June 1, 2012: Red Sox @ Blue Jays

[evilhand]

Jung, SoxFanForsyth has already made most of the points I would have made in response to your ridiculous position. You may want to say that baseball was better back in the good old days than it is now, and you probably wouldn't even get much resistance on that as it's purely a matter of opinion.

But refusing to acknowledge good performances today based on criteria that are outdated by decades? Come on... the game has changed. Any night when your starter goes 6 and gives up less than league average runs per 9 is a good night.

Your pining for the 60's and 70's isn't going to change the sport as it exists today.

[pumpsie green]

The AL East being a good division does not hinge on some teams being superior and some teams being inferior. The point is that all 5 teams are over .500 and very competitive. My point is what you said in the bold.

The problem is that you're judging the teams in the AL East by comparing them to the average of the teams in the AL East, and nothing else. If you use the rest of the AL, you'll see that there's 9 teams in the AL with a .500+ record, and 5 of them are in the East. And it's not like they're all hovering around .500. The Rays have the 2nd best record in the league. The Orioles have the best Wild Card record, and the Yankees are tied for 2nd in the WC. And all of this is with a huge amount of injuries in the division. It's clearly the best division in the AL.

Ah. I see the misunderstanding. The discussion that was going on was in the context of the ALE. Here is a post by TutGadol the preceded what I wrote:

The division is tough. Considering the injuries and the horrendous start, 3 gb is very pleasing, we might have a chance when all those injured guys come back.

If you look at the whole league, I would have to agree that we (and every ALE team) are having an good year overall. It is, so far, the best division in the American League. I am not denying that. However, in past years, one team or two usually begins to separate themselves from the others as being superior or inferior within their division. For example, last year in two of the three divisions one team was at least six games ahead of the last place team. In 2010 the differences were 10, 14, and 7 games. In the ALE no team has that kind of separation. You can use the word "average" or "ordinary" in comparing the ALE teams if you like, rather than mediocre. I was not intending in my post to include the set of ALL AL teams.

[User Name?]

1. Rangers - Derek Holland: 6.18 IP per Start, 3.95 ERA

2. Rays - David Price: 6.59 IP per Start, 3.49 ERA

3. Yankees - Ivan Nova: 6.09 IP per Start, 3.66 ERA

4. Tigers - Doug Fister: 6.76 IP per Start, 2.83 ERA

5. Red Sox - Josh Beckett - 6.43 IP per Start, 2.89 ERA

Then they either taxed their pens or their 1's made up the difference or some other starters took up the slack. To some extent you have to look at the ERA's which suggest that at least in the cases of Fister and Beckett, their managers removed them, and did not allow them to go 7 innings when they likely could have. In fact I read comments here last year suggesting that Beckett's excellent ERA for the year was in part a consequence of being removed a bit early in games.

Fister also recorded an excellent ERA and got closer to 7 innings on average and I would suggest that his ERA combined with that average in innings being over 6.5 and just short of 7 means Fister did his job and justified his role in the rotation.

Nobody thought Holland and Price had Hollandish and Priceish kinds of years last year meaning they did not meet expectation for their assigned roles on their staffs. Are the better than league average...sure....are they what was expected of those pitchers in their assignments...no they were not which is what makes the league average argument somewhat irrelevant.

Nova?????? how many times has the Yankees staff been discussed in terms of CC and pray for rain. They had a very disjointed rotation last year, got really good performances from pieces of the puzzle that were question marks at the start of the year and had an outstanding pen anchored by a once in a lifetime closer.

So I am not sure but I think you might have gotten closer to proving my point than proving the opposite.

More importantly, the last few years have seen the pendulum swing entirely over to the far end of the spectrum which has prompted Nolan Ryan's effort in Texas and I think a more general effort around the league to have starters in general and you most highly paid, top of the rotation starters pitch more innings. I think it will be interesting to see where these numbers fall out in the next five years when we will likely see a shift back to more innings especially at the top of rotations.

jung, you're falling into the same logical fallacy that SoxSport does on a regular basis.

This is not the same brand of baseball that you saw in the 60's and 70's. With the advancement of scouting reports and the increase of offensive talent throughout the league, pitchers just don't throw that many innings.

You definition of a "#1" and a "#2" is simply unrealistic in the context of the current baseball landscape.