Parity In Baseball Actually Down This Year
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

This year, even more than in recent years, the key word in baseball has been parity. Just as scientists once believed that planets and stars were suspended in a luminiferous ether, baseball fans and insiders take as a given that teams and players are fixed in parity. A concept that can make sense of everything, from why the American League is better than the National League even though the latter has nearly all the game’s best players to why last week’s trade deadline was the busiest in many years, parity explains all.
To a point this makes sense. Four divisions — the East and West in the NL, the East and Central in the AL — are locked in tight races; the NL Central isn’t only because the Chicago Cubs kicked the Milwaukee Brewers around like dogs in a crucial four-game set last week, and the wild card races are as heated as any in the game. Furthermore, while many players are having great seasons, none are having the kind of otherworldly ones that have been common in recent years. There are certainly signs of equality everywhere, if you’re looking.
Still, the notable thing about 2008, at least compared to recent years, is that the supposed parity of the game isn’t notable at all.
Going into last night’s games, 13 teams were within five games of first place or the wild card, an arbitrary but sensible way of separating out the teams that have hope from those who don’t. That’s not bad, and baseball’s marketing executives can start counting the money they’re going to rake in as the races go to the wire next month, but it’s also the worst figure in the last five years.
Last year at the same time, 16 teams were within five games of a playoff spot. The year before, it was a ridiculous 21. The year before that, it was 16 again. And the year before that, it was 15. The majors may not be much off their recently established standards for pennant race parity, but they are below them.
Generally speaking, the reason why is pretty obvious — teams that should be contending aren’t. Detroit, Cleveland, and Atlanta ought to be a lot closer to first than they are, and Oakland probably would be if general manager Billy Beane hadn’t waved the white flag of surrender and traded veteran pitchers for prospects. What’s less obvious is why this year is generally being taken as an unusually competitive one when it really isn’t. I think there are three explanations — none of them mutually exclusive.
First, although we usually think of parity as a quality defined by lower bounds, it’s equally defined by upper ones. In other words, the exact number of teams loitering somewhat near contention is no more important than the number that are running away from their rivals. By that standard, this is indeed an exceptional year for parity. Only the Los Angeles Angels started out last night with a winning percentage above .600, and no other team is on pace for 100 wins. Other than Chicago and Milwaukee, no team in the NL is even on pace for 90 wins.
Second, Tampa Bay’s ascension really focuses the mind. Whether New Yorkers and Bostonians like the charge or not, the rest of the country’s fans have a point when they complain that the AL East gets a disproportionate amount of coverage in the national baseball press. Over the last few years, we’ve seen all sorts of unlikely teams make runs for the pennant, but nothing so dramatic as a bunch of green kids and journeymen whipping the famed Yankees and Red Sox. The mere presence of the Rays in first place makes such a vivid illustration of parity that it makes the standings seem more unsettled than they are.
Last and likely most important is that parity has been a fact of baseball for years now, so much that it’s hard to look at the standings without scrutinizing them for clues to the identity of this year’s mystery winner. As the random ascensions and rapid descents of such teams as Colorado, Florida, and Houston at various points show, more or less any team can get to the World Series these days so long as they get hot at the right time. And those teams can win: Only Boston has won more than one World Series this decade, and only St. Louis has won more than one NL pennant. In the sense that there’s no obvious favorite in either league, the game is just as open now as it has been over the last few years.
This is the expected result of deliberate central baseball policy; you may like it or not, think it opens up the sport or turns it into a lottery, but it’s how things are now, and how they’ll be for the foreseeable future. If you like a game in which 17 of the weak have been culled by the first week of August, take the time to enjoy it. You may not see its like again for years.
tmarchman@nysun.com