With the DH, the AL attracts hitters with limited defensive skills--big deal, you say, the Cubs do that too!

Who is this even referring to?

My quick response: Yes. Yankee-Boston rivalry (which creates a general arms race for talent in the AL, particularly in the AL East) and the DH.

and the DH

I don't buy it. The DH has existed for 36 years now and AL superiority goes back maybe 5 years (the NL won the inter-league series and the World Series in 2003). What the AL superiority coincides with is the separation of the Yankees from the rest of baseball in terms of payroll level and the acquisition of the Red Sox by John Henry.

It's payroll. Subtract the Yankees from the AL and maybe the other extreme outlier, the Marlins, from the NL, compare payrolls (very similar) and records (very similar). Voila, there's your answer: the NL doesn't have the Yankees.

Subtract the Yankees from the AL and...the Marlins, from the NL,

WOO! We made it, boys, we're in rarefied air!

That's kind of my point, though (the Yankees and Red Sox create an arms race for talent in the AL that doesn't exist in the NL).

The one good thing that I see happening with the NL is the emergence of the Phillies as a power to be reckoned with. I've written about this before, but I think that is one of the best long term developments for baseball in general, and for the NL in particular: if nothing else, having a top notch Phillies franchise means that Mets and Braves (and even the Marlins and Nats) have to work extra hard to get to the playoffs every year.

However, some of the impact of the emergence of Philly is going to be lost in the divorce firesales of the Padres and (particularly) the Dodgers.

Voila, there's your answer: the NL doesn't have the Yankees.

The Yankees are not solely responsible for the AL's superiority in interleague play or All Star games.

They need more pinch hitters, defensive substitutions, and guys who can be scrappy.

Rhat rabout ry rephew, ruys?

- SD

The Yankees are not solely responsible for the AL's superiority in interleague play or All Star games.

No, but the Yankees and Red Sox slugfest (with each bringing some combination of smarts and deep pockets) has likely lifted the bar for Al playoff contention. The big market counterparts in the NL have not created a similar situation.

It could also just be part cylical.

Kiko's main point is there's no real reason to believe the DH has anything to do with it, unless such an advantage had a strange 30-year gestation period.

Since 1998, the NL employs an average of 191 hitters more than the AL does--almost 12 per team. That can’t be explained away to pitchers only, because a handful of pitchers per AL team get ABs during IL games.

This is terribly either lazy or misleading math. In terms of absolute number of players, the NL employs 14% more players simply by virtue of having two extra teams. And rather than waving away the pitcher issue, why not address it head-on by removing pitchers?

For 2009, 320 non-pitchers had at least one PA for an American League team - dividing by 14 that gives us 22.9 hitters per team. In the National League, 377 non-pitchers (*) had at least one PA - dividing by 16 that gives us 23.6 hitters per team. So, NL teams used 0.7 additional non-pitcher hitters per team in 2009 - not quite 12 (unless he meant to say 12 total players over the last 11 years (1.1 per team per year), in which case it's closer to true but still damn misleading).

(*) source: BB-Ref. I excluded anybody who's "Summary Pos." was either "1" or "/1". If some pitcher played an inning in left field or something (and got a PA at some point), I'm probably including him.

The one good thing that I see happening with the NL is the emergence of the Phillies as a power to be reckoned with. I've written about this before, but I think that is one of the best long term developments for baseball in general, and for the NL in particular:

Great...in 2040, I eagerly look forward to the new Broadway smash "Damn Phillies," in which a Washington Nationals fan sells his soul to the devil. (Well, since by 2040 the culture will likely have further coarsened, the title may be something more aurally alliterative with "Phillies," if you catch my drift.)

Would that also mean that the collapse of 1964 would become the Phils' equivalent of Jack Chesbro's wild pitch in 1904, an aberration prior to excellence?

Kiko, thanks for breaking that down. I was puzzling over how he came up with those numbers, since they seemed to be completely out of line with my expectations.

At one time I had similar thoughts about why the AL is better than the NL, but now I'm not buying it. I think it's mostly the AL has bigger markets and more revenue, so more talent flows that direction.

The Yankees are not solely responsible for the AL's superiority in interleague play or All Star games.

It was partly hyperbole: SoSH U got it right.

