The AL is king, and don't expect this to change in '06

dirty · Mar 30, 2006

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD noWrap>March 29, 2006
By Scott Miller
CBS SportsLine.com Senior Writer
Tell Scott your opinion!
</TD><TD width=10> </TD><TD align=right><SCRIPT language=JavaScript></SCRIPT><SCRIPT src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/sponsorships.spln.com/fs/stories/mlb;arena=mlb;feat=stories;type=psa;user=Named;ct=USA;st=GA;ac=770;gend=M;age=B;seg=nonaol;ctype=lan;lang=en-us;lang=en-us;vpmp=yes;adv=a;cust=yes;fteam=NFL-ATL;fteam=NBA-ATL;fteam=MLB-ATL;fteam=NHL-ATL;fteam=NCAAF-GATECH;fteam=NCAAB-GATECH;pteam=NFL-none;pteam=NBA-DAL;pteam=NBA-DEN;pteam=NBA-SAC;pteam=NHL-none;pteam=NCAAF-GA;pteam=NCAAB-DUKE;pteam=NCAAB-NC;fplay=TEN-none;fplay=AUTO-none;pplay=TEN-none;pplay=AUTO-none;vip=no;u=dirtydy1;sz=234x42;tile=5;ord=8622993775717522?"></SCRIPT>

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</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>As Porter Wagoner of the Country Music Hall of Fame once philosophized in song, Sun Don't Shine (On the Same Dog Every Day).
Or, as Catfish Hunter of the baseball Hall of Fame later interpreted, "The sun don't shine on the same dog's ass all the time."
<TABLE width="45%" align=left><TBODY><TR><TD><OBJECT id=VHSS codeBase=http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0 height=173 width=230 classid=clsid

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<EMBED src="http://vhost.oddcast.com/vhsssecure.php?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fvhost.oddcast.com%2Fgetshow.php%3Facc%3D18512%26ss%3D288310%26sl%3D613757%26embedid%3Df835dc6175dfae41cb287fac4ab5e122&edit=0&acc=18512&loading=1&bgcolor=0xFFFFFF&firstslide=1" swLiveConnect=true NAME="VHSS" quality=high scale=noborder bgcolor=#FFFFFF WIDTH=230 HEIGHT=173 TYPE="application/x-shockwave-flash" PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></EMBED></OBJECT>Do you remember the last time the NL won a World Series game? Scott Miller does -- barely. Click play to hear more.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>However you split the hair of this dog, be it in the heartbreak parlance of country music or in the earthy language of the dugout, one thing is clear. The American League is enjoying an extended period of ultra-violet rays and warmth, of rolling around in the sun and contentedly scratching itself in the backyard grass ... while the National League is entering another summer of being shut in the shade of the dog house.
As baseball swings into the 2006 season, few things are more predictable than this:
If you're looking for power, dominance, Q-rating, raw muscle, sexiness, household names, a good party, winning lottery tickets and, oh yes, the eventual World Series winner, the AL clearly is where it's at.
Not only has the AL won the past two World Series, the league has swept them.
<AD></AD>American League clubs have won three of the past four World Series and six of the past eight.
The AL has swept the World Series in four of the past eight years -- the Chicago White Sox over Houston in 2005, Boston over St. Louis in 2004, the Yankees over Atlanta in 1999 and the Yankees over San Diego in 1998.
Last time there were this many TKOs in championship bouts, Muhammad Ali was in his prime.
"When I came over here in 2004, St. Louis was the best in the National League," says Cincinnati manager Jerry Narron, who coached and managed in Texas from 1995-2001 and worked as Grady Little's bench coach in Boston in 2003 before moving to the Reds organization in 2004. "The Angels, the Yankees, the Red Sox and the Twins, I thought they were all better.
"And there was a bigger gap between the Cardinals and the second-best club in the National League than between the Red Sox and the second-best in the American League.
"I don't want to make it sound like the NL doesn't have as many good clubs. But in reality, there wasn't."
Still isn't, and it's not even close.
Scan the NL heading into the '06 season and what you'll find on paper is similar to what has been the case for the past three or four years: St. Louis is the only scary-good team. Oh, there are other good clubs -- Houston's pitching is stellar, Atlanta is always a powerhouse, a San Francisco team with Barry Bonds in the lineup always gets your attention -- but if you look hard enough, you can find flaws. And it isn't as if you need to be a professionally trained scout to find them.
Break down the AL and you've got monsters -- or, potential monsters -- in the Bronx, Toronto, Boston, Chicago, Oakland, Anaheim, Cleveland and, possibly, Minnesota.
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=175 align=left><TBODY><TR><TD width=175>

