{"id":9154,"date":"2010-09-13T07:01:37","date_gmt":"2010-09-13T06:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=9154"},"modified":"2010-09-14T17:58:25","modified_gmt":"2010-09-14T16:58:25","slug":"weekly-hit-ground-ball-senior-circuit-superiority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=9154","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Senior Circuit Superiority"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WhgbHlSq\"2010 may well be a banner year for the National League.<\/p>\n

There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no doubt that the American League, the so-called Junior Circuit, has been the stronger of the two in recent years.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been fairly even in terms of World Series winners over the last ten years, with the AL shading it 6-4, but if we stretch that out to 1991 then the National League falls back to 6-12 (no World Series was played in 1994).\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Additionally, the AL has been seen as the stronger competition overall, not least in the shape of a team like the Toronto Blue Jays of 2006-07 who were probably good enough to win a National League division in both years, but didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even make the postseason due to the AL competition they were up against.<\/p>\n

And then there was the All-Star Game.\u00c2\u00a0 Prior to this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Mid-Summer Classic, the National League hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t won the annual get-together since 1996.\u00c2\u00a0 A single exhibition game each year doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really tell you anything about the respective strengths of the two leagues, but that didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make the run any less annoying to National League fans.<\/p>\n

So when the Atlanta Braves\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Brian McCann doubled home three runs for the National League All-Star team on 13 July and led his team to a 3-1 victory, one part of the AL\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dominance was pushed to one side.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n

In terms of overall strength, the American League still looks to have the edge.\u00c2\u00a0 ESPN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s MLB Power Rankings<\/a> has the Yankees, Rays and Twins as the top three teams in the Majors and that looks a fair call; however, and partly due to the quality of those three teams, the National League is undoubtedly on top when it comes to exciting postseason races.<\/p>\n

A quick glance at the standings shows that the AL races, while not yet finalized mathematically, are close to being decided.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s emphasised by the Postseason Odds published on BaseballProspectus.com<\/a>, a report \u00e2\u20ac\u0153compiled by running a Monte Carlo simulation of the rest of the season one million times\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Prior to Sunday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s games, the Rays had a 99.6 per cent chance of making the postseason, the Yankees 98.9 per cent, the Rangers 98.8 per cent and the Twins 96.5 per cent.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, it would be a real shock if the four teams currently occupying the four playoff places are not the teams holding those slots at the end of the regular season.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a different story in the National League.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Cincinnati Reds stand a great chance of winning the National League Central.\u00c2\u00a0 Their Postseason odds are at 98.5 per cent and it would take a desperate collapse, combined with a\u00c2\u00a0 surge by St. Louis, for them to be denied from this point.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet even the Reds\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 strong current position is something to be excited about.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve not made the postseason since winning the World Series in 1995, so they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcnew\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 postseason contender to add to the mix that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen in recent years.\u00c2\u00a0 The Reds are a great combination of veterans like Scott Rolen and Bronson Arroyo, and young stars like MVP candidate Joey Votto, the starting pitching talents of Johnny Cueto, Edinson Volquez, Mike Leake and Travis Wood, and the latest showstopper in Aroldis Chapman.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

The other two National League divisions, and the Wild Card, are where the true drama lies over the next few weeks.<\/p>\n

The Atlanta Braves took first place in the NL East on 31 May, following a win over the Phillies, and had stretched their lead to seven games three weeks later.\u00c2\u00a0 However, two losses at the start of last week against the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates allowed the Phillies to edge ahead and the teams were level before yesterday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s games.\u00c2\u00a0 The Braves and Phillies play each other six more times the rest of the way: a three-game series in Philadelphia over 20-22 September and a three-game series in Atlanta to end the season over 1-3 October.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Braves and Phillies had a two-game lead in the NL Wild Card over the second-placed team in the NL West.\u00c2\u00a0 That was the San Francisco Giants after they lost to the San Diego Padres on Saturday, although they only trailed the Friars by a single game before the two teams met for the fourth and final game of a series at Petco Park yesterday.<\/p>\n

The Padres have been the Cinderella team of the 2010 season.\u00c2\u00a0 Sceptics had been waiting for them to fall from their lofty position as division leaders ever since they first took first place.\u00c2\u00a0 They stayed there for 141 calendar days and had just about proved the doubters wrong before going into a tailspin and losing ten games in a row over 26 August-5 September, shrinking their division lead from 6.5 games to just one.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Adding to the story is that the Giants are no longer the only team chasing them down.\u00c2\u00a0 The Colorado Rockies are invoking the spirit of their incredible 2007 stretch run to get back into the 2010 race, winning nine straight before Sunday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s game against the Diamondbacks.\u00c2\u00a0 The Padres and Rockies start a three-game series at Coors Field today (the Rockies are leading the season series 11-4 so far) and the Padres are also scheduled to face the Giants in a three-game series to end the season.<\/p>\n

So while the postseason spots in the AL are likely to be decided before or at the start of the final week, the NL East, West and Wild Cards could all come down to the final weekend as the key protagonists meet (the Rockies close the season out with a four-game series in St. Louis).<\/p>\n

One of the (many) criticisms about the All-Star Game determining home-field advantage for the World Series is that no one knows who will benefit from it at the time, therefore the idea that it is an incentive for the players is overstated.\u00c2\u00a0 While we know that it will be the National League representative who benefits for the first time in a while, we still don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know which player(s) directly helped their own cause, not least because, two months on from the game at Angel Stadium, we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even know which NL teams will be playing beyond the regular season.<\/p>\n

All of which makes the Senior Circuit the centre of attention. After years of Junior Circuit superiority, the older league could be making a comeback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2010 may well be a banner year for the National League<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[107,122,133,553,99,135,134],"class_list":["post-9154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-hit-ground-ball","category-mlb-2","tag-atlanta-braves","tag-cincinnati-reds","tag-colorado-rockies","tag-mlb-2","tag-philadelphia-phillies","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-san-francisco-giants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9154"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9170,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9154\/revisions\/9170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}