But on All-Star games, take half of the Yankees' All-Stars: A-Rod, Jeter, Rivera, Posada, Cano, Texeira, Sabathia, etc. - and put them on the NL team and see how the two "leagues" fare against each other.

The Yankees are in their own payroll tier, and there's no NL counterpart. At the other end, the same is true of the Marlins (although they tend to do surprisingly well in the standings given their payrolls).

The other issue is that the 2nd tier of payrolls in the NL includes some lousy teams - Mets, Cubs - with nobody really putting together a recent run like the Angels and Red Sox. But there's nothing to prevent a well-off NL team from doing something similar, and the Phillies and maybe the Dodgers look to be moving in that direction. At which point, the difference will boil down to just the Yankees (and I suspect that even they are going to slide back toward the rest of MLB in terms of payroll when Big George passes on).

My article in this year's Hardball Times Annual examines this issue.

My conclusion is that the DH has nothing at all to do with it. Fundamentally it's driven by superior farm system production from AL franchises overall, which itself might be driven to some extent by the Yankees/Red Sox arms race.

As for these things being cyclical, that might be the case, but history suggests that the cycles occur in spans of decades, not years.

The Yankees are not solely responsible for the AL's superiority in interleague play or All Star games.

Not solely, but having them and the Red Sox in the same division raises the bar for every other AL team to even be in contention. One of those two teams is (generally) going to win 95 games and come in second. That means every other AL team that wants to compete either has to win their division or beat whoever comes in second in the AL East. There's no rivalry like that in the NL, where being a 90-ish win team can give you a fair shot of making it into the playoffs. It always seems like there's still a scrum of potential NL playoff teams when the AL ones are pulling away.

So if the average AL team has to be stronger, then that's going to affect the All-Star team; the whole bell curve is shifted further in one direction, so taking the top 10% is going to get you a better sample, even though there are more NL teams. Interleague, too.

Of course, interleague is also going to be affected by the fact that the DH gives the AL team an advantage both home and away: At the home park, they're starting a really good hitter while the NL team is starting a fourth outfielder; at the NL park, the fact that the AL manager isn't used to double-switching or removing a pitcher because his spot is up next in the line-up is more than countered by the fact that he has a nuclear weapon on the bench and the NL guy has a slingshot.

(It might be nice to have the NL make some sort of rule change to give them an edge in roster construction, but I can't think of anything that would offset the DH)

When was the last time that an NL team was thought to be the truly dominant team in MLB? 1975/6 with the Reds? Since 1987, the All Star game has been dominated by the AL. Since the same year, an NL team has won the World Series 8 times (out of 22 contests), and has been the favorite probably exactly once (2006?). I think the AL has been the de facto superior league for years. It just took a while for people to recognize it since they were still living under the impression that the NL had a more aggressive style of play that hearkened back to the dead ball era.

(It might be nice to have the NL make some sort of rule change to give them an edge in roster construction, but I can't think of anything that would offset the DH)

Not necessary. They can simply spend the same amount of money on the other eight starters that the average AL team expends on nine. So the AL has a big advatnage in the ninth position, but the NL has an incremental edge in all the rest of the positions.

The AL has had better teams in the last 5-7 years. It happens. The DH has nothing to do with it, in or out of interleague play.

When was the last time that an NL team was thought to be the truly dominant team in MLB? 1975/6 with the Reds?

The 1986 Mets were truly, genuinely dominant. The Sox should have won the damn series, but they were still a vastly inferior team overall.

14. has me wondering.... are the amount teams spend on farm systems/player development public? Or as public as MLB salaries?

Who gets the most out of the farm system $?

(Obviously draft order plays a role here)

When was the last time that an NL team was thought to be the truly dominant team in MLB? 1975/6 with the Reds? Since 1987, the All Star game has been dominated by the AL. Since the same year, an NL team has won the World Series 8 times (out of 22 contests), and has been the favorite probably exactly once (2006?). I think the AL has been the de facto superior league for years. It just took a while for people to recognize it since they were still living under the impression that the NL had a more aggressive style of play that hearkened back to the dead ball era.

The strength of its best team isn't a particularly good metric of overall league strength, thus WS results are a very weak indicator. ASG results are better than that, but the sample size is microscopic, and of course the game itself isn't exactly played to win.

