Them's Fightin' Words

[MFS62]

One of the baseball "specialists" on ESPN radio (Buster Olney?) said yesterday that 9 of the 10 best teams this year are in the American League. He didn't say which NL team makes his list.

Do you agree?

Later

[Guest sharpie]

Yankees-Red Sox-White Sox-Twins-Indians-Angels-A's. Then who? Rangers? Blue Jays? Better than Braves, Cards, Astros, Mets and Phillies? I think not. You can make a case for those first seven.

[Frayed Knot]

I think the balance of power tilts towards the AL this year (as it did last year) although trying to predict it team-by-team will usually prove flawed at this time of year.
I had mentioned in another thread about how most pundits agree to some extent with what Olney said, with a piece in The Hardball Times making an attempt to quantify why.

The NL has won the head-to-head in IL play in most years (and has an overall edge) since its inception, although the AL won by a substantial amount last season. Using post-season play - like AS Games - doesn't show much IMO since it only involves 2 teams and a small smaple size.
In general over the last half-dozen or so years, the AL seems to have had more teams on both extremes: several teams that were as good or better than the NL's best but also several of ML's bottom feeders, while the NL teams were more squashed towards the middle.