You get what you pay for: the AL/NL discrepancy

[James282]

Last night I heard some commentary on the radio about how the NL is a joke and how poorly NL teams are structured and how AL GMs are so much better than NL GMs etc and so on..and remembering that this was also the prevailing thought on this board, I decided to look into it a little bit.

There are 14 teams in the American League, who had a combined payroll of $1,306,601,780 going into this season, for an average payroll of $93,328,698. 16 National league teams have an average payroll of $74,060,075 and an aggregate payroll of $1,184,961,212. How could people trying to analyze the success or failure of various front offices without mentioning this?

But, you might say, this gets skewed just a little due to the Yankees and Red Sox exorbitant payrolls! Looking more closely, though, the AL has 7 of the top 10 biggest payrolls in baseball and the middle two teams(Baltimore and Oakland) have payrolls of 95mm and 80mm - and the average payroll of non-yankee or Red Sox teams is $80,687,418 - which is higher than the average of National League teams without removing any teams!

Small market darling Oakland is actually the 16th highest payroll in the majors(read - they have a completely average payroll) - and the little guys at Minnesota make more than almost half of the National League teams! There is some good work going on in front offices in the American League, don't get me wrong - but with a $20,000,000 per team advantage wouldn't you expect the American League to beat the National League year in and year out? IMO, the gap in wins and losses between the two leagues is simply representative of a willingness or an ability to spend and little else. Maybe the amount spent is a skill and not simply an event of circumstance - but I'm definitely not convinced just based on the wins and losses that AL GMs are somehow better at structuring teams than NL teams.

By another metric - looking at the top half of teams using Pecota's upside rankings for various farm systems, we find that while the Rays, Yankees, Angels, and Twins are numbers 1-4, the AL only has 7 of the top 15 systems. Using under 25 talent across both the major and minor leagues, the AL has 8 of the top 15 systems. Considering that the AL has fewer teams than the NL, this is certainly a small credit to the AL, but it's very very close either way.

One concession that I will make is that the top AL teams are certainly better than the top NL teams. The Twins and Indians specifically are exceptionally well run and IMO have done the first and 2nd best jobs of compiling a team over the last few years considering the talent they project to have going forward vs. the amount of money that they spend. The NL doesn't have any teams that can hold a candle to the development that these 2 teams have shown, though the Diamondbacks have compiled some very promising talent on a significantly smaller payroll than either of these two teams.

Anyway, I just felt like throwing this out there because the whole attitude that AL GMs are super smart and NL GMs are retards who can't put a team together is getting on my nerves. Maybe a gap in ability exists among the top teams, but across the board it's very very close and I don't think a conclusion can be drawn either way when taking into account the considerable advantage in resources that AL GMs have.

James