"Meet Moore's Jetsam"... Well played. That was a hoot.

I know the NL is worse than the AL, but common, 7 AL teams before the Phillies? I know that this is a well-thought out formula derived from many things, but the league difference seems a bit drastic that it raises questions for me.

I have a hard time believing the Phillies are worse than 7 AL teams, but I do have great respect for your formulas. It's not like they've been struggling though, 48-19 since July 21st.

I know it's a long way off but I'm a long suffering Orioles fan - what are their chances of finishing above .500 in 2011?

What is this? BPESPN? Sox aren't near that good.....

According to you, the Astros are worse than the Royals, Indians, Orioles, and Mariners. I know BP detests Ed Wade, but give the team on the field some credit. They might not be a "contender", but they were not the second worst team in baseball this year, especially in the 2nd half. Does pitching mean nothing in your formula?

No way is the AL that much better than the NL such that the Chisox , BJays, and A's are the 6th, 7th, and 10th best teams in baseball. All 4 NL playoff teams, Reds excepted, are better than they are, and frankly so are the Cards and Rockies. Your methodolgy is deeply flawed and produces results that do not pass the smell test. Within leagues it's ok, combining them it's not. Sorry, but it's not up to Bp standards, which thankfully are high

Thanks again for another year of the 'Hit List'!

And all you saying "the NL's no longer that inferior grumblegrumble", how about some (nonanecdotal, please) evidence for that assertion? Hmmm???

Padres are better than those three too

The Phils at 8 is just silly.

I echo the disagreements here, but at least there is a logic behind the madness. Maybe and adjusted weight scale per division record might make more sense. Couple that with the uneven figurative "baseball rivalries" and some teams definitely have tougher draws. Obviously any teams that have to play the better AL teams every year should get some points knocked off or added if you will. And I may be reading this wrong, but it just not make sense to me for the top NL teams to be punished for having the Pirates, Nationals, D Backs, and Cubs.

lol a mests fan unable to understand math.

natl league pride!

please try to actually field competent teams before spouting league-ist rhetoric

I really appreciate the hit list and accept the rationale.

I do think the Phillies are better than #8 overall but I'm too tired and lazy to look for proof - and your info supports the ranking. 20-31 over the last 3 years in interleague play is pretty weak. Maybe the Orioles should lobby to move to the NL!

And speaking of the Orioles, how many teams have ever played .300 ball (32-73 or .304) for 2/3 of a season and then finished the final 1/3 at a .600 clip? (.596 actually, 34-23 W-L).

Obviously, I'm starving for something positive for the O's.

well, just looking at some BP team stats, in a pretty cursory way, does not seem to support the rankings. Either the hit list is overcompensating for league difference, or the team stats are under compensating. It may be that all I am showing is that the league difference is so great that you can't build up from underlying stats.

The table just shows where the teams fall in the specific stat among the 30 MLB teams, so the Yanks are second overall in MLVr, second in Defense, etc. I included two team pitching stats for no scientific reason whatsoever. I also admit freely that I may be missing something huge with respect to the team stats, and welcome commentary. (Yes it would be helpful if I had copied in the actual stats instead of the raw rankings, but since I wanted to compare it to the ranking on the Hit List I thought it at least interesting to do it this way.)

Team VORP FRA MLVr DE EQBRR
Yankees 13 13 2 2 5
Red Sox 17 21 3 20 25
Blue Jays 21 20 11 20 19
Phils 5 3 9 9 11


Again, IF it is at all fair to compare these stats across leagues, they do not appear to support the Hit List in putting the Phils behind the Jay, and probably not behind the Red Sox either.

Yep, I did have a big "IF". there are plenty of variables that make cross-league comparisons hard, which is why we get to argue about it and enjoy it. the most important obviously being they play by different rules. But there's also that the NL has more teams, and that the interleague schedules are imbalanced.

there ought to be some stats to isolate talent among individual players that could be aggregated to a team to allow a cross-league comparison, though. from a forest not trees point of view, it's hard to believe that the Phillies players aggregate to less talent than the Jays players.

On the stats I used, I only used Team VORP for pitchers, not down the line, so you don't have any positional overlap issues. You just have the VORP for pitchers issues.

I suppose someone could aggregate SIERA and TAvr, but that someone is not going to be me. Have a good weekend, enjoy the games everyone.

What strikes me as nuts is that people are treating something like the .003 difference between the Jays and Phillies as though it's engraved in stone tablets. There's a margin for error in any measurement, and if you wanted to argue that instead of +25 for the AL and -22 for the NL it should be +23 and -20 because I should be weighting the past three years 4-3-2 instead of 5-4-3 or 3-2-1 or something, and therefore the Phillies should wind up at .553 and the Jays at .552, I can understand that.

The underlying point is that there's a clear separation between the top five AL teams and the next eight AL + NL teams. The Phillies, no matter what league adjustment I make, ain't gonna wind up in that top five based upon the available evidence. They MIGHT pass the Jays and the White Sox had I done this a bit differently. As it is, they're the top-ranked NL team on the year-end Hit List. Live with it.