FanPost

Is AL Central really the best?

You've heard it all year long, and I heard it again in the Angels/Tigers pregame: "The red-hot Twins, the World Champion White Sox, and the Tigers: First place in baseball's toughest division."  This got me thinking, so I did a little research.  Let's look at the average win totals by division.

AL East: 68.0 wins per team
AL Central: 71.4 wins per team
AL West: 71.0 wins per team

For fun, here's the NL:

NL East: 69.0 wpt
NL Central: 63.2 wpt
NL West:67.6 wpt

So there you go.  The AL Central is the toughest, but not by as much as you'd think.  If the Angels win tonight, which they may with Escobar on the hill (7-0 lifetime vs. Detroit), our WPT would be at 71.25.  That's less that 1 division-wide win.  Why hasn't the west been hyped?  Besides East-coast bias, I think it's because the west doesn't have 100 game winners every year, we rarely have the best team in baseball.  I believe the last time that happened it was the Mariners.  What we do have is four decent teams that have a legitimate chance of winning every night no matter who they play.  The East and Cetral have punching bags at the bottom of their division, all we have are the very capable (except against us) Mariners.

Here's a fun fact: using this measurement, the NL East is stronger than the AL East.  What a difference Ortiz and Ramirez make.