Major League Baseball’s National League West, Where the Baseball Is Best

For years many baseball analysts have said that the American League’s Eastern Division is the best in baseball. The East features the illustrious New York Yankees, the most successful team in the history of the Major Leagues, and the Boston Red Sox winners of two recent World Series. Also, nearly every year these two teams have the highest payrolls in baseball, which seems to show that the ownership of these ball clubs tries to put the best team money can buy on the field every year.

Consequently the Yankees and the Red Sox play many great games against each other, and each year they finish at or near the top of the division and usually make the playoffs. In recent times, the only other team to win the AL East has been the Tampa Bay Rays. The other teams in the East, the Toronto Blue Jays and the Baltimore Orioles, haven’t won the Eastern Division in the twenty-first century.

Okay, the AL East has some excellent teams, but it doesn’t have the best competitive balance in the Major Leagues. That belongs to the National League’s Western Division.

The National League West has five teams: the Los Angeles Dodgers, the San Francisco Giants, the Arizona Diamondbacks, the San Diego Padres and the Colorado Rockies. Other than the Colorado Rockies, since the year 2001 each team has won the division title at least twice and no team has won it more than two years in a row. Although the Rockies haven’t won the division over that period of time, they have won the wild card twice.

In 1998, the Arizona Diamondbacks were added to the West as an expansion team. The following year, the Diamondbacks won the division! No expansion team has ever won a division title that quickly. Wouldn’t you say that’s indicative of competitive balance in the NL West? Could it also be evidence of the best competitive balance in the Major Leagues?

At the beginning of every season ESPN baseball analyst Tim Kurkjian cannot predict which team is going to win the National League West. (Just ask him!) That’s because at the start of each baseball season every team in the NL West has a chance to win either the division or a wild card berth. No other division boasts this level of competition. And this state of being will probably continue for the foreseeable future.

In 1975, Walt Alston, manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers said: “Perhaps the truest axiom in baseball is that the toughest thing to do is repeat.”

In fact, the National League is more competitive than the American League, because the last team in the National League to repeat as World Series champions was the Cincinnati Reds from 1975 to 1976. The last team before that to repeat was the New York Giants in the 1920s. As for the American League, the New York Yankees won the World Series from 1998 to 2000. Overall, they dominate that league.

For competitive balance, who needs the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox? They’re just two teams. Baseball in the National League West is best!

That steady beat continues in the National League West, as the Arizona Diamondbacks, a team that finished last in the division in 2010, won the division title in 2011.

Don’t forget, in the Doors’ song “The End,” Jim Morrison sings “the west is the best.” Even he knew!

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