Best Division in the history of FCM?

[GoIrish]

Was reading the AL East thread and I started thinking, what is the best division in the history of first class mogul.

Here are the numbers to support my view.

AL East - 1 World Series (NYY 2014) 4 WS apperances (NYY '12,'14,'15,'17)
AL Central - 1 World Series (Min 2010) 4 WS Apperances (Min '10, det '11, Cle '13, KC '16)
AL West - 0 WS 0 WS Apperances
NL East - 1 World Series (Florida 2015) 2 world series apperances (Florida '14, '15)
NL West - 1 World Series (SF 2013) 1 WS apperance (SF 2013)

and.....




NL Central - 4 WS Championships (Houston '12, '16, Milwaukee '11, Chicago '17) 5 WS apperances (Chicago 17, Houston '12, '16, Milwaukee '11, Cincy '10) Wild card teams 4 (Chicago '11, '12, '16 Houston '17)

[jps93]

Not to mention all of the +.500 teams we have this year!

[Cdawg]

How can you not vote AL West. Our utter dominance of the league is so much more apparent than just these silly stats.

[hokeyrules]

to me its a one horse race.

[Hummingbird]

How can you not vote for the AL west?

[AndyP]

I just feel, historically, that the AL East has been top to bottom a better division since FCM inception. We've had less teams picking in the top 10, more teams over .500, and a variety of other factors.

If the AL would just win a freaking all-star game here and there you might see better balance in the WS titles too.

But it is very, very close in my eyes - a couple years with Pitt, St. Louis, and Cincy in the hunt and this is probably a changed opinion, but so far I'd say the AL East has had more top to bottom quality.

[danpac47]

NL central may have the better teams, but i still think that the AL East has always been a fun division to watch unfold.

[GoIrish]

I could see if more teams in the AL east made a post season showing that you could say it is top to bottom the best divison but it has been a 1 horse race in the AL East. If you take NYY out of the AL East, the AL East will then be on par with the AL West with what they have won. You take Houston out of the NL Central and we still have the most WS Championships as a division.

[AndyP]

The NL Central also has had some of the worst teams in FCM history. The Cubs picked in the top ten for several years, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and Cincinatti have all also been in that boat. For most of the history of FCM there have been two good teams in the NL Central and as many as four awful teams.

I look at it like real life - would anyone really argue that over the last decade or so that the NL West has been one of baseball's best? Because by the same criteria - only the AL East in real life has been better than the NL West and that isn't even by much. Colorado, San Diego, Arizona, San Fran, and LAD all have had success in the last decade in real life, but I look at the whole group as a bunch of mediocre hacks who have benefited from a weak division. So it clouds the "ultimate success" stats in their favor over the NL East, AL West, or NL Central.

Our NL Central success stories have been legit, but it's just a real life example of how you can twist numbers to make things look better than they have been.

[dejota]

I think Sean and Andy are both right. IRL we tend to favor divisions that are thick but also produce different winners year to year. I think if you take out yearly ebbs and flows of talent, the AL East and NL Central have been relatively similar with the edge going to the AL East since fewer teams have rebuilt during FCMs history.

However, The AL East has failed to produce enough of a variety at the top of the division to get my vote (also a heavy bias is there obviously). The NL Central has had 4 of the teams in our division finish 1st and 3 of the teams finish 1st multiple times. I may be mistaken but IIRC the AL has only had NY as a repeat champion/ws representative. It's close and basically splitting hairs, but I'll take the NL Central for it's consistency and variety.