40 HR/40 2B

[Ubiquitous]

Soriano is batting .288. 8 points above .280 makes you a god?
He has walked the most in his life ever this year and he also has 15 intentional walks. Nothing he is doing right now is out of line for his career. This could turn out to be his career year but this isn't some major leaguer hitting against little leaguers.

AS for mediocre power? He had a .500 SLG in the AL, average 40 doubles and 33 homers per 162 games in the AL. If that is mediocre what is good?

Saying this is because he plays in the NL is a gross over generalization of the facts.

[Ubiquitous]

Oh and right now Soriano is remotely close to the best offensive player in the league. 6th in VORP, 8th in EqA, 4th in Win Shares, and 7th in runs above replacement.

[SABR Matt]

Soriano is batting .288. 8 points above .280 makes you a god?
He has walked the most in his life ever this year and he also has 15 intentional walks. Nothing he is doing right now is out of line for his career. This could turn out to be his career year but this isn't some major leaguer hitting against little leaguers.

AS for mediocre power? He had a .500 SLG in the AL, average 40 doubles and 33 homers per 162 games in the AL. If that is mediocre what is good?

Saying this is because he plays in the NL is a gross over generalization of the facts.

Um...take a look at the LAST two years in the AL Ubi...that is what I was referring to as mediocre power. Soriano is the type of hitter that commonly peaks early...he peaked with the Yankees.

[SABR Matt]

And none of those measures take league quality into account.

I could start rattling off the names of national leaguers who this year are suddenly having surprisingly good seasons, but somehow I don't think that would matter to you.

[Ubiquitous]

Um...take a look at the LAST two years in the AL Ubi...that is what I was referring to as mediocre power. Soriano is the type of hitter that commonly peaks early...he peaked with the Yankees.

You mean like last year when he hit 36 homers and 43 doubles?

Peak early? He was 26.

[Ubiquitous]

And none of those measures take league quality into account.

I could start rattling off the names of national leaguers who this year are suddenly having surprisingly good seasons, but somehow I don't think that would matter to you.

Yes silly Vlad doesn't he know he shouldn't be putting those kind of numbers up? Doesn't Lyle Overbay know he is supposed to delcine when he moved to the AL? Perhaps Thome still thinks he is with the Phils?

Is the NL a weaker league? Probably, but the difference isn't as great as you make it out when talking about Alfonso Soriano.

[SABR Matt]

Yes silly Vlad doesn't he know he shouldn't be putting those kind of numbers up? Doesn't Lyle Overbay know he is supposed to delcine when he moved to the AL? Perhaps Thome still thinks he is with the Phils?

Is the NL a weaker league? Probably, but the difference isn't as great as you make it out when talking about Alfonso Soriano.

HelLO!! Vlad came over to the AL long before the NL weakened. Lyle Overbay moved into a park that extremely favors doubles hitters and people who can use the turf. Thome is a long-time AL stud and last played in the NL full time before it declined sharply.

The smart-ass comments don't help this discussion. Calm down.

The NL was still a solid Major League caliber group as recently as 2005...apparently you missed the series of articles re: the AL's utter domination of inter-league play and before the season regarding how as many as 5 wins PER TEAM left the NL for the AL in free agency...this stuff was all over BTF and other forums before the season...the 2006 NL is nothing like the 2005 NL...and much less the 2004 NL when last Thome was effective and not injured.

This is just an off-the-cuff estimate based on interleague results (which yes, they are a small sample, of this I'm aware) and player movement, but I would guess that if the 2005 AL was a 100 difficulty, then the 2005 NL was about a 98, the 2006 AL is about a 102 and the 2006 NL is about a 96. Six points may not seem like a lot of difference, but that's 6% of the best performance shaved right off the top and it's mostly in pitching. The NL's pitching this year is comically thin.

[AstrosFan]

There's no question the NL is much weaker, than the AL, Matt. I think the problem people have with your comments is that you're saying the NL is not at major league level this year. Are you sure it's that extreme? When I think "not a major league," I think of the UA, NA, PL, maybe the AA. I can't see an argument that the 2006 NL has sunk to those depths.

[AstrosFan]

Andrew Dolphin's rankings of MLB teams, ranked by the predictive measure, which he says is the best for measuring how good a team is.

