East v. West who is the best?

So I was at work today and of course I work with none other then Red Sox and Yankee fans. They were both talking about how the Angels are not that good and that they play in a weak division. So I decided to do a little homework to see if I could make them eat some crow. So I looked up the overall records of the teams against the other leagues. I was surprised to see how lopsided it really was. Here are the overall records as of this morning, September 22.

East v. West 72 – 91  .442%

East v. Central 102 – 71  .590%

Central v. East 71 – 102  .410%

Central v West 78 – 96  .448%

West v. East 91 – 72  .558%

West v. Central 96 – 78 .551%

So I knew the argument to this would be that the AL west only has 4 teams as that is the common argument with the strength of the division. So I disregarded the teams with the worst record in their division. Here are the overall records of each division.

With all teams overall

East 388 – 362 .517%

Central 352 – 397 .470%

West 321 – 278 .536%

With the top 4 teams in the division

East 328 – 272 .546%

Central 291 – 309 .485%

So now with all of this being said, we can see that the East is not the best as far as records are concerned. They are the second best, and they have a losing record against the West. I think we all knew that the Central has struggled the most this year but I was again surprised that the East had a .442 against the West, after showing this to the guys at work they quit with the argument.

I don’t know if this has much bearing on how the playoffs will go but I think the Red Sox and Angels are looking the best right now. They seem to be winning and it looks like the Yankees are starting to struggle. I think it will be a great playoff year and I can’t wait for it to start.