Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Never Mind, AL West - You Win

Further to the news of yesterday, in which the AL West choked away its lead over the AL Central:

I wrote, "In other words, the AL Central is better because it has the power to match the West's best teams - yet its weakest link is not nearly as poor as the West's worst."

That statement is no longer true. There is still a suspicious difference between the West's best and worst teams, enough to create a 10% difference between the divisions in that part of Baseball Playoffs Now's division rankings. But the Central lost that last hope last night as Cleveland lost to Texas, Detroit lost to Oakland, and Minnesota lost to Baltimore. Of the AL Central teams, only the White Sox won yesterday, and that was over fellow division member Kansas City.

As of now, the AL Central isn't skating by on the measure of divisional cohesion. Even though Seattle lost again and there continues to be a growing divide between the Western teams, that statistic - meant to be a sort of tiebreaker between divisions - has been overpowered by interdivisional play.

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