The best metrics of league strength are, in order, (1) the results of interleague play, and (2) the comparative aggregate performance of players who shift leagues.

We have data for the latter going back many decades, of course. (Thank you, Sean Smith!) It indicates that the NL was dramatically stronger in the 1950s and 1960s. For the 1970s and '80s, it suggests the leagues as roughly equivalent, with a slight edge to the AL, and then a pronounced advantage to the AL for both the 1990s and 2000s, though not as strong as the NL's advantage was in the '50s and '60s.

For the more direct metric, interleague play, we of course only have a little over 10 years worth of data. What it indicates is a slight advantage to the NL from 1997 through 2004, but then a sudden and dramatic advantage for the AL every season from 2005 through 2009.

Maybe the American League outperforming these metrics for so many years in a row can just be attributed to luck.

Not necessary. They can simply spend the same amount of money on the other eight starters that the average AL team expends on nine. So the AL has a big advatnage in the ninth position, but the NL has an incremental edge in all the rest of the positions.

This, a million times this. Anyone who thinks the DH gives AL teams an advantage is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. They are better because they spend more money. It is as simple as that.

Of course, interleague is also going to be affected by the fact that the DH gives the AL team an advantage both home and away: At the home park, they're starting a really good hitter while the NL team is starting a fourth outfielder; at the NL park, the fact that the AL manager isn't used to double-switching or removing a pitcher because his spot is up next in the line-up is more than countered by the fact that he has a nuclear weapon on the bench and the NL guy has a slingshot.

Pitcher hitting 2009:
NL: .138/.179/.176
AL: .095/.126/.131

Of course, I'm sure that's more than made up for by the nuclear option of Ken Griffey Jr, Andruw Jones, Marcus Thames, or Mike Jacobs.

I've always assumed the difference was just the AL payroll advantage. But over the past 5 years, 13 of the 14 AL teams have an interleague pythag of over .500 (and the 14th is .491). It does not appear to be a function only of Boston and NYY's strength.

And the AL teams actually are stronger away than at home, relative to H/A expecations. Home pythag is .598 (about .060 above normal HFA), while away pythag is .545 (+.085).

And the AL teams actually are stronger away than at home, relative to H/A expecations. Home pythag is .598 (about .060 above normal HFA), while away pythag is .545 (+.085).

Are those figures compared to normal H/R winning percentage, or normal H/R pythag?

The NL will only get worse. I think the best team in the league will still be able to compete come World Series time, but the overall gap won’t turn around any time soon.

Well, now NL fans are beginning to know what we AL fans went through from the mid-50's through the late 60's. I extend my deepest sympathies.

We have data for the latter going back many decades, of course. (Thank you, Sean Smith!) It indicates that the NL was dramatically stronger in the 1950s and 1960s. For the 1970s and '80s, it suggests the leagues as roughly equivalent, with a slight edge to the AL, and then a pronounced advantage to the AL for both the 1990s and 2000s, though not as strong as the NL's advantage was in the '50s and '60s.

For the more direct metric, interleague play, we of course only have a little over 10 years worth of data. What it indicates is a slight advantage to the NL from 1997 through 2004, but then a sudden and dramatic advantage for the AL every season from 2005 through 2009.

That seems about right. As lopsided as things have been lately, it can't yet compare to the imbalance of the 50's and 60's. If you look at the true A-level players, the NL has a much greater percentage of them today (even allowing for the two extra teams) than the AL did back then. Once you got past Mantle, Williams, Berra, Ford, Kaline, and the late 60's Yaz, it was downright embarrassing, and you can thank Mr. Jas. Crow for that.

Are those figures compared to normal H/R winning percentage, or normal H/R pythag?

I was comparing to win%, but is there any difference?

Once you got past Mantle, Williams, Berra, Ford, Kaline, and the late 60's Yaz, it was downright embarrassing, and you can thank Mr. Jas. Crow for that.

