East Coast Bias

With the A's recent re-signing of super stud Justin Duchscherer...er..er..er... it got me thinking about baseball. So I was looking at last season's standings and something struck me: the AL West was the best division in baseball. Now, I know what you're thinking: You're crazier than Pat, Oakland! The AL East is easily the best division in baseball! They have the Yankees AND the Red Sox! I watch Sports-center all day and I'm barely aware that other teams exist!

Well, I'm not crazy. The numbers back me up. When compared head-to-head, the AL West beat up on the other divisions. The only teams not in the AL West to have a winning record against the AL West are: the Yankees, the Tigers, and the Blue Jays. Yeah, I don't know how the Blue Jays did it either. Now, on the other hand the only teams to have a winning record against the AL East (that are not in the AL East) are: the Angels, the Rangers, and the Mariners. All AL West teams. Even the lowly A's were 21-23 against the East. (And pretty much everyone beat up on the AL Central). The AL West was a combined .549 against the other two divisions, the highest of any of the three.

So what about the NL divisions? What about them? The NL sucks!

Now, looking at the standings for so long, another thing hit me: why the hell does the AL West only have 4 teams? And how does that affect things? Well, the affect is this: The AL West teams play only 57 divisional games, while the other two divisions play 72 games against their division. That means that AL West teams have to play 15 additional games against non-division opponents. This has two affects: First, it means that they have to play teams they are less familiar with more often than the teams in the other division. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it's different, that's for sure. Second, it means more travel. Now, this is doubly unfair because teams out west already have more traveling to do than Eastern teams. Traveling more DEFINITELY makes it harder to win consistently.

I understand the reasons for scheduling it like this, but it still pisses me off. Go A's. Pat is crazy.