, in a short 7 game series, the champs can approximate the AS team’s advantage by leaning harder on their best pitchers. You won’t be dipping into your 3rd and 4th pitcher or the so-so long reliever unless the game is out of hand already. So, I’d say Baseball has the least advantage.

Next is Basketball. There’s only one ball to share, so having 5 top guys isn’t as much of an advantage as having 3 top guys. The champion team will be giving those guys big minutes as well, so I think the AS advantage is blunted.

Next is Hockey. I’m not an expert on hockey but the 3rd and 4th lines play about 25 minutes a game, that’s a lot of time to have your 3rd and 4th best guys up against All Stars.

Last is Football. Football is all about matchups. Having a team of Pro Bowlers means you can shamelessly exploit matchup problems. Usually, teams have to help out or double up protection and coverage to help the weaker players handle the best players of the other team. But the PB team is filled with guys who don’t need help or are matchup nightmares for the opposition… The Champs won’t have enough guys to double up where they need to, and the PB’s will have extra guys because they will rarely need to double up at all.

8

It’s interesting that I labeled football the opposite; IMO the Champs usually destroy the All Stars. I’m not exactly disagreeing with your here, more intending to stimulate further discussion.

My take is skill at executing specific plays with no “oops” moments is the key to success in NFL football. There are many different play-creating and play-calling schemes in the NFL. It’s not a standardized business. Guys that haven’t played together a LOT will struggle with more elaborate plays and with schemes they’re not familiar with from their home team.

IMO that’ll produce enough “dumb moves” by the All Stars that the Champs will get interceptions, recover fumbles, make sacks, etc., at an elevated rate compared to their already championship-earning performance against their near peers in the league. Against champion-level performance the All Stars can’t stand to have more than a couple of their offensive drives per game interrupted by “oops”.

My other point is given the ad hoc nature of the All Stars & the OP’s short practice time of just 30 days, they’ll tend to play more vanilla = more predictable plays. They won’t have a deep bench of well-honed plays to trot out in the second half. By late in the third quarter the champ’s defense (and offense) will know what’s coming on every snap. That won’t be helpful for the All Stars’ cause.

Yes, the Champs will have some weaker players But they didn’t get to be champs with large deep holes in key positions. Good bet that even the Champ’s worst player is middlin’ or better in teh league pecking order for his position.

Thoughts?

9

You are correct that the All Starts will be playing vanilla ball.

Let’s talk Defense, DE’s in particular. If you are up against a team with an AS DE, you game plan to stop him from blowing up the offense. Now you have to game plan to stop 2 of them, and both DTs can make a fuss all on their own. This uses up resources, you always have to keep at least 1 extra man in, maybe 2, making pass coverage even easier.

In coverage, the AS’s have 2 lock down corners. Your top receiver may be able to shake it up, but that’s an easy double team, leaving 4 other guys to cover your slot receiver and the (maybe) one TE/RB you are able to free up, or blitz.

The reverse is true on the offense, the AS OL can double your best pass rusher and leave the other 3 to block one on one, which they should be able to handle. That leaves 5 available receivers, all of whom are the best receivers on their respective teams, the guys you normally throw extra resources at to keep them in check, but the Champs don’t have extra resources, not to cover 5 guys.

10

That’s fine but you’re not accounting for the randomness of the sport.

Hockey is FAR AND AWAY the most weirdly random of pro sports. If the Lightning are playing the Senators, the Lightning will probably win, but it’s far froma guarantee. Hockey is a sport where the difference in talent between two NHL teams is very easily superseded, in many games, by puck luck. It is very, very common to have NHL games where one team totally outplays the other, dominates in every aspect of puck control, and outshoots the lesser team 44-26, and loses anyway, because their shots just missed and didn’t get the right deflections, and the lesser team got lucky. I cannot think of any equivalent in other major sports.

In basketball, if one team way outplays the other, they will win. I’ve seen games where I thought one team played a LITTLE better but lost anyway because they didn’t quite get the bounces in 3-point shooting. I have never, ever seen a game where one team dominated play in all aspects and lost due to luck; because basketball gives each team about 80 discrete ball possessions per game, the luck will average out for the most part.

Of the four major sports, basketball is by far the sport where a definitively superior team will most likely win. It’s the sport with the fewest upsets.

11

One of the fun things you could do with baseball (and probably the other sports) is play this on paper. If we took the opposite all star team (solves players on both teams( from the best team in baseball at the end of season it would look like this.

Dodgers vs AL Al All stars

P Buehler 4.9 Cole 7.3
C Smith 1.7 Garver 3.9
1B Muncy 4.8 Santana 4.4
2B Hernandez 1.2 LeMahieu 5.4
SS Seager 3.3 Semien 7.6
3B Turner 3.4 Bregman 8.5
LF Taylor 1.7 Springer 6.5
CF Bellinger 7.8 Trout 8.6
RF Pederson 3.3 Betts 6.6
Total 32.1 58.8

So the AL All Stars would have a WAR of almost double the Dodgers not counting a DH or a full staff of pitchers.