Yes. There were two clear and obvious explanations for the NL's superiority in the 1950s and '60s (and I strongly suspect it held through until somewhere in the late '70s): the first was certainly the AL's dramatically slower pace of racial integration, and the second was the NL's much more rapid grabbing of the most lucrative new markets in the '50s and '60s: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and Atlanta, while the AL countered only with Baltimore, Kansas City, and Minneapolis-St. Paul. The AL was second to arrive in both southern California and the Bay Area. These location advantages allowed the NL to build upon the attendance/broadcast revenue superiority it had achieved by the mid-1950s; the attendance advantage the NL enjoyed though the 1960s and well into the '70s was obscene. Nothing approaching it has occurred in any period before or since.

The advantage the AL has gained within the past decade or two, while undeniable, isn't that dramatic, and moreover its causes aren't as distinctly clear.

When was the last time that an NL team was thought to be the truly dominant team in MLB? 1975/6 with the Reds?

I find this question interesting independent of the question of league strength. Actually, after so much burping and barfing about league strength over the last couple of years, I actually find this question considerably MORE interesting than the one about league strength. I'd say that there was a brief period when the Cardinals were a truly dominant team, but that really peaked around the time that the two leagues started to separate (2004, when they won 105 games and stacked up nicely against the Red Sox and Yankees, WS sweep regardless). Before that, only the mid-80s Mets come to mind. Meanwhile, the AL has experienced periods of dominance from Toronto and New York.

And, after writing all those sentences, the Atlanta Braves come to mind. How easily one forgets.

I was comparing to win%, but is there any difference?

If you use Runs/game, there's a bias in Pythag against the home team because home teams bat less often. Runs/inning should work fine, since it would correct for this. Otherwise, you should bump up home team Runs Scored by 4-5% before calculating your Pythags.

The strength of its best team isn't a particularly good metric of overall league strength, thus WS results are a very weak indicator.

I would generally agree with this for any given year because it can happen that a team has a flukey good year and makes it to the World Series. But when you couple the AL teams dominating by winning the Series for 14 out of 22 years with the perception that the NL champion has been generally thought to be the weaker team (2006 and 1986 excepted), it indicates to me that we have generally thought the AL the better league. As the data shows, there really haven't been a lot of dominant NL teams for a long time, and the league as a whole has been less dominant.

Yes. There were two clear and obvious explanations for the NL's superiority in the 1950s and '60s (and I strongly suspect it held through until somewhere in the late '70s): the first was certainly the AL's dramatically slower pace of racial integration, and the second was the NL's much more rapid grabbing of the most lucrative new markets in the '50s and '60s: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and Atlanta, while the AL countered only with Baltimore, Kansas City, and Minneapolis-St. Paul. The AL was second to arrive in both southern California and the Bay Area. These location advantages allowed the NL to build upon the attendance/broadcast revenue superiority it had achieved by the mid-1950s; the attendance advantage the NL enjoyed though the 1960s and well into the '70s was obscene. Nothing approaching it has occurred in any period before or since.


Holy crap, you're right.

Atlanta Braves come to mind

But with the Braves, winning the NL East never seemed to be that much of a challenge. That is, it wasn't that they were so good, but that the teams they competed against were so bad. And given the utter failure of the team in the post-season (in light of their extreme success during the regular season), they just don't seem to merit the label "dominant."

Yeah, I had the same series of thoughts, but I thought about getting stabbed in the neck, and decided to guard against it.

14. Steve Treder Posted: December 02, 2009 at 04:15 PM (#3401547)

My article in this year's Hardball Times Annual examines this issue.

My conclusion is that the DH has nothing at all to do with it. Fundamentally it's driven by superior farm system production from AL franchises overall, which itself might be driven to some extent by the Yankees/Red Sox arms race.

I haven't had a chance to find your article yet, but I was wondering how far you extend the advantage of having a DH. In other words, the elite talents like Arod tend to get the longer contracts, and AL teams get to mitigate the risk of the back end of those contracts by having the DH. So, while Arod isn't a DH yet, the Yankees reap his peak years in part b/c they can slide him over to DH.

I don't know enough (anything) about the business side of the game, but I wonder if long-term contracts weren't as popular in the past. Thus, this indirect DH advantage is only now becoming visible.

Before that, only the mid-80s Mets come to mind.

Mid 80's Cards have to be in the discussion too.

Once you got past Mantle, Williams, Berra, Ford, Kaline, and the late 60's Yaz, it was downright embarrassing, and you can thank Mr. Jas. Crow for that.

