There are 29 other teams in the majors

If you haven’t yet read Mike’s post on the rotation concerns, go do that now. He hits on some important point regarding how we mistakenly use hindsight when comparing last year’s team to this year’s. That’s one pitfall into which we can easily fall, but it’s not the only one. When we get emails and comments from fans who express concern, or panic, over the current team I often wonder how much baseball they watch outside the Yankees. Because while the Yankees certainly have flaws, other teams have them too.

In terms of the regular season the Yankees seem set. They are tied for the best record in baseball, and even if they finish with the second best record they’re obviously still in the playoffs. The Red Sox present the only possible threat to the Yankees’ playoff chances, but that’s quite the long shot. They’re 5.5 games out and will miss the right side of their infield for the rest of the season. Two of their three starting outfielders won’t return, and their bullpen is in tatters. Five and a half games might be a surmountable deficit for a team at full strength, but the Red Sox are far from that.

The only concern, then, is how the Yankees will fare in the playoffs. While it might seem like the Yankees have a few fatal flaws, they’ve managed to do pretty well despite them. No team in baseball, after all, boasts a better record. This signals that other teams have more glaring flaws. And since the next closest team after the Rays is 5.5 games worse, it would seem that those flaws are considerably more significant. It might be tough to see this at times, since most of us don’t watch many non-Yankees games, but it’s true. The Yankees are far better off than their non-Rays competition.

Adding to the strength of this Yankees team is the division in which they play. We know anecdotally that the AL East is the toughest division in baseball. While other divisions have a couple of strong teams, the AL East boasts what could be the three best teams in the AL. The Red Sox, injuries and all, would lead the AL Central by a half game, and would sit a mere .001 percentage points behind the Rangers in the West. Then there are the Blue Jays, 66-60, giving the AL East another tough competitor.

Just how much better than the rest of the league is the AL East? Perhaps a pair of tables that loyal reader PJ emailed us will shed some more light on the situation.

It’s no surprise that the AL East, NL East, and NL West are the only teams with positive run differentials, since they’re the only divisions with four teams at or above .500. But the margin between the NL and AL Easts is staggering. The AL East has a 68 percent larger run differential. Yes, the Yankees play a large role in that; they do have the largest run differential in the league. But they have to play all those other teams with superb run differentials, and they have to play them 18 times each. And, as we saw this week, that includes Toronto, which has the sixth best run differential in the AL. That’s rough for a fourth-place team.

In terms of the playoffs, the Yankees appear to be in a similar spot as last year. As part of Baseball Prospectus’s statistical package, they provide something called Secret Sauce, which blends defense, pitcher strikeout rate, and bullpen strength to determine a team’s likelihood of winning in the playoffs. You can read our write-up on Secret Sauce here. Last year the Yankees’ Secret Sauce score was 22. This year it’s — guess what? — 22. The only difference is that the Rays have a lower (i.e., better) score this year, but there’s nothing the Yanks can do about that. It would seem that they’re in the same position as last year, which as we know is nothing but a good thing.

Do the Yankees have flaws? Of course. Are those flaws more serious than those of other teams? Not at all. The Yankees own baseball’s best record, the league’s best run differential, and the AL’s second best Secret Sauce score. The only difference this year is the presence of the Rays, something over which the Yankees exert no control. It means one more tough team to beat, but little more. In terms of comparing the 2009 World Champions to the 2010 defenders, there isn’t too big a difference.