(03-30-2011, 12:26 PM)GoIrish Wrote: I am not following your analogy of the NL West and AL East in real life in comparision to FCM. In real life the NL west have won 1 WS (SF '10) in the past 10 years and made 3 WS apperances (SF '02, '10 and Col '07) but the AL East have had 4 WS championships (NYY '00, '09 Boston '04, '07) in the last 10 years with 7 WS Apperances (NYY "00, '01, '03, '09, Boston '04, '07, Tampa '08). If anything this is shaping up to be very similar to our debate in FCM, in real life the AL East have been the best division in baseball because they have had the most success by different teams.
The NL West also has had Arizona win the WS in '01. They've also got the NL Wild card 4 times in the last decade. The point I was trying to make is that if you skew the numbers right you can make anyone look better than they are or worse than they are.
(Talking real MLB here) Personally, when I think "best divisions of the decade" - I think AL East, AL West, and NL East. Yet if one took the numbers as you did, they could make a much stronger case for the NL West than they really deserve. At least part of what makes the AL East the best in my opinion isn't just that they've had that ultimate success, but the fact that there is routinely a third team and sometimes a fourth team(Toronto, Tampa, Boston, or New York at times) that aren't a factor simply because they beat on each other so much and only two can move on. Put Toronto or Tampa in the NL West and they may have won that division a couple times the last decade, for example.
(FCM) I'm not trying to skew any numbers. In terms of ultimate success - the NL Central has had significantly more than the AL East - there isn't much doubt about that. In terms of division quality year in and year out, I don't think there's much doubt that the AL East has been deeper and filled with more potential contenders and less cannon fodder.
The question is then, which of those traits matters more to answer that question. I completely understand why people would look at the WS titles, so I don't think anyone is wrong to vote that way. I'm not trying to sway people either way, just present a fair take on both.