Re: Chicago Bias

"Paltry division?" Paltry division? You'll have to repeat that in my good ear. Although I agree that the north-siders have been given more credit than their fellow south-siders for an equally-good win streak, comparing the Cubs' foes to that of the Sox proves to be not that dissimilar. (I won't even mention the lack of coverage of a team that also won five in a row, currently sits atop the majors with the best record, and won the World Series a mere one year ago.) Frankly, I'm really not sold on the Tigers. After all, every one knows how important preseason predictions are, right? The Bulls were predicted across the board to win the East. Tiger was predicted to run away with the Masters. Hell, I remember a 2005 preseason 8th-ranked Hawkeye team that lost a game 23-3 to an "inferior" team two hours west on I-80.

Now, I'm a numbers-kind-of-guy and baseball is a numbers-kind-of-game. I did a little research to Mr. Ruettiger's divisional claim -- as of the day he posted, to be fair -- and the results were surprising.

As you can see, the NL Central actually came out to be the most winningest division while the AL Central sat second to last. As of today, the date of this post, nothing has changed.

However, since we are talking about strength of division, one can not include inter-divisional games. It's the classic intangible argument: the Tigers lose to the White Sox because the Sox are a good team, but you can discard the Tigers poor record because they're losses are a result of playing in a tough division. And vice versa: the Astros lose to the Cubs because the Astros are a bad team, thus making the Cubs look better by playing in a poor division. In divisional play, the overall division record always comes out to .500 -- one team must win and one team must lose -- and how that is interpreted is a matter of perspective. Logically, the only way to quantifiably compare one division to another is based on non-divisional play. The results are as follows:

Shocked? I'm not. The AL Central is dead last in non-divisional play to date with the NL Central leading the pack. Now I'm not saying this trend will continue all season because it's early. Very early. But I will say that right now, at this moment, I would take the Cardinals, Brewers, and Cubs over the top three clubs in any other division. The past three years I would have agreed that the AL Central was top-to-bottom the strongest division in baseball (yes, even with the Royals) but times have changed. Oh, and Sox fans, you'd better get used to all the attention the Cubs will get this season as long as the calender reads "2008."

I'll revisit this analysis quarterly throughout the season, but until then, in the words of Bryan Swinbank, "NL Central Rulez!!!"

Disclaimer: This was in no way meant to encourage the ceasing nor desisting of Cub-bashing.