</TD><TD width=15> </TD></TR><TR><TD width=175>Mariano Rivera and the AL have won six of the past eight World Series. (Getty Images) </TD><TD width=15> </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>The AL is King Kong. The NL is Curious George.
"It's a different ballgame," says White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, who watched the NL closely as a coach with Montreal and Florida for three seasons before taking his current job in 2004. "People think that there is all of this difference in strategy. The only strategy is the double-switch.
"In the American League, I can hit-and-run with my six, seven, eight and nine hitters, and I can bunt. In the National League, I can't move guys over there because the pitcher is batting behind them and what am I gonna do?"
Oh, and the AL is 8-0-1 over the past nine All-Star Games.
As the lines between the two leagues have blurred more and more over the past decade -- interleague play, free agency, umpires now working both leagues instead of just one, the dissolution of the league offices -- the most obvious difference is the designated hitter.
Clearly, as Guillen and many others say, that generally makes for stronger lineups in the 14-team AL than in the 16-team NL.
There is more money in the AL, too -- at least, at the top. In 2005, three of the top four payrolls came from the AL -- the Yankees (highest in the majors at $208 million), Boston (second, $123.5 million) and the Los Angeles Angels (fourth, $97.7 million).
"Let's not kid ourselves, when you have good players, it makes everybody look good -- players, manager, front office," Yankees third-base coach and former Philadelphia manager Larry Bowa says. "The other thing is depth. That's what big payroll teams have. If they lose somebody, they've got somebody else. They don't go down to their farm system. That's a big difference."
The Yankees have ranked first in payroll in each of the past seven seasons, beginning in 1999, and will be there again in 2006. (Baltimore had the highest payroll in the majors in 1998 at $70.4 million).
In five of the six seasons from 2000-05, at least three of the top five payrolls were funded by AL clubs. They ranked 1-2-3 in 2002 -- the Yankees ($125.9 million), Boston ($108.3 million) and Texas ($105.7 million). They did it again in 2004 -- the Yankees ($184 million), Boston ($127 million) and the Angels ($100.5 million).
However, though the team with the game's top payroll did cash that into a World Series victory in 2000 -- Yankees over Mets in five games -- in none of the next five seasons did that happen.
And though big bankrolls certainly give a club an advantage, in the past five years, only one club ranking among the game's top five payrolls has won it all -- the 2004 Red Sox, who ranked second with a $127 million payroll.
Still, the AL is the Beatles at its peak; the NL is Tiny Tim strumming a ukulele.
You can argue that the two leagues are playing the same game, but the truth of it is, the AL is doing it up in the penthouse suite while the NL is bumping into walls in the darkness of the basement.
"Everybody's lineup is stacked," says Yankees right fielder Gary Sheffield, who came to New York in 2004 after 11 NL seasons in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Florida and San Diego. "The National League is more the way it used to be, emphasizing fundamentals, guys in traditional roles -- your second-place hitter, your leadoff hitter."
Bottom line, as Sheffield says, with the pitcher in NL lineups, "a lot of times you can count two or three outs" during a trip through the lineup.
The DH, though, has been around since 1973, and it sure didn't prevent Cincinnati's Big Red Machine from dominating in the mid-1970s ... or Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and St. Louis from giving the NL four consecutive World Series titles from 1979-82 ... or the NL from reeling off 11 consecutive All-Star wins from 1972-82 (fueling a stretch of 21 victories in 23 All-Star Games from 1963-85).
Right now, though, in a cyclical game, the NL is to the AL what a scratching post is to a cat.
This isn't by unanimous vote, certainly. Just because the NL has gotten steamrolled in recent years doesn't mean that its residents are fleeing from the rubble.