I can’t find a decent formula to compare the win percentages of a head to head matchup based on the WAR of two teams. I was thinking about looking at runs scored vs runs against for the two teams but I was getting a bit too complicated for my lunch break. Anyone else want to take swing at it?

In the end I would guess the Dodgers have greater than a 30% chance in a single game but I wouldn’t guess greater than 40%.

12

True, but I also think basketball is a sport where the best teams most closely mimic an all star team. Two years ago the Warriors had 4 players who were multi year all stars and all-NBA players. The AS team will have 12 players at that level, but 6 of them would likely get very limited playing time.

13

How would you compare runs scored for an all star team? Simulate a season first?

14

I’m with @LSLGuy on this one. I see the champion NFL team wiping the floor with the probowlers in almost any year. LSLGuy touched on it but didn’t say it outright: Football is the sport where the players themselves are the least important compared to any other sport. Something like half the battle is won or lost by the coaching staff. In other sports it’s almost all players (or puck luck) all the time. Coaching is a minimal aspect of the game and at the allstar level may even be superfluous. Not so with football.

Put it this way: Take away Belichick and his staff from the Patriots but keep the exact same rosters over the past 20 years, no way do they reach 8 Superbowls winning 6. Not even remotely close.

30 days? I have to be honest, I think every single playoff team crushes the probowlers. Possibly every team in the league that finished the season 8-8 or better. I wouldn’t even be shocked if every single team in the league, including historically bad 0-16 seasons, beat the probowl team at least half the time.

Many of those probowl players will be playing on the champions team causing matchup headaches for the allstars. It is quite possible for a future HoF LT and a future HoF DE to go at it all game and one of them (either of them) totally dominates the other. Just because you put a probowler at a position doesn’t mean he won’t need help with his matchup. Which probowl defender was going to shut down Gronk in his heyday, for example?

15

Basically, I found a couple of formulas to get from team WAR to expected W/L (1 WAR is worth about 0.7 wins over the replacement level team at 46 wins) on the season and then you could use that to reverse pythagorian w/l to expected runs. It wouldn’t be perfect but you could at least generate a number.

16

I would have loved to see prime Urlacher cover Gronk. On the football since I’ve played on all star teams and I think you’d need more time to learn a real playbook from scratch. In theory though the all stars would have all star coaches. I think if you gave an NFL all star team the preseason the would kick around most teams but that is more than 30 days.

17

In the current NFL, schemes (particularly offensive schemes) are so complex that, when a team brings in a new coach, it typically takes the entire offseason (OTAs as well as training camp and the preseason) just to get the team reasonably up to speed on it.

If the all-star team had an entire training camp/preseason to get on the same page with each other, they’d certainly stand a better chance, but when they’re facing a championship team, which likely has had the same schemes, with mostly the same players, for several seasons, they are still likely going to be at a disadvantage on schemes, despite having the better overall talent level.

18

There is no such thing as an absolutely certain prediction (or forecast, if that’s the term used in a particular field) unless something is so trivially predictable that it’s not worth predicting (like if the sun will come up tomorrow). It’s not possible to make absolutely certain sports or political or economic or weather or box office or medical or future technology or whatever predictions. Furthermore, you shouldn’t judge the ability of someone to make predictions in a given field just because they made one correct prediction. Before you trust someone to be reasonably good at prediction, you should check what they’ve predicted about dozens of cases in the field they claim to be good at doing forecasting in. For each prediction, they should tell you what probability they think there is for the events they are forecasting, not just what they predict will happen. You can combine their record in predictions about those events using a technique called the Brier score. You can learn more about prediction by reading the book Superforecasting by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner.

19

This is the crux for me in all the OP’s sports.

These are team sports and a team is much more than the sum of the players or even the sum of the players and the coaches. Despite the reductionist emphasis on individual statistics which are becoming such a booming business since they drive the fantasy gambling biz.

Given enough time to work together to become a team, yes a batch of All Star individuals would become world beaters. Given a full preseason in whichever sport it’d be close. Less time is less assurance of success.

20

I think this is the crux of it though. Defence isn’t that hard to get up to speed on and given a full preseason I would expect the all star team to be playing at a 95%+ level of their potential especially if they were familiar with the championship team from playing against them and doing previous film study. Offence is complicated but Cam Newton joined the Pat’s in July and has a shot to be their starting QB and that is in a full scheme or at least mostly so. We see every year a QB joining a new team relatively late in the off season and going on to start. I would expect a all star QB to pick up a system quickly. Maybe they would be operating at 75%. For me the question is a 95% and 75% team enough better than an average team to make it competitive and I think that’s a certainty. As for a championship team I think that is a much bigger question especially since the champs will have many all stars themselves.