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Them's Fightin' Words

MFS62 Apr 05 2006 01:36 PM

One of the baseball "specialists" on ESPN radio (Buster Olney?) said yesterday that 9 of the 10 best teams this year are in the American League. He didn't say which NL team makes his list. Do you agree? Later

sharpie Apr 05 2006 01:39 PM

Yankees-Red Sox-White Sox-Twins-Indians-Angels-A's. Then who? Rangers? Blue Jays? Better than Braves, Cards, Astros, Mets and Phillies? I think not. You can make a case for those first seven.

Frayed Knot Apr 05 2006 01:57 PM

I think the balance of power tilts towards the AL this year (as it did last year) although trying to predict it team-by-team will usually prove flawed at this time of year. I had mentioned in another thread about how most pundits agree to some extent with what Olney said, with a piece in [url=http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-talent-gap/]The Hardball Times[/url] making an attempt to quantify why. The NL has won the head-to-head in IL play in most years (and has an overall edge) since its inception, although the AL won by a substantial amount last season. Using post-season play - like AS Games - doesn't show much IMO since it only involves 2 teams and a small smaple size. In general over the last half-dozen or so years, the AL seems to have had more teams on both extremes: several teams that were as good or better than the NL's best but also several of ML's bottom feeders, while the NL teams were more squashed towards the middle.