Is the difference between the AL and NL right now as Grand Canyon-vast as it appears?
"I don't think so at all," Houston manager Phil Garner says.
Garner's reaction is understandable, of course, for a couple of reasons. One, the sting of last October's World Series defeat is still relatively fresh. And two, though his Astros were swept by the White Sox, it was, as they say, much closer than the scoreboard indicated. The series included two one-run games and two two-run games, and the Astros had their hearts broken with the 14-inning, 7-5 defeat in Game 3.
"I give Chicago credit, they played better than we did," Garner continues. "Plain and simple. We had lots of opportunities to drive in runs, and we didn't. They did. Scott Podsednik one night (the ninth-inning, game-ending shot in Game 2). Jermaine Dye vs. Roy Oswalt was a classic at-bat (in Game 3). Roy pitched as good as you can pitch and Dye flips one out to center field that broke the game up for them (an eight-pitch at-bat with one out in the fifth to extend the inning and pull the White Sox to within 4-3).
"I thought Boston got on a roll in 2004. I didn't think there was any way they would beat the Yankees. Then, at that point, I didn't see how they could lose. St. Louis may have been the better team. But once you get that going ... it was unbelievable.
"I don't believe in destiny, but once you look back, it sure seems like some things were destined to be."
Oh, and the AL cleaned the NL's clocks in interleague play last summer, 136-116.
Two years ago, though the AL only held a 126-125 edge, even Tampa Bay got better in interleague play, going 15-3 against NL clubs -- San Francisco, Colorado, San Diego, Arizona and Florida.
You can dismiss that as coincidence -- the lowly Devil Rays just happened to put together their one hot streak during interleague play.
But when the games are meaningful, in October, the trend is indisputable.
Even the most recent NL teams to cross the 100-win threshold in the regular season have melted like candle wax when facing the AL's heat.
St. Louis won 105 games during the '04 season ... and went 0-for-4 in the World Series against Boston.
Atlanta won 103 games during the 1999 season ... and went 0-for-4 in the World Series against the Yankees.
In fairness to the NL, the 2003 Yankees won 103 games and lost a six-game World Series to Florida.
But at least the Yankees were competitive. And when the 114-win Yankees reached the Series in 1998, they behaved like the dominant team they were and whitewashed the Padres in four games.
Regularly these days, the AL is playing Starbucks to the NL's Folgers, and unless the league of Tony La Russa and Bobby Cox has something up its sleeve, there is no reason to believe that things will change in 2006.
From the $200 million Yankees to the Roy Halladay and A.J. Burnett-led Blue Jays, from the defending champion White Sox -- who are even better on paper this year -- to the vastly improved rest of the AL Central, from the pitching-rich Oakland A's to the talented and prospect-stocked Los Angeles Angels ... the landscape looks awfully familiar.
"As I look around the American League, it's as balanced as it's been," Athletics manager Ken Macha says. "Boston will be good, the Yankees will be good, the Blue Jays ... Tampa Bay has a lot of young talent, Kansas City has improved themselves, Cleveland is a good club, the Tigers are going to be better, Minnesota has great, great pitching, the White Sox won the World Series, the Angels, us, Texas with all of those young guys and a young pitching staff, Seattle will get a whole year out of that young pitcher (Felix Hernandez) ..."
Says Oakland third baseman Eric Chavez: "I think wins are going to drop. I don't think you'll see anybody with 105 wins this year (in the AL). There are so many good teams.
"You're not going to go into Baltimore and sweep, or into Toronto or Tampa Bay, anymore. It's just not going to happen.
"I think the high 80s or low 90s is going to be where it's at. Now teams are just too good."
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The AL is king, and don't expect this to change in '06

dirty

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