In the world of baseball, few things are certain. If the St. Louis Cardinals can win 84 games in 2007, and then win the World Series, obviously anything can happen. Except, it seems, the National League being better than the American League. But, here at MLJ, we believe it’s not simple enough to just say that the AL is better than the NL. We need to ask: why?

First: payroll. 5 of the top 6 teams in payroll are in the American League (the lone exception being the Mets). Not only would this allow an AL team to sign, say, CC Sabathia or Mark Teixeira in the offseason, but it allows teams to sign players who can help them improve on the margins. The Red Sox could afford to toss a contract Bartolo Colon’s way in a way that a team such as the Pirates would be unable to. But while payroll is important, many teams’ successes have shown that payroll isn’t very important.

Secondly, the two worst run franchises in baseball, the Giants and Astros, are in the NL. And, the Pirates aren’t far behind. The Giants’ main problem is either bad trades (AJ Pierzynski for Boof Bonser, Joe Nathan and  Francisco Liriano anyone?) as well as an over-reliance on veterans who are past their prime (Rich Aurilia, Ray Durham, Omar Vizquel). The Astros have to deal with a meddling owner, who dabbles in the baseball side of things too much, and as a result the Astros have basically had two or three awful drafts in a row. While the NL has to deal with that, the AL has had Billy Beane and Theo Epstein, two of the best GMs in the game, as well as Terry Ryan, who was very good as well up until his retirement.

One other explanation is the fact that the AL has much better rookie and near-rookie pitching. It goes without saying that a good player of 23-25 years of age would be better than his counterpart that is in his late 30s, so finding these good young pitchers is very important. Using PRAR, or Pitching Runs Above Replacement, we find that since divisional play began way back in 1969, the NL has out performed the AL in just six years. But why? Well, one theory is the designated hitter. Young AL pitchers coming up through the minors and in the majors only have to focus on pitching, whereas NL pitchers have to focus on hitting, and more specifically, bunting. When I first read this theory I thought it was farfetched as well, but in fact the AL surpassing the NL in near-rookie pitching coincides almost exactly with the institution of the DH rule.

One thing it definitely is NOT is the DH itself. Many people belive that by getting an extra hitter, AL teams have a huge boost when playing NL teams. This is not the case. Look at some of the EqA’s for AL DH’s this year. (For those of you who don’t know, EqA stands for equivalency average, and it weighs all the skill sets that go into making a good offensive player, and is set on a scale to resemble batting average, so that .260 is average.)

Travis Hafner: .237
Billy Butler: .255
Jose Vidro: .188

Obviously I am cherry picking a bit with those three, but most others aren’t much better, and it looks even worse when you consider that you need basically a .300 EqA at the minimum to be worth it. Baseball Prospectus’s Joe Sheehan more eloquently stated this point in a column, even pointing out that a lot of NL teams have players better suited for an AL DH role than most AL DHs.

So, while there may not be one overhanging reason why the AL is better than the NL, all of the reasons above added together give us a good start explaining why.

* Special hat-tip to Baseball Prospectus and Baseball Between the Numbers.

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