Can you quantify the gap between the two leagues? Does it put a dent in our evaluation of these greats?

With the DH, the AL attracts hitters with limited defensive skills--big deal, you say, the Cubs do that too!

Who is this even referring to?

On the Cubs? Milton Bradley, Fox, DeRosa when he was with the Cubs. Aaron Miles, for one...

Aaron Miles, for one

I thought that Aaron Miles' defensive skills were less limited than his offensive ones.

My conclusion is that the DH has nothing at all to do with it. Fundamentally it's driven by superior farm system production from AL franchises overall, which itself might be driven to some extent by the Yankees/Red Sox arms race.

I wonder if the AL's drafting edge has to due with their willingness to draft defensively limited hitters because of the possibility of the DH (both because the hitters can move there if they prove defensively deficient, and because it can be used to get a third fist basemen/left fielder into the lineup). I suspect that it's not a significant advantage, but I occasionally hear "he's a slugger with no position" used as justification for National League teams passing on such players by draft gurus.

I thought that Aaron Miles' defensive skills were less limited than his offensive ones.

Dividing by zero will cause a rupture in the space time continuum. Anyway, Miles is one of those guys who can play a bunch of positions but poorly. He's certainly not a DH kinda guy, but anyone claiming that he's on the team for defense should have his head examined.

But with the Braves, winning the NL East never seemed to be that much of a challenge. That is, it wasn't that they were so good, but that the teams they competed against were so bad. And given the utter failure of the team in the post-season (in light of their extreme success during the regular season), they just don't seem to merit the label "dominant."

Winning their division may not have been much of a challenge, but the unbalanced schedule wasn't introduced until 1997, so the quality of the division was irrelevant to their overall record for their first 5 division titles and 4 world series appearances.

One stray factoid is that the Asian players who have been much good in the past five years have been AL players: Ichiro, Matsui, Johjima, Matsuzaka, Choo, Wang. Only the established Japanese stars cost a lot, though. And some NL teams have shelled out for Japanese talent too (Fukudome), but that talent hasn't panned out quite as well.

The numbers are tiny compared to the players' celebrity, and it really isn't symptomatic of anything except the Yankees and Red Sox in particular being very rich and very smart. That fact, as several above have stated, has quite a bit to do with the current league disparity.

Anyway, Miles is one of those guys who can play a bunch of positions but poorly.

He's essentially a less versatile Jose Macias.

I wonder if bad long term contracts has anything to do with it... The Jays have Wells, of course, but with the Cubs choking on Soriano, the Giants suffering through Zito, not to mention the only recently deceased Mike Hampton debacle --- when I think of 'bad contracts' -- I think NL teams. Strangle a couple teams with big, long contracts - and I think it has to have some effect on the talent level in the league.

Well, the Dodgers did get two terrific seasons and part of a third from Saito.

(Edit: meant to be a reply to #43.)

The Jays have Wells, of course,

And B.J. Ryan, and nearly Rios, and they got out from under Thomas' contract by some fairly questionable means.

When I think of 'bad contracts' I think of Toronto.

I am not sure that I buy the "Phillies as a dominant team" argument as a reason that the NL will catch up to the AL. Since making the playoffs is all that a team can really plan for in the offseason, does the Phillies winning 92 and 93 games the past two years. Is really that high of a bar? It woud only be good enough to win the Central in the American League, if they were an AL east team they would not have made the playoffs and may have finished fourth once strength of schedule is factored in. I think of this team as a very good one who has had a great couple of postseasons (you could call that 'getting lucky' in the sense that they played well at the right time, though I hate that term). Far from dominant. The 90's Braves, on the other hand, usually had more wins than the 08/09 Phillies. If anything it is that the rise of the Phillies means that there is another big market team that will compete, it is not their 'dominance' because they have not been dominant.

I am not sure that I buy the "Phillies as a dominant team" argument as a reason that the NL will catch up to the AL.

I'm the one who brought up the Phillies, and I didn't make THAT argument.

It does bear mentioning, however, that the Phillies were not really competitive (except for 1993) when the Braves were winning division titles in the 90s and early 00s. So again, the fact that the Phillies are successful right now (and that they are finally properly tapping the revenue streams that were available to them for a very long time) is going to force their competitors (the Mets and the Braves, to a lesser extent the Nats and Marlins) to keep up with them.

