Every AL East team has winning record; is it the toughest division?
The Blue Jays' win over the Orioles on Saturday afternoon means every team in the AL East is above .500. Is this again baseball's best division?
By
Dayn Perry
•
1 min read
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On Saturday, the Blue Jays nipped the Orioles and, in doing so, moved above the .500 mark for the first time since July 29 of last year. That outcome also does this to the current American League East standings ...
Yep: We're in late(ish) June, and all five teams in the AL East now have a winning record. That's impressive, and it raises the issue of whether the AL East is baseball's toughest division. In order to get a better grasp on an answer, let's compare each of baseball's six loops ...
| Which division is the toughest? | |||
| Division | Games over/under .500 | Run differential | Avg. Power Ranking |
| AL East | +33 | +111 | 10.6 |
| AL Central | -8 | +39 | 18.0 |
| AL West | -16 | -86 | 17.0 |
| NL East | -30 | -170 | 20.6 |
| NL Central | +23 | +122 | 12.2 |
| NL West | -2 | -16 | 14.6 |
Here's what you see above ... First is each division's cumulative games over/under .500 against teams from outside the division. Next is each division's cumulative run differential against foreign hordes, and then we've listed the average and most recent Power Ranking for each division (thanks to Street Fightin' Matt Snyder for his weekly yeoman's work on those).
As you can see, the discussion largely comes down to the AL East and NL Central. The NL Central is better at the top, but the AL East is certainly deeper, as its intra-division schedule affords no games against teams as bad as the Cubs and Brewers. Not in the discussion for best division? The NL East, which is simply awful outside of the Braves.
Partisans of the NL East and AL West will be tempted to dismiss these marks because of the respective presences of the Marlins and Astros. But you can't do that. When assessing the strengths of divisions, the back end matters, especially in this, the era of the unbalanced schedule.
In any event, we're coming up on the halfway mark of the season, and the choice between the AL East and NL Central as best division largely comes down to whether you place more value on the excellence of a division's top teams or the overall strength of each and every team. So ... AL East or NL Central? At this juncture, there's no other answer.
