how bad is the National League?

Question

how bad is the National League?
St. Louis can loose 8 in a row. and are still up 2 games in the central.

Arizona Diamondbacks are 3 and 21 in their last 24 games. and are only 3 games out.

only 2 NL teams have winning records against the AL.

Ouch!

st louis...the second best team in the NL.
has lost 8 in a row. and is still only 2 up in their division. any AL team that would do that is dead.

Minnesota has gone 9-1 in their last 10.
and are still 11 out.
ouch.

Answer 1

Let's use cosaxteacher's argument and break it down.

There are 9 teams in the AL at .500 or better. Which means there are 5 teams under .500. The 9 that are over and how many games they are over right now: Boston +18, NY +11, Toronto +8, Detroit +29, Chicago +24, Minnesota +7, Oakland +6, Texas +3, Seattle even. The 5 that are under: Baltimore -6, Tampa Bay -12, Cleveland -6, KC -25, LA -7. You could say that teams are winning at the expense of KC and TB, but they don't account for all of the margins. 106 games over vs. 56 under.

NL. 8 teams over or at .500 - New York +18, St. Louis +8, Cincinnati +5, Milwaukee even, San Diego +4, LA +2, Colorado +1, San Francisco even. 8 teams under - Philadelphia -6, Florida -6, Atlanta -12, Washington -12, Houston -3, Chicago -20, Pittsburgh -26, Arizona -3. 38 over vs. 88 under.

NL has 1 team that's 10 games over or more and 4 that are 10 games under or more. AL has 4 teams that are 10 games over or more and 2 that are 10 under or more.

The NL is bad.

Answer 2

I wouldn't necessarily say that the entire National League is just bad. There's a lot more competition between the teams in the NL compared to the AL. In the AL, seemingly every year, a few select teams take the lead in their divisions and stay there for the rest of the season, while seemingly every year in the NL, there's a fight for the lead and every division is up for grabs. Look at the NL West for instance. There's only one team that's below .500, and that's Arizona, and like you said, they're only 3.5 games out of first place.

There's also a perfectly reasonable explanation for the difference between the two leagues. The average payroll for the 14 AL teams is $83,675,647, while the average payroll for the 16 NL teams is $72,437,584. Quite a bit of a difference huh?

Answer 3

Before we jump to conclusions a fuller examination of the data is in order. Baseball is a funny, random sport; a set of 250 games might seem like a lot, but it may not be enough to provide categorical proof of a league's superiority.

Imagine that all the interleague games were played between teams of equal strength; from a mathematical point of view, this is the equivalent of flipping a coin 250 times. The odds that the coin would come up heads at least 136 times -- which corresponds to the 136 interleague games that the NL won -- is 9.2 percent. Certainly, the National League's success is a point in its favor, but it's hardly an open-and-shut case.

In reality, the NL's argument is somewhat weaker than that. One of the lovely quirks of combining interleague play with leagues of unequal numbers of teams is that it cannot be accomplished with a balanced schedule. While every AL team was scheduled to play 18 interleague games, NL teams could play 12, 15, or 18 contests, depending on their division and the whim of schedule guru Katy Feeney. As luck would have it, the three NL teams with only 12 games apiece were all below average squads -- the Reds, Pirates, and Brewers. By having three of its weaker teams pulled out of the pack, the NL had the deck stacked in its favor, increasing its expected winning percentage in interleague games to .506.

In fact, however, we need not restrict ourselves to the 250 interleague contests in order to draw lessons about league strength. We're living, after all, in an era of high roster volatility, and there are a great number of players who have played in both the NL and the AL at some point in the recent past.

There are, for example, seven position players who started regularly for AL clubs in 2002 who have since become regulars in the 2003 National League. Using Equivalent Average ("EqA"), an overall measure of offensive production that adjusts for the run-scoring environment of a player's park and league, we can evaluate how those players have performed after switching circuits.

Answer 4

i love a great number of the solutions that were given, yet i imagine because of the DH that the AL communities pitching staffs could be deeper. because of the DH and the money that the AL golf equipment have and use, they must have that extra lefty specialist for a David Ortiz or Travis Hafner. look on the type of hitter the NL golf equipment grant up even as they could use the DH in interleague play and the international sequence. that is consistently a 4th outfielder or back-up infielder who's strong for a end hollow yet to Josh Beckett an trouble-free strikeout or pop-up. Whoever lands up representing the AL contained in the international sequence after dealing with a complicated commonly used season or perhaps harder playoffs, the NL club is a breeze. searching on the lineups as they are on the instantaneous, in person-friendly words the Mets and Phillies have something on the brink of an AL searching club, and until eventually the Phillies ponies up for Aaron Rowand, they are going to take a step back.

Answer 5

Not that bad.
There are 9 teams in the AL that have a better than or equal to .500 record, and there are 8 teams in the NL that are in the same situation.

So you named two teams that aren't doing good. If you are going to judge an entire league, look at the entire league.

Answer 6

Im surprised that you are one of the few who noticed that the two best teams in the AL just ran through the NL central.

the cards were swept by detroit and by the white sox.
the astros two, they only won one game against the tigers and sox.

the AL is really shutting down the NL this season.

Answer 7

Horrible, they haven't won the All-Star game in eight years, and they stink in interleague play.

Answer 8

Not as bad as the Cleveland Indians......sigh

Answer 9

pitt arizona

Answer 10

NY METS