Is the American League still the hitters’ league?
It may seem that the Junior Circuit has always been the league of inflated
offense, as a result of–take your pick–weaker pitching, cozier ballparks,
weaker pitching, smaller strike zones, and weaker pitching. That’s not the
case. Prior to the installation of the DH in 1973, the two leagues had
virtually identical offensive levels. If anything, the NL was the more
offensive of the two.
The league with the most runs scored per game (since 1900) is the 1930 NL
(5.68), which also holds records for OPS (808) and batting average (.303). A
sampling of the leagues over the years will give you a sense for their
equality before the DH:
Year AL OPS NL OPS Diff AL ERA NL ERA Diff1905 613 647 -34 2.65 2.99 -0.34 1910 621 666 -45 2.52 3.02 -0.50 1915 651 640 +11 2.93 2.74 +0.19 1920 734 679 +55 3.79 3.13 +0.66 1925 768 762 +6 4.40 4.27 +0.13 1930 772 808 -36 4.65 4.97 -0.32 1935 753 722 +31 4.46 4.02 +0.44 1940 750 702 +48 4.38 3.85 +0.63 1945 671 696 -25 3.36 3.80 -0.44 1950 759 737 +22 4.58 4.14 +0.44 1955 720 737 -17 3.96 4.04 -0.08 1960 718 710 +8 3.87 3.76 +0.11 1965 682 687 -5 3.46 3.54 -0.08 1970 703 724 -21 3.71 4.05 -0.34
The most significant difference between the two leagues occurred in 1920,
with Babe Ruth leading the revolution (he increased the league’s OPS
by nearly seven points all by himself) towards a more powerful game. It only
took the NL two years to catch on; by 1922, the NL had the higher ERA, and
Rogers Hornsby became the only hitter in history to hit .400 with 40
homers. World War II hit AL hitters hard, as the league ERA dipped by more
than a full point between 1940 and 1945, but strangely, NL hitters were
hardly affected at all.
The AL had the lower OPS and ERA in every year but one between 1965 and
1972, which goes a long way towards explaining why they were the league
willing to experiment with the DH in the first place.
And the DH certainly had its intended effect. In every year since 1973, the
AL has had the higher ERA of the two leagues:
Year AL ERA NL ERA Diff Year AL ERA NL ERA Diff1973 3.82 3.66 +0.16 1987 4.46 4.08 +0.38 1974 3.61729 3.61725 +0.00004 1988 3.97 3.45 +0.52 1975 3.78 3.62 +0.16 1989 3.88 3.50 +0.38 1976 3.52 3.50 +0.02 1990 3.91 3.79 +0.12 1977 4.06 3.91 +0.15 1991 4.10 3.69 +0.41 1978 3.76 3.58 +0.18 1992 3.95 3.51 +0.44 1979 4.22 3.73 +0.49 1993 4.32 4.04 +0.28 1980 4.03 3.60 +0.43 1994 4.80 4.21 +0.59 1981 3.66 3.49 +0.17 1995 4.71 4.18 +0.53 1982 4.07 3.60 +0.47 1996 4.99 4.21 +0.58 1983 4.06 3.63 +0.44 1997 4.57 4.21 +0.36 1984 3.99 3.59 +0.40 1998 4.65 4.23 +0.42 1985 4.15 3.59 +0.56 1999 4.86 4.56 +0.30 1986 4.18 3.72 +0.46 2000 4.91 4.63 +0.28
In the early years of the DH, the difference between the two leagues was
very slim (invisible in the case of the 1974 season) which only highlights
the fact that the AL endorsed the DH because they were desperate to inject
offense into their games; without it, their offensive totals would have
lagged far behind the NL’s. But since 1979, the AL has consistently had
consistently higher offensive totals than the NL. With the exception of 1981
(a strike season) and, for some reason, 1990, the AL has had an ERA more
than a quarter-run higher than the NL in every season.
But does the AL truly have better hitters, or simply more hitters? If you
eliminate DHs and pitchers from the equation entirely, do the leagues even
out, or does the AL still have the higher offensive totals?
Unfortunately, I don’t have the game-by-game box scores needed to eliminate
DHs from league totals, but it is fairly easy to eliminate the performance
of pitchers. The following chart lists the OPS for each league since 1973,
as well as the OPS of each league once pitchers’ hitting totals are removed
(pitchers’ hitting data is not available after 1998):
Year AL OPS NL OPS Diff AL OPS NL OPS Diff
(no P) (no P)
1973 712 700 +12 712 724 -12
1974 697 695 +2 697 716 -19
1975 709 698 +11 709 722 -13
1976 684 684 0 684 706 -22
1977 738 727 +11 738 750 -12
1978 714 694 +20 714 718 -4
1979 746 712 +34 746 736 +9
1980 733 697 +36 733 719 +14
1981 696 686 +10 696 707 -11
1982 733 695 +37 733 717 +16
1983 731 700 +31 731 724 +7
1984 727 691 +36 727 714 +13
1985 735 695 +40 735 718 +17
1986 740 704 +36 740 728 +12
1987 761 734 +27 761 760 +1
1988 718 675 +43 718 699 +19
1989 712 680 +32 712 702 +10
1990 718 707 +11 718 730 -12
1991 726 692 +34 726 714 +12
1992 716 686 +30 716 708 +8
1993 748 729 +19 748 752 -4
1994 782 750 +32 782 773 +9
1995 774 741 +33 774 764 +10
1996 798 741 +57 798 764 +34
1997 770 747 +23 773 770 +3
1998 774 744 +30 776 766 +10
1999 786 771 +15
2000 792 774 +18
The chart shows that once pitchers are removed from the equation, NL hitters
were actually more productive up through 1978, and though the AL has been
the more productive league since, the difference is fairly small. On raw
totals alone, the AL has had a 30-35 point edge in OPS over the last 20
years, but approximately 23 of those points are purely the result of
pitchers batting in the NL. (Interleague play has had a measurable, but
small, impact on these numbers. AL pitchers now pick up a few hundred
at-bats a season, lowering the league’s OPS by about two points.)
