Bad Sports Writing and the American League's Superiority

Anyone who has been following the major league game closely for the last ten or fifteen years should know that the AL is currently the better of the two major leagues, just like the NL was the better league from the late 1940’s through the 1970’s when it was the league taking the lead on integration (and thus getting the lion’s share of the best African American and Latin players).

Still, I’m irritated by Jon Heyman’s article on SI.com making the point, due to its lack of nuance and accuracy.  Yes, the AL is the better league, but it’s not as much better as Heyman suggests.  Need I remind everyone that Ryan Garko, who hit .285 with an .826 for Cleveland in the Junior Circuit, is currently hitting .233 with a .651 OPS for the Giants?  Need I remind everyone that Jason Bay doesn’t seem to have had any problem with all those super-star pitchers in the AL since the Red Sox acquired him from the Pirates?

Heyman sure doesn’t.  According to his article, every player that ever went from the AL to the NL suddenly became or regained superstar status.  The part of Heyman’s article that really annoyed me was this:

“[Rockies' GM Dan O'Dowd] cited Randy Johnson’s trade from Seattle to Houston way back in 1997 as the first case of an incredible transformation. ‘He was OK in Seattle [that year], but he went on a roll that was phenomenal in Houston,’ O’Dowd recalled. Johnson was known as a terrific talent with the Mariners but wound up winning his four straight Cy Young Awards with the NL’s Diamondbacks .”  [The italicized portion is the part that's Heyman's opinion, not O'Dowd's.]

Umm, didn’t Randy Johnson win a Cy Young award in the AL?  Didn’t he have seasons as a Mariner where he went 19-8 with 308 Ks, 18-2 with a 2.48 ERA and 294 Ks, and 20-4 with a 2.28 ERA and 291 Ks?  Good thing the National League came along so that Randy could suddenly become a “great” pitcher.

Heyman, in making such a stupid statement, is relying on the fact that few people remember how Johnson was actually regarded when he and Pedro Martinez were the best two pitchers in the AL.  At the time, everyone knew that Johnson and Martinez were the best two pitchers in the league, and there wasn’t much sincere debate otherwise.  Also, at the time, everyone knew that the Mariners traded Johnson away because they didn’t think they could afford the free agent contract he was going to command at the end of the 1998 season (Johnson signed a then enormous 4-year $53 million contract with the Diamondbacks before 1999).

I guess my point is that I’d prefer accuracy to overstating the case in order to get a “good” or at least more memorable story.