FanGraphs notes that the American League is better than the National League because the AL has an higher average payroll than the NL. Most of that comes from the Yankees, but even without including New York the AL is still higher. I think we’re about to see that change, however, and the reason is the Philadelphia Phillies. Over the last decade or so, the NL struck me as much more balanced than the AL. There always seems to be six teams competing for the wild card down the stretch in NL, for example. Parity and balance ruled the senior circuit. The Phillies, however, decided to build an AL style offense through excellent development and shrewd signings and trades. Teams can no longer put together a decent set of players and hope that with a little luck they’ll win the pennant. A trip to the World Series now goes through Philadelphia, so if a NL team wants a title, they have to set their sites on the Phillies, not on their division leader. The Phillies, by being so good, are going to force teams to spend more to compete. I suspect the Mets, Cubs, Cardinals and Dodgers will be the first to go up, but you’ll know some smaller market teams are headed that way as well if the Brewers award Prince Fielder a huge contract.
I wish this were the case, but I am less than sure. The Phils have created a team which could compete for the AL title this year, but they are already showing the strains in their budget, and next year they will be showing cracks instead.
The Phils have already committed to a payroll for 2011 which is about the same as 2010, even though several significant contracts (Werth, Moyer and to a lesser extent Romero and Dobbs) are coming off the books. And this winter suggests they don’t have the ability to expand payroll enough to re-sign them or equivalent replacements.
Not only did the Phils trade Cliff Lee for prospects, but they gave Toronto 3 of their top 4 prospects for Halladay in order to have Toronto kick in $6M of his salary for this year. If they were willing to absorb Halladay’s whole salary, they probably would have been able to replace Drabek or Taylor with a lesser prospect and be able to fill one of their holes cheaply next year. Similarly, they did not have the ability to expand payroll to get another lefty in the pen, so until Romero is back, they have only 1 southpaw, Bastardo.
Unless the Phils expand payroll by about 10%, they will fall back to the pack, and the other NL GM’s will not see the reason to play catch up.
The problem for NL teams is they only need 8 full time hitters other than the pitcher. In the AL, with the DH you need 9 hitters that can perform well with 400 or more PA. This leads to more depth in the AL than the NL, as the bench players tend to be defensive replacements or players who can play multiple positions, but none exceptionally well, and who get relatively few PA (150 or so).
Having to pay 9 full time hitters is more expensive than having to pay 8. Bench players are relatively cheap. Hence the higher payrolls in the AL, and reluctance of NL teams to go to the DH (one reason anyways).
So the trend is that as players reach their FA years, older pitchers tend to gravitate to the NL (where it’s easier to get through a lineup including the pitcher), while older hitters whose defense is in decline move over to the AL where they can DH, or retire early. Until recently, hitters declined less slowly than pitchers (with some exceptions like Clemens, Pettitte, etc), so the AL grew stronger.
Also, most teams could care less about going to the World Series (not saying they would not like to, just that they will not pay to do so). The main goal is to get to the playoffs, thats enough to sell tickets for the next season. The Wild Card and division league structure allows teams that otherwise do not deserve to get to the playoffs to get there, with limited payroll. What happens in the playoffs is a matter of luck and which team gets hot, so we have seen some pretty mediocre teams in the World Series over the last decade.