And while it might be fun to see somebody overcome the odds and succeed, the real Olympics is a better event.

There is nothing exciting or difficult about making a double switch (except, theoretically, you take out another good player for a bad player). “Arena Baseball” is a much more logical evolution of the sport, and the AL’s dominance, I think, is proving that.

Baseball more than any other sport is both prone to change and prone to having change criticized because of its timeless, pastoral nature. It reminds people of all the things that once were and it brings back memories for old folks who wish they could be 12 years old again. It’s that mentality and nothing else that keeps the NL DH-less.

Any game where old fat guys, who are basically glorified pinch hitters, get $8M annual contracts, while pitchers are delicate flowers who should never do anything as “dangerous” as pick up a bat or gasp! slide, is clearly inferior to a sport where all players are athletes.

Barry Zito and Doug Davis would make a lot of AL rotations. When was Greg Maddux ever in the American League?

Despite an aesthetically superior game, NL teams are obviously weaker in general than AL teams, and have been for the past four years, as NSJ demonstrates in the article. The DH has nothing to do with this. Rather it’s the ultra-competitiveness of the late 1990’s Yankees, and then everyone else in the AL successfully striving hard to catch up during this decade that moved the AL ahead. If any NL team (Braves, Dodgers, Mets, Cubs, Giants) had been as ambitious as the Yankees were in the 1990’s the NL might be dominant right now.

I got really really angry every time i saw a headline questioning AL superiority a few months back – there were a number of them. And they all pointed to this youth movement of hitters in the NL.

I never understood why 90% of these articles didn’t even broach the subject of worse NL pitching. it just didnt make any sense. it was like watching Little Leaguers and saying, wow all these kids are hitting .350! they must be better than American League hitters.

was i missing something? i feel like i must be.

and yes, loved your examples of Lilly, Arroyo. i noticed them as well. Harang too (2005-2007)

I am an A’s fan but I hate the DH and prefer National League baseball. I don’t have a problem with the general ineffectiveness of pitchers at the plate. I do have a problem with players in the game who do not participate in both offense and defense. It’s supposed to be our nine against your nine. If you want your big lumbering slugger in the game, you have to take the risk of exposing his liabilities in the field. If you want your dominant pitcher in the game, he has to swing and run and slide just like everyone else. I would be thrilled if the A’s would once again have a roster of 25 baseball players instead of twelve baseball players, a guy who hits, and twelve guys who pitch. Oh, to have a pitcher like Blue Moon Odom again! Adding the DH to the game was a huge step towards the pussification of baseball. If you have any doubts about this, watch an A’s Cactus League game where the A’s don’t even allow their pitchers to swing the bat out of fear they’ll injure themselves. That is a total disgrace!

may be a paradox, but it isn’t an oxymoron.

(If you had said they were growing younger, then you might have a case.)

what’s up with A’s fans and your inferiority complex (take that with a grain of salt because I’m a Giants fan ok?). constantly trying to figure out new ways to convince yourself you have the best run organization in MLB (although i think you have to be biting your tongue seeing the Rays holding that torch right now). and when that salt loses its savor you move on to,”Well, look! our league is better!!!1” Which league is better? is it really worth arguing about…or writing a dissertation about?

The rosters are built differently because of the DH rule, basically meaning every AL team should have 1 more starter quality bat in their lineup at all times/1st bat off the bench during an interleague game in a NL park. It’s not obvious on the surface, but playing with or without the DH completely changes the way an organization builds their rosters 1-25, and your analytical minds should realize that. statistics dont carry the day here because your trying to compare apples and oranges. Does the AL score more runs? ok. Does that make it a better league? no, because one doesn’t prove the other, and the 2 leagues cant be compared better/worse to one another based on stats because the AL and the NL play a different game of baseball, period.

but overall anyones preference is obviously just personal taste.  personally, I cant get behind the idea of a DH, because when i grew up playing baseball down at the park, everyone who played would hit and play in the field, its just the purist form of baseball. if you're a DH, you're not a baseball player, you're a hitter. The thing with being frustrated with watching a pitcher hit has merit, but to me the solution is, "learn to hit, Meat!", it's ridiculous that these athletes have the hardest time even laying down bunts, but thats no reason to change the rules of greatest game ever invented.

Your Zito argument is bunk to me because of our ability to say in hindsight, "look how much he suxxxxx!" If he didn't totally completely forget how to pitch (and dont respond about his declining peripherals before he left oakland, i know this already) since coming to S.F, he shoulda still been a solid #3 in either league for a few more years--def not worth his contract obviously though, but still a decent enough pitcher. anyways, i dont know why i'm writing this, frustration over my own sucky team probably.

Mostly I just hate the snarky attitude many of the posts on here have. I read them here because as a fan base you all seem to keep up on most prospects in baseball as a whole more than others, and thats what I’m intersted in to a degree, and you have a large community of posters which is cool, but the attitude just kills me lol, it’s so condescending all the time!

my conclusion= comparing the leagues is ridiculous, at least statistically, it’s almost (and i use this term loosely) like looking at the stats of a WR in the Arena football league and then the stats of a WR in the NFL, and then basing your decision of who is better on their stats; doesn’t work, its a different game.

my points are neither poignant or precise, but thats what these fan blogs are all about so i'm gonna follow through and post this.

Does anyone have it? I know the A’s have the most wins vs. the NL since 2001, but what is our overall Interleague Record? Thx!

Apparently you came here to disparage A’s fans by claiming we have an inferiority complex - which, as a confessed Giaunts fan, you wisely didn’t even attempt to support with comparative evidence. Even if one were to accept your position that the Rays’ mildly better mid-season record makes them a better-run team (and I’d note that the difference between the A’s and Rays is a lot smaller than, say, the difference between the A’s and your team), their success is a recent phenomenon. They are also built on a somewhat similar model. Anyway, good for them - we’ll see where we both are at season’s end, and beyond.

As a more general comment which may/not go to your other point about incomparability, I think to call anything that goes on during a baseball game “strategy” vastly dignifies it. It’s “tactics” at best, sometimes cleverly conceived, but very rarely brilliant. “Strategy” is much more fundamental and far-reaching—like how you go about building a team, over a substantial number of seasons. I think NSJ’s points above, and much other consistent evidence, contributes to a pretty sound conclusion that the AL enjoys a strategic advantage, and plays a better brand of baseball.

Has there been any inquiry of the DH effect on defense?

Do AL teams, with the DH spot available, have better defense? I would guess that most NL teams have to sacrifice defense for hitting more often.