The All-Division World Series: AL East vs. NL East

Call it East Coast bias, but the public has spoken, voting both the AL East and NL East All-Division teams as the best in their respective leagues.

Now, it’s time to see who you think is better: AL East or NL East? I’ll re-post the rosters, along with some brief thoughts of my own. Make sure you vote!

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

NL East:

SP Roy Halladay
SP Cliff Lee
SP Roy Oswalt
SP Josh Johnson
SP Tommy Hanson
RP Ryan Madson
CP Francisco Rodriguez
C Brian McCann
1B Ryan Howard
2B Chase Utley
SS Hanley Ramirez
3B Ryan Zimmerman
OF Mike Stanton
OF Jason Heyward
OF Jayson Werth

I’m going to have to take the NL East pitching here. I like Halladay and Lee better than Sabathia and Price, and I think there’s less dropoff from the front of the NL East rotation to the back than there is from Sabathia to Ricky Romero. The AL East bullpen is better than the NL East’s, though, particularly with the closers.

The hitting is obviously unequal, since the AL has a DH and the NL does not, although the 2011 version of Manny Ramirez probably isn’t an elite enough player to swing the vote anyway. The AL East takes a further hit at catcher, where McCann is clearly superior to Wieters, so among batteries, the NL East is the easy pick.

From there, it’s tough. The infields and outfields of both teams are pretty stellar. I’ll take Gonzalez, Cano, and Longoria over Howard, Utley, and Zimmerman, but Hanley Ramirez is the better shortstop, and the outfields aren’t terribly unbalanced.

Or, to break it down another way:

Halladay > Sabathia
Lee > Price
Oswalt < Lester
Johnson > Buchholz
Hanson > Romero
Madson = Soriano
Rodriguez < Rivera
McCann > Wieters
Howard < Gonzalez
Utley < Cano
Zimmerman < Longoria
Ramirez > Jeter
Stanton = Crawford
Heyward = Gardner
Bautista = Werth

That’s six for the NL East, five for the AL East, and four ties. If you want to add Manny Ramirez back to the mix, then obviously things get interesting, even more so if you break one of the outfield ties in favor of the AL East. I will say, though, that easily the most lopsided difference is the one at catcher, which favors the NL East, so I’m going to cast my vote in their direction. It’s clearly very close, however, and on a different day, maybe I’d vote for the AL East.

That’s it for me, although if you want to discuss it further, fire away in the comments. Who’s got your vote?

Voting ends at 12:00 AM, March 19.

Which All-Division Roster is Better?Market Research