Some Unexpected Names Atop AL Leaderboards

If you want one sign that the baseball season is starting to settle in, the National League leaderboards are a good place to start. The top five in the senior circuit in on-base plus slugging are Chase Utley, Chipper Jones, Pat Burrell, Albert Pujols, and Lance Berkman. These may not be the five very best hitters in the league, but their presence at the top shows that all will soon be well in the major leagues, as order begins to assert itself. Similarly, a glance at the leaders in earned run average betrays the early date only by the presence of one Edinson Volquez atop the league — right behind him are Tim Lincecum, Carlos Zambrano, Jake Peavy, and Ben Sheets, all of whom will probably be right at the top at the end of September.

Conversely, if you want a sign that anything can happen in five weeks of baseball, look at the American League. There, the top five in OPS are Carlos Quentin, Eric Hinske, Manny Ramirez, Casey Kotchman, and Johnny Damon. Granting that Quentin and Kotchman are formerly acclaimed prospects who are likely breaking out as really fine hitters, it's an odd list. Even more unusual, though, is the list of ERA leaders, which takes in Cliff Lee, Zack Greinke, Ervin Santana, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and Greg Smith.

Five weeks being five weeks, there's nothing much to make of this in its own right. Top hitting stars such as Alex Rodriguez, Vladimir Guerrero, and David Ortiz are either hurt or off to uncharacteristically slow starts; meanwhile, some strong pitchers such as Johan Santana and Dan Haren are now pitching in the National League, while others, such as Josh Beckett and Erik Bedard, have been injured.

What's actually strange are the numbers these players are putting up. Quentin is the only AL hitter with an OPS above 1.000, and one of just 10 with a mark above .900. (Four of them are at .902 or below.) In the NL, 11 players are hitting above 1.000, with another 14 above .900. Damon's good but hardly spectacular batting line of .295 BA/.394 OBA/.527 SLG makes for the fifth-best OPS in the league; in the NL, it wouldn't crack the top 20.

This is largely a reflection of the decline in offense in the AL. Scoring per team is down half a run per game from last year, to 4.44, which is actually lower than the NL. This being so, you'd expect more freaky pitching numbers from journeymen, such as Lee's 0.96 ERA, or even Vicente Padilla's 3.50. In the AL, though, just 11 starters have ERAs below 3.50; in the NL, there are 20.

Here is a seeming paradox: More or less everyone would acknowledge that the AL is much stronger and more competitive than the NL, but the senior circuit is, in the early going, where nearly all the best performances are to be had. This would seemingly carry some implications about the real strengths of the leagues; after all, isn't the better league the one where the better players are to be found?

It may seem odd, but the implication would actually be, if anything, that the AL is stronger than many fans take it to be. It's easier to run up big numbers in a weaker league, which is why top players used to do things like hit .400 and win 30 games in the olden days of segregation and no farm systems, while top prospects put up video game numbers in the minors today. In a stronger league, where there are fewer weak teams and fewer weak players generally, the performance of the best of them is generally going to stand out a bit less, as they have fewer chances to beat up on scrubs. This, along with the more important fact that it's still early, is probably why no one's really destroying the competition in the AL while lots of guys are doing so in the NL.

This is just a theory, but it makes sense when you consider the general climate of the two leagues right now. In the NL, four teams — the Rockies, Padres, Pirates, and Reds — are flirting with .400 winning percentages, while the Nationals and Giants are almost certainly worse than any of them. In the AL, by contrast, only the Rangers and Mariners are playing poorly, and every other team is at least decent. This is parity in action in the American League, and while it's generally thought of as a good thing insofar as it gives fans of more teams hope and faith that they might see a winner (note that every team in the AL save the two feeble clubs in the West harbors at least some hope for a pennant), it's also a bad thing in that it makes it more difficult for individual talents to really stand out. When everyone's equal, no one excels.

tmarchman@nysun.com