Sorry, The National League Still Sucks (Part 1)
IN the interleague
era (1997-2013) the American League has been dominant over the National League.
If we take the years 1997-2009 the AL has an 8-5 lead in World Series and went
unbeaten (with 1 tie) in the All Star Game. But it’s a different story if we
look at the records of the leagues in Interleague Play:
Year G
NL AL
214
|
97
|
117
|
.547
|
||
224
|
114
|
110
|
.509
|
||
251
|
116
|
135
|
.538
|
||
251
|
136
|
115
|
.542
|
||
252
|
132
|
120
|
.524
|
||
252
|
123
|
129
|
.512
|
||
252
|
115
|
137
|
.544
|
||
252
|
127
|
125
|
.504
|
||
252
|
136
|
116
|
.540
|
||
252
|
154
|
98
|
.611
|
||
252
|
137
|
115
|
.544
|
||
252
|
149
|
103
|
.591
|
||
252
|
138
|
114
|
.548
|
(Data from Wikipedia)
The NL actually had a
good record in the early years of Interleague but since it’s been all American
League.
But in the last 3
years the NL has seemingly been fighting back – 3 straight ASG wins and they’ve
been taking advantage of the subsequent WS home field advantage by winning the
last 3 World Series (2010-SF, 2011-STL, 2012-SF). But if you look at the
Interleague stats for the last 3 years we see the AL is still better:
Year G
NL AL
252
|
134
|
118
|
.532
|
||
252
|
131
|
121
|
.520
|
||
252
|
142
|
110
|
.563
|
This year there maybe
was a hope things might change with Houston going to the AL – Houston are
‘rebuilding’ and thus would suck real hard and help bring the AL down from the
inside. We also would see even leagues – 15 teams in each league. Each team
would play 20 games – giving us 300 games spread throughout the season to sort
out who is the better league.
Looking at overall interleague
record is the best measure we have of the relative strength of the 2 leagues.
We get a large sample of hundreds of games in a year and we get all the teams
in both leagues playing teams from the other league.
As for this year – it’s
not going very well so far, as at 6/29 the AL is giving it to the NL after 175
games the AL leads 92-83 for a winning percentage of .526. It’s better than in
previous years but the AL is still winning. The AL is winning even with Houston
playing in the AL. In fact Houston is 8-7 in Interleague play.
But maybe the
schedule so far has been biased to the good AL teams (Tex, Det, et al) playing
the dregs of the NL (Miami, Milwaukee, Marlins, etc), and the remaining 125
interleague games will have all the good NL teams beating up Houston. Actually
it’s slightly the opposite. On average, teams have played 11-12 interleague games.
Houston have played more (15 games), Minnesota have played 19 of their games. While
Pittsburgh (remember that they are a good team now) and Atlanta have played 14.
In fact if you take
the intra-league (non-interleague) records of every team and weight it to how
many interleague games they’ve played the AL has actually been sending their
lesser teams to face the NL. The average non-interleague record of AL teams in
interleague games is 0.490 (i.e. lesser AL teams have been playing more
interleague games than the better teams), while the average NL team is .502.
[calculations at end of article]
So don’t let the All
Star Games and the World Series results fool you – the AL is still better. Of
course that doesn’t mean Pittsburgh isn’t awesome. It’s like with divisions –
look at the standings and you’ll see the NL East is a lesser division than the
NL Central, which boasts 3 awesome teams. In the second part of this post I’ll
analyse some possible explanations for the suckiness of the Senior Circuit.
Overall
|
Interleague
|
Non-Interleague
|
|||||||
AL
|
W
|
L
|
Games
|
W
|
L
|
W
|
L
|
%
|
(%)x(Games)
|
49
|
34
|
6
|
4
|
2
|
45
|
32
|
0.584416
|
3.506493506
|
|
46
|
36
|
9
|
5
|
4
|
41
|
32
|
0.561644
|
5.054794521
|
|
42
|
38
|
12
|
5
|
7
|
37
|
31
|
0.544118
|
6.529411765
|
|
42
|
39
|
10
|
9
|
1
|
33
|
38
|
0.464789
|
4.647887324
|
|
40
|
40
|
14
|
9
|
5
|
31
|
35
|
0.469697
|
6.575757576
|
|
43
|
36
|
9
|
4
|
5
|
39
|
31
|
0.557143
|
5.014285714
|
|
43
|
38
|
11
|
7
|
4
|
36
|
34
|
0.514286
|
5.657142857
|
|
37
|
41
|
11
|
5
|
6
|
32
|
35
|
0.477612
|
5.253731343
|
|
36
|
41
|
19
|
8
|
11
|
28
|
30
|
0.482759
|
9.172413793
|
|
32
|
46
|
13
|
5
|
8
|
27
|
38
|
0.415385
|
5.4
|
|
47
|
34
|
13
|
7
|
6
|
40
|
28
|
0.588235
|
7.647058824
|
|
47
|
35
|
11
|
8
|
3
|
39
|
32
|
0.549296
|
6.042253521
|
|
38
|
43
|
12
|
4
|
8
|
34
|
35
|
0.492754
|
5.913043478
|
|
35
|
46
|
10
|
4
|
6
|
31
|
40
|
0.43662
|
4.366197183
|
|
30
|
51
|
15
|
8
|
7
|
22
|
44
|
0.333333
|
5
|
|
175
|
92
|
83
|
85.78047141
|
||||||
Int. Record:
|
0.526
|
Ave. Record:
|
0.490
|
||||||
Overall
|
Interleague
|
Non-Interleague
|
|||||||
NL
|
W
|
L
|
Games
|
W
|
L
|
W
|
L
|
%
|
(%)x(Games)
|
47
|
34
|
14
|
7
|
7
|
40
|
27
|
0.597015
|
8.358208955
|
|
40
|
40
|
15
|
9
|
6
|
31
|
34
|
0.476923
|
7.153846154
|
|
39
|
42
|
14
|
5
|
9
|
34
|
33
|
0.507463
|
7.104477612
|
|
33
|
44
|
10
|
8
|
2
|
25
|
42
|
0.373134
|
3.731343284
|
|
28
|
51
|
11
|
3
|
8
|
25
|
43
|
0.367647
|
4.044117647
|
|
50
|
30
|
14
|
11
|
3
|
39
|
27
|
0.590909
|
8.272727273
|
|
49
|
31
|
11
|
5
|
6
|
44
|
25
|
0.637681
|
7.014492754
|
|
46
|
35
|
11
|
5
|
6
|
41
|
29
|
0.585714
|
6.442857143
|
|
34
|
45
|
13
|
9
|
4
|
25
|
41
|
0.378788
|
4.924242424
|
|
32
|
47
|
12
|
3
|
9
|
29
|
38
|
0.432836
|
5.194029851
|
|
42
|
38
|
6
|
3
|
3
|
39
|
35
|
0.527027
|
3.162162162
|
|
41
|
41
|
15
|
3
|
12
|
38
|
29
|
0.567164
|
8.507462687
|
|
40
|
41
|
12
|
6
|
6
|
34
|
35
|
0.492754
|
5.913043478
|
|
38
|
42
|
8
|
2
|
6
|
36
|
36
|
0.5
|
4
|
|
36
|
43
|
9
|
4
|
5
|
32
|
38
|
0.457143
|
4.114285714
|
|
175
|
83
|
92
|
87.93729714
|
||||||
Int. Record:
|
0.474
|
Ave. Record:
|
0.502
|
||||||
