AL and NL All-Star streaks add up to an almost even match
Something about Major League Baseball’s All-Star game doesn’t add up, and it hasn’t for decades.
It’s not that one league has dominated. In 80 games, the National League has won 40, the American League 38, and there have been two ties.
It’s not that the games have been lopsided either. The cumulative run totals are nearly identical — 339 for the AL, 336 for the NL.
Indeed, the numbers seem to indicate the annual game has gone back and forth year after year.
But it hasn’t.
The game has been all about streaks.
First it was the AL, which won 12 of the first 16 games, from 1933 to 1949.
Then it was the NL, which took 33 of 42 from 1950 until 1987 (there were two games a year from 1959 to 1962), including winning 19 of 20 in one span.
Most recently, the AL has been back on top. Since 1988, it has lost only three times, and it’s currently on a record 13-game streak in which it hasn’t lost — 12 wins plus a tie in 2002.
One theory about the streaks is that baseball tends to be cyclical and one league may be simply better over a given stretch.
However, neither Dodgers Manager Joe Torre nor Angels boss Mike Scioscia believes the game defines the superior league.
“The only way you’re going to find what the better league is, where the best talent is, is to group everybody in the same season and see who’s got the staying power to play for the whole season,” said Scioscia, who spent his entire 13-year career in the majors in the NL with the Dodgers and all of his 11 years as a manager in the AL with the Angels.
“That’s the real test and the real challenge of being a good baseball team, your staying power and longevity. One game doesn’t prove that.”
Angels center fielder Torii Hunter, a four-time All Star, wasn’t sure what to make of the streaks, but had his own theory:
“If something’s wrong or something’s going on or something’s happening, follow the money,” Hunter said.
Currently, six of the top nine teams in payroll come from the AL, including the runaway leader, the New York Yankees at $206,333,389, and the No. 2 Boston Red Sox at $162,747,333. The Red Sox are nearly $16 million in front of the NL-leading Chicago Cubs.
“Obviously, the money teams are definitely going to attract guys with more skill-set,” said Dodgers outfielder Garret Anderson, who played in the AL for 15 seasons before switching to the NL last year. “That’s business. That’s just the way it is.”
Alec Levenson, a research scientist at USC’s Marshall School of Business — and a die-hard Red Sox fan — said the ebb and flow of All-Star streaks can be explained by
the Law of Large Numbers, a theory used in situations when the same experiment is performed many times.
He said the law is applicable to baseball’s midsummer showcase because the level of talent on each side is fairly equal, a fact proved by the nearly even head-to-head win-loss totals during an 80-game span.
Therefore, Levenson said, a coin flip is as good as any way to determine which team might win. “If you flip a coin 80 times,” he added, “you’re going to come close to a 40-40 split.”
And if during those 80 flips there are streaks in which the coin comes up heads or tails several times consecutively, it’s still likely that the end total will be near 40-40.
“It’s luck,” Levenson said.
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