Some of that keeping up is going to entail spending more money than they currently are spending (or at least spend more money smartly). And again, that would seem to be to the benefit of the NL.

Having stated the former, I did point out early in this thread that whatever is happening in the NL East is not being repeated in the NL West, where the Padres and Dodgers are being affected by the personal troubles of their owners.

Once you got past Mantle, Williams, Berra, Ford, Kaline, and the late 60's Yaz, it was downright embarrassing, and you can thank Mr. Jas. Crow for that.

Can you quantify the gap between the two leagues? Does it put a dent in our evaluation of these greats?

That's a very tough assignment, but there's plenty of crude evidence of NL superiority in the 50's and 60's: the huge gap in A-level Hall of Famers; the big discrepancy in black stars; the All-Star game results; the Grapefruit League results, which were heavily in favor of the NL teams (and when you consider the number of years, the "small sample size" argument pretty much evaporates); the castoff NL vets who found second life in the AL; etc.

14. has me wondering.... are the amount teams spend on farm systems/player development public? Or as public as MLB salaries?

Who gets the most out of the farm system $?

I'm not aware of any source except one. The figures produced by MLB in 2001 or so, which listed 'national and other local expenses' for all 30 teams, and which included a lot of the non-40-man player costs but also threw in other non-player expenses, like front-office salaries.

The Expos had the lowest, at $35m. The Mariners the highest, at $84m. You can assume fairly safely that the Expos' sum represented the absolute minimum, but who can say how much of the Mariners' $84m was going on the farm system? The total is more than twice the Expos' spending so as a hypothesis one could think that the richer teams probably spend twice what the poorest ones do, and then make some sort of calculation based on WAR or something as a ratio of 50 for a poor team and 100 for a rich one. But it doesn't really give enough information about the middle to equip us to make meaningful judgements across all MLB.

That's a very tough assignment, but there's plenty of crude evidence of NL superiority in the 50's and 60's: the huge gap in A-level Hall of Famers; the big discrepancy in black stars; the All-Star game results; the Grapefruit League results, which were heavily in favor of the NL teams (and when you consider the number of years, the "small sample size" argument pretty much evaporates); the castoff NL vets who found second life in the AL; etc.

More than castoff NL vets, check out Frank Robinson's numbers in the NL from 20-29 and the AL from 30-35:

NL: .303/.389/.554, 150 OPS+
AL: .300/.401/.543, 169 OPS+

Guy went from a 151 OPS+ in his last year with Cincy to a 198 and the triple crown in Baltimore.

Meanwhile, the AL has experienced periods of dominance from Toronto and New York.

And Oakland.

This is one of the very frustrating things about being a Cubs fan.

OK, they don't have the Yanks revenues. But they do have the Red Sox or Angels revenues and could build a team that good. And a team that good would win 95-100 games in the NL year after year.

But as to DeRosa, he was average or better at 2B, OF and 3B with the Cubs. OK, UZR has him as terrible at 2B in 2008 but that wasn't my impression nor, if I recall, ZiPS (and he was fine in 2007). And, c'mon, Miles and Fox are bench players. Hendry doesn't go for defensively incompetent players, except maybe Bradley (who was supposed to crush the ball of course). He doesn't look for defensive whizzes either but Theriot is the only other major defensive risk the Cubs have taken in the last few years but he's been just fine.

That's a very tough assignment, but there's plenty of crude evidence of NL superiority in the 50's and 60's: the huge gap in A-level Hall of Famers; the big discrepancy in black stars; the All-Star game results; the Grapefruit League results, which were heavily in favor of the NL teams (and when you consider the number of years, the "small sample size" argument pretty much evaporates); the castoff NL vets who found second life in the AL; etc.

More than castoff NL vets, check out Frank Robinson's numbers in the NL from 20-29 and the AL from 30-35:

NL: .303/.389/.554, 150 OPS+
AL: .300/.401/.543, 169 OPS+

Guy went from a 151 OPS+ in his last year with Cincy to a 198 and the triple crown in Baltimore.

And just for grins, we can also note that without Frank Robinson's shifting leagues, the NL would likely have won 20 straight All-Star games from 1963 to 1982.