Well, the NL East won the NL poll in a landslide over the Central and West, taking 93 of 142 votes. Many believe the AL East to be the strongest division in baseball, so is the AL East All-Division team better than the Central or West? Let’s see!
Here are our AL All-Division teams, as voted on by the lead bloggers of the team sites:
AL East:
SP CC Sabathia
SP David Price
SP Jon Lester
SP Clay Buchholz
SP Ricky Romero
RP Rafael Soriano
CL Mariano Rivera
C Matt Wieters
1B Adrian Gonzalez
2B Robinson Cano
3B Evan Longoria
SS Derek Jeter
OF Carl Crawford
OF Brett Gardner
OF Jose Bautista
DH Manny Ramirez
AL Central:
C Joe Mauer
1B Miguel Cabrera
2B Gordon Beckham
SS Alexei Ramirez
3B Danny Valencia
OFÂ Shin-Soo Choo
OF Alex Rios
OF Delmon Young
DHÂ Billy Butler
SP Justin Verlander
SP Francisco Liriano
SP John Danks
SP Max Scherzer
SP Mark Buehrle
RP Matt Thornton
CL Joakim Soria
AL West:
CÂ Kurt Suzuki
1BÂ Kendry Morales
2BÂ Ian Kinsler
3BÂ Adrian Beltre
SSÂ Elvis Andrus
OFÂ Josh Hamilton
OFÂ Ichiro Suzuki
OFÂ Nelson Cruz
DHÂ Torii Hunter
SP Felix Hernandez
SP Jered Weaver
SP Brett Anderson
SP Dan Haren
SP Trevor Cahill
RP Scott Downs
CL Neftali Feliz
That’s one hell of a murderer’s row in the AL East, with Manny, Longoria, Cano, Bautista, and Gonzalez. I think it’s a pretty easy decision that the East has the best hitting–other than Wieters, there aren’t really many weaknesses.
Compare that to the West, with Suzuki, Andrus, and Hunter, for example. Obviously, the West has only four teams to choose from, and one (Seattle) was pretty terrible offensively last year. It’s no surprise that five of the nine non-pitchers are Rangers.
The Central has a better lineup than the West, in my opinion, but Valencia’s a pretty laughable All-Division starter, and I don’t buy Ramirez, Rios, or Young as elite players, even on the level of, say, Brett Gardner in the East.
Pitching’s a different story. The East is certainly weaker there, as neither Buchholz nor Romero are truly elite pitchers yet, at least if you’re in the sabermetrics camp. Still, though, I’d take them over Buehrle and Scherzer at the back of a rotation. The Central does have the best pair of relievers, as far as I’m concerned, although all three divisions have some excellent guys in those roles.
I do think, however, the West is strongest with the pitching. That’s a pretty vicious rotation one through five–I don’t think any fan really likes their team’s chances against any of those five pitchers, whereas Buchholz, Romero, Buehrle, Scherzer, and Danks–and perhaps even Price–aren’t quite as imposing.
So, I’d probably go East, Central, West in offense, but West, East, Central in pitching. That would seem to indicate that the East is the most balanced, as it’s the one division that doesn’t have the worst of anything, and by my logic, it has to be better than the Central, since it’s better in both pitching and hitting.
The only other possibility seems to be that the West’s rotation is so much better that it outweighs the offensive gap. The West’s pitching is clearly best, but I don’t see it making up for the difference between, say, Manny Ramirez and Torii Hunter, or Robinson Cano and Ian Kinsler.
But that’s just me. What do you think?