“The National League is better than the American League” according to Joel Sherman: What the stats say
It’s the oldest argument in baseball. Which league is better? Depends who you’re talking to and how you measure the data. We’ll take a quick look at this year’s teams and players and try to see who’s better
Let’s begin with individual batting stats. If we begin old school, and I think the occasion deserves it considering the impressive numbers the MLB’s top hitter is showing this season, let’s start with old fashioned batting average. The top two for-average hitters in the MLB right now are both from the American League and both are on the same team. Aaron Judge (.423) and Paul Goldschmidt (.349) are raking this season.
Directly behind the two Bronx Bombers are two players from the National League: Pete Alonso (.344) and from the New York Mets and Brendan Donvan (.339) from the St. Louis Cardinals are having a great start to their 2025 campaign. But, we can’t analyze the hundreds of players from both leagues, but looking at the to 20 in the AVG category, exactly 10 are from the American League and 10 are from the National League.
Best OPS (On base percentage + slugging percentage)
A more modern stat for some of our diehard fans out there. Let’s see if this stat clears anything up for the question at hand. Aaron Judge is the leader with a whopping 1.287 OPS and Pete Alonso is right behind him at 1.124. In this category there’s more of a tilt favoring the National League as 13 hitters are in the top-20 in the OPS category. But, does that maybe mean the pitching is weaker in the NL? Traditionally speaking, no. But, let’s take a look.
Best MLB pitcher
Let’s begin old school again and look at ERA. Yoshinobu Yamamoto from the Los Angeles Dodgers has and earned run average of 0.90 and incredibly is only 4-2 for the season. In second place is the best American League pitcher, Max Fried of the Yankees with a 1.01 ERA in seven starts. If we continue down the list with this stat, there are 11 American League pitchers in the top-20 (three of them from the Texas Rangers) and 9 from the National League.
If we look at the Wins Above Replacement (WAR) stat, it’s basically the same with 11 American League pitchers in the top-20. The WHIP stat (Walks plus Hits per Innings Pitched) doesn’t decide anything either, with both leagues sharing the top-20 with 10 pitchers each.
Do you agree with Joel? pic.twitter.com/MeWEKffNlt
— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) May 4, 2025
So, how do we decide which league is better?
If we look at team records, a few numbers stand out. In the NL West alone there are three teams that already have 20+ wins: Dodgers (23), Padres (22) and Giants (22). The Cubs (21) in the NL Central and the Mets (22) in the NL East are also firing on all cylinders.
In the AL there are only three teams with 20+ wins: Tigers (22), Guardians (20) and the Mariners (20). The American League total wins is 254 and the National League total wins are 260 as of May 5.
It’s hard to quantify which league is best and for most teams, players and fans it comes down to something more subjective, so what’s the point? Joel Sherman might be right, but then again, maybe not. Let’s see who wins the World Series and then we’ll have another piece of data to analyze.
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