So, how many games do you give the NL in the WS?

That being said, the NL does look pretty weak this year. The Mets look to be the only really impressive team in the NL. The rest of the league is pretty even.

also, if you agree the NL was a power league and the AL into small ball strategy in the '70s, why did the leagues flip so? has to be more to it than adapting to the DH.

1) There's a payroll disparity between the leagues
The average AL player makes 16% more than the average NL player
2) The top 4 payrolls in MLB are AL teams
Yankees ($200M), Red Sox ($120M), Angels ($105M) and White Sox ($105M)

Current division/wildcard leaders and payroll rank:

AL East: Boston (#2)
AL Central: Detroit (#14)
AL West (tie): Texas (#18), Oakland (#21)
AL Wildcard: Chicago White Sox (#4), New York Yankees (#1)

NL East: New York Mets (#5)
NL Central: St. Louis (#11)
NL West: San Diego (#17)
NL Wildcard: LA Dodgers (#6), Cincinatti (#22), San Francisco (#10)

So of the top 6 payrolls, 5 are represented above. Even the Angels (#3) are 2 games out in the West.

http://www.berniewilliams.com/images/bw_home_photo.jpg
2005: .249/.321/.367

yes, in '73, when the NL was at the height of being a power league. you wouldn't expect it to alter strategy right away, it would take 5-10 years for its influence to show itself.

I think I remember a mid-90s debate about NL pitching dominance that reminds me quite a lot of the current discussion. Maybe it was just about Atlanta pitching dominance. At any rate, there was no interleague play then to generate numbers (ASG and WS results don't count), so it was a fairly pointless discussion.

I wonder which league has more dregs teams percentage wise, clubs that never seem to win.

Long time losers the since 98 (the year the Brewers moved to the NL)

(Winning Seasons- Losing Seasons, includes this year)

AL Losers
Tigers 1-8* this year being the winning season
B-more 0-9 (OUCH, how the once mighty have fallen!)
KC 1-8
Tampa 0-9
Rangers 4-5
Mariners 4-5

AL Winners
Evil Empire 9-0
Boston 9-0
White Sox 7-2
Twins 6-3
Angels 5-4
A's 8-1
Indians 5-4
Blue Jays 5-4 (This kind of suprised me, but I guess they have been over .500, but never made the playoffs.)

NL Losers
Brewers 1-8 (Lone non-losing season was exactly .500)
Pirates 0-9
Rockies 1-8
Marlins 3-6
Reds 3-6
Nationals/Expos 3-6
Cubs 4-5
Phillies 4-5
Padres 4-5

NL Winners
D-Backs 5-4
Astros 7-2
Braves 8-1
Mets 6-3
Giants 8-1 (SF at .500 right now)
Dodgers 7-2 (LA at .500 right now) Kind of suprising, it doesn't seem they have been that good the last ten years.
Cards 9-0

(sorry)

Alex in SF states on that thread that the NL is home to such weak teams as the Nationals and the Marlins being offered as examples... but the Nationals are arguably the better team in the DC area (cf, Orioles), and the Marlins are far and away the best team in Florida (ie, Devil Rays).

Not only are the Devil Rays horrible, but there is a team even worse than them also in the AL. Is the AL actually more extremely good AND extremely bad whereas the NL is more competitive?

Who's worse: the Devil Rays or the Pirates? I like the Devil Rays over the Pirates in a seven game series, especially if Kazmir starts thrice.

OTOH, Boston is 12-10 vs. KC/TB (the worst teams in baseball and you know, I'd bet they've even been outscored by both teams), yet Boston is 16-2 interleague vs. PHI/ATL/WASH/NYM/FLA.

Anyway the one thing that is true is what Morbs said above. No matter how poor the NL may seem compared to the AL in a short series anything can happen (although the fact that AL keeps getting the home field is probably helping their chances long term.)

Your claim:
The 2nd tier AL teams (essentially the AL West) are better than the 2nd tier NL teams.

My assumption:
Let me be very generous and say that the NL West teams are 2nd tier NL teams (I think we'd all agree that this is a generous assumption).

The NL West vs. the AL West (2006 interleague):
31-35... Yes, the advantage goes to the AL West with a .530 win percentage, but that's not necessarily dominant but isn't it rather, a fairly competitive margin (66 game sample size!)? If you take out Seattle (14-4) then the NL West is up 27-21.

And I'm pretty sure that the AL has been playing .600 ball against the NL for the past couple of years before this one, but I don't have the stats in front of me.

Except that these teams play almost 300 in-league games every year. Some have even noted that the reason for these teams existence is so that the Yankees and Red Sox can beat up against them 25 times a year (*and yes my point upthread was that the Red Sox weren't doing such a good job of it this year!).

Help me with this Barry: If you were to hypothetically swap the 2 worst NL teams with the 2 worst AL teams, you're saying there would be no effect in each league's performance?

I'm saying we should be comparing EVERY TEAM: the good AND the bad. Perhaps the Yankees/Detroit are SO good because they play shittier teams (I'm not referring to interleague play here, haha). The reason why the NL divisions (with a few exceptions) are all huddled around .500 is not because the league itself is weaker, but rather more competitive.

I think the effect of swapping Pittsburg and the Cubs for the Devil Rays and the Royals would not have a very significant effect this year certainly (next year and the year after it would depend significantly on variables which are not predictable--see: Detroit Tigers 2003-2006.)

It's more competitive, yes, but it also a weaker league this year.

Let's look at BP's "Hit List Factor" weighted-averages by league then division:

AL: .520
NL: .483

The AL is 7.6% stronger than the NL. Going back to Dr. Morbius' comment, I firmly believe that this variance is grossly exaggerated.

By division from strongest to weakest:
AL Central: .530
AL East: .515
AL West: .513
NL West: .505
NL East: .491
NL Central: .459

Big suprises here: AL East is only 0.4% stronger than the AL West, and less than 2% stronger than the NL West (the worst team in the NL West (the Giants) are #18 out of 30).

Not so big surprises: AL is better than NL (13 of the bottom 17 teams are in the NL). Cubs/Pirates are 9% stronger than the D-Rays/Royals (compare that to the AL vs. NL factor), meaning the D-Rays/Royals are, yes, really THAT bad.

AL: .517 (down from .520)
NL: .485 (up from .483)

The AL is 6.6% stronger than the NL (down from 7.6%).

By division from strongest to weakest:
AL Central: .530 (2 weeks ago .530)
AL West: .511 (2 weeks ago .505)
AL East: .508 (2 weeks ago .515)
NL West: .505 (2 weeks ago .505)
NL East: .495 (2 weeks ago .491)
NL Central: .462 (2weeks ago .459)

The somewhat prevalent "weak NL West" conventional wisdom is on the verge of overtaking the AL East (probably CW's assumed "best in baseball").

But given that none of these 10 teams has managed to play better than .511 baseball through five months, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of reason to think that any of them can get it together and run away over the last five weeks. More and more, this is looking like a set-up for the kind of wacky finish that cements the wild card’s place in the game’s lore.

I'll take the Marlins in 6.