The remaining 10-point edge is still exaggerated; because DHs have no
defensive responsibilities, it is much easier to find a DH that can hit
than, say, a shortstop, so the "average" DH is a considerably
better hitter than the "average" AL position player. If we were
able to eliminate DHs as well as pitchers from the equation, the ten-point
edge in OPS that the AL possesses would shrink almost to nothingness.
This is an absolutely crucial point to understand: the fact that the AL has
had consistently higher offensive totals than the NL over the last 25 years
does not mean that AL hitters are better, or that AL pitchers are worse. The
difference is almost entirely an illusion created by replacing pitchers with
designated hitters for nearly 5,000 at-bats over the course of a season.
What this means is that if, say, two hitters bat .270/.340/.450, and one of
them is in the AL and one is in the NL, even though the NL hitter is better
relative to his league than the AL hitter, that is an inaccurate (and
therefore irrelevant) comparison, because the two league averages involve
different components. Comparing a hitter to league averages can only be
done after pitchers’ hitting totals have been removed from the equation.
Better still is to compare players to the performance of hitters only at
their position.
The point of all this?
As of the All-Star break, the AL ERA is 4.52, which is a Rockies homestand
away from the NL figure of 4.47. The AL OPS (766) is also just barely ahead
of the NL total (760).
The five-point difference in ERA, and the six-point gap in OPS, are both the
lowest figures by far since 1976. This, after the 1999 and 2000 seasons
showed the smallest gap between the two leagues since the early 1990s. And
while I don’t have an easy way of removing pitcher hitting totals in-season,
we can infer from previous seasons that, pitcher hitting aside, the average
NL hitter has an OPS 15 to 20 points higher than the average AL hitter. This
is a significant difference, especially when you consider that this is a
trend: since 1998, NL hitters have been gaining steadily on their AL
counterparts.
The possible reasons for this are too numerous to mention, but I prefer to
keep things simple and look for a single, obvious, measurable cause for this
shift. Fortunately, one such cause does in fact exist: the ballparks.
The following list includes every new stadium that opened after the 1998
season. Park factors are calculated from the STATS Major League
Handbook, and are based on a score of 1000 for a neutral park, with
higher numbers indicating more run scoring (e.g. a factor of 1050 indicates
the stadium increases scoring by 5%). Note that these park factors are not
the same as the ones Clay Davenport uses for Equivalent Average rankings;
those park factors incorporate a team’s road games as well as home games.
All park factors are based on three-year data, where available.
Year Team Old Stadium Park Factor New Stadium Park Factor1999 Seattle Kingdome 1022 Safeco Field 845 2000 Detroit Tiger Stadium 1011 Comerica Park 888 2000 Houston Astrodome 931 Enron Field 1194 2000 San Francisco 3Com Park 888 Pacific Bell Park 842
This season, the Brewers moved out of County Stadium (park factor: 985) and
into Miller Park, which through the All-Star break has a park factor of
1027. The Pirates have moved from Three Rivers (park factor: 1004) to PNC
Park (park factor: 1109).
Break it down, and you have two AL teams moving from parks which were
slightly favorable to hitters into the two best pitchers’ parks in the
league. Of the four NL teams to change parks, only the Giants have moved
into a pitchers’ park, and Pac Bell is only slightly tougher on hitters than
their old digs at Candlestick Point.
The Astros have gone from one of the worst parks (for hitters) in
major-league history into one of the best, and the Brewers and Pirates have
also made their hitters quite happy with their moves.
We can do a rough estimate of how each of these ballpark shifts have
affected the overall rate of scoring in their league. For example, the
Astros moved from a park which depressed scoring by 6.9% into a park that
increases scoring by 19.4%, an increase (relative to the league average) of
26.3%. Since 1/16th of all NL games are played in Enron Field, that should
correspond to a league increase in scoring of about 1.64%. Running the
numbers for all six teams:
Team Old PF New PF % Change % Change (League)Detroit 1011 888 -12.3% -0.88% Seattle 1022 845 -17.7% -1.26%
Houston 931 1194 +26.3% +1.64% San Francisco 888 842 -4.6% -0.03% Milwaukee 985 1027 +4.2% +0.03% Pittsburgh 1004 1109 +10.5% +0.66%
Combine the totals for each league, and we can estimate that the overall
drop in AL runs scored due solely to the change in ballparks in two AL
cities is approximately 2.13%. The estimated increase in NL runs scored as a
result of the four new ballparks is roughly 2.31%.
The ratio of AL runs per game to NL runs per game should, therefore, have
declined by about 4.5%, once you do the math properly. And in fact, in 1998
the ratio of AL runs per game to NL runs per game was 1.089. This season,
that ratio is just 1.027, an overall decline of 6.0%. That leaves 1.5% that
we can’t explain with our ballpark theory. That could be due to any number
of possibilities, the most likely of which is simply natural sample-size
variation, also known as a fluke.
But that still means that most of this paradigm shift–a full 75% of it–is
not only explainable, but expected. The AL may boast of the DH, but it needs
the DH to make up for parks like Comerica and Safeco, especially since the
NL counters with parks like Coors, Enron, and PNC. The era of two different
leagues playing at two markedly different scoring levels appears to be over.
At least until the next new ballpark opens in a city near you.
Rany Jazayerli is an author of Baseball Prospectus. You can contact him by
clicking here.
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