TEAM			Rank	Lg
DETROIT			1	AL
N.Y. YANKEES		2	AL
CHICAGO WHITE SOX	3	AL
CLEVELAND		4	AL
MINNESOTA		5	AL
OAKLAND			6	AL
TEXAS			7	AL
N.Y. METS		8	NL
L.A. ANGELS		9	AL
TORONTO			10	AL
BOSTON			11	AL
SEATTLE			12	AL
L.A. DODGERS		13	NL
PHILADELPHIA		14	NL
ATLANTA			15	NL
SAN DIEGO		16	NL
SAN FRANCISCO		17	NL
ST. LOUIS		18	NL
COLORADO		19	NL
HOUSTON			20	NL
ARIZONA			21	NL
FLORIDA			22	NL
BALTIMORE		23	AL
CINCINNATI		24	NL
TAMPA BAY		25	AL
KANSAS CITY		26	AL
MILWAUKEE		27	NL
WASHINGTON		28	NL
PITTSBURGH		29	NL
CHICAGO CUBS		30	NL

Notice anything?

[SABR Matt]

There's no question the NL is much weaker, than the AL, Matt. I think the problem people have with your comments is that you're saying the NL is not at major league level this year. Are you sure it's that extreme? When I think "not a major league," I think of the UA, NA, PL, maybe the AA. I can't see an argument that the 2006 NL has sunk to those depths.

The UA, PL and NA were not simply non-major leagues...they fail to meet the standards of modern AAA.

The NL is IMHO somewhere between AAA and the AL this year...probably close to the level of play in the Nippon League...I wouldn't be surprised if the Nippon League were stronger this year...

[SABR Matt]

Notice anything?

wow! Nice little demonstration of my point.

[ohms_law]

The NL was still a solid Major League caliber group as recently as 2005...apparently you missed the series of articles re: the AL's utter domination of inter-league play and before the season regarding how as many as 5 wins PER TEAM left the NL for the AL in free agency...

First off, I did miss the earlier discussions about this, so we'll probably end up repeating some of that here. Sorry.

The question that I have is, besides interleage play, what else can be offered to substantiate the view that the national league this season is so weak that it's fallen below the "Major League" standard? I don't see interleague play as being very meaningfull. Yes, the low number of these games is an important part of my view on this, but more importantly is that interleague games all occur early in the season and have even less importance to the teams than out of division games. It's not that I beleave that the players don't take interleague games seriously, but them being early season and not being as significant as in league games has to have some sort of psychological effect.

Hasn't anyone come up with any league average numbers for 2006 to date?

[baseballPAP]

The UA, PL and NA were not simply non-major leagues...they fail to meet the standards of modern AAA.

The NL is IMHO somewhere between AAA and the AL this year...probably close to the level of play in the Nippon League...I wouldn't be surprised if the Nippon League were stronger this year...

That is a major stretch Matt....the Nippon League probably isn't as talented as AAA on the whole. Their stars are better probably, but the overall quality is pretty similar to our AAA. The NL is definately weaker on the whole than the AL, but not by enough to be demoted. I'd call it maybe 4%, but 6 isn't out of the question. It would take at least 10 before I'd even begin to entertain the thought of them being "AAAA". For the record....my opinions on the leagues:
AL:100
NL:96
Nippon:88-90
AAA:85-88
AA:80-85
Mexico/Korea/other large foreign leagues:variable, hover around 70
A:65-70
Rookie League:60
Indy Leagues:40-50

There are major League level talents at every one of these levels, but for the most part, MLB gets the best of the best from around the world. No way the NL is below the talent level by that much, when nearly every team in the league has a bench player that would be a star in Japan, or in AAA.

[Ubiquitous]

HelLO!! Vlad came over to the AL long before the NL weakened. Lyle Overbay moved into a park that extremely favors doubles hitters and people who can use the turf. Thome is a long-time AL stud and last played in the NL full time before it declined sharply.

So AL guys who come over to the NL then back to the AL don't look better while they are in the NL?

The smart-ass comments don't help this discussion. Calm down.

I didn't know I wasn't calm

The NL was still a solid Major League caliber group as recently as 2005...apparently you missed the series of articles re: the AL's utter domination of inter-league play and before the season regarding how as many as 5 wins PER TEAM left the NL for the AL in free agency...this stuff was all over BTF and other forums before the season...the 2006 NL is nothing like the 2005 NL...and much less the 2004 NL when last Thome was effective and not injured.

No I didn't miss it but I am not going to throw out a blanket assessment of an entire league and then apply it on my analysis of just one player.
It's like saying the average major league fastball is 92 mph therefore Nolan Ryan didn't throw fastballs at 100 mph.

[SABR Matt]

No Ubi...Players who start in the AL...go to the NL pre-2005 and then come back pre-2006 aren't going to see major changes in their lines because before no earlier than 2005, the NL and AL were reasonably close. The extreme shift didn't happen really until THIS season.

And baseballPAP...that's simply not true about the Nippon League, IMHO. Japanese baseball since about 1996 has been increasngly deep and in the last few years Japan has become a borderline major league. Around the same level as our NL this year...not quite there yet but really gaining ground.