hansen {l Wrote}:
smoltz was tipping pitches. the fact your coaching staff couldn't pick up on that doesn't say much for them. as for the best pitchers, i'll admit that Beckett is an outstanding pitcher but carpenter is just as filthy. Carpenter is one of those pitchers who emerged from TJ surgery and became a much better pitcher. there are other examples of this. i'll give you that your closer is better... but the cardinals have a crazy good 1-2 punch in Pujols (the best hitter in all of baseball and arguably the best player in the game right now) and Matt Holliday. the red sox have a deeper lineup but that's a result of the DH... AL teams will always (or should at least) have deeper lineups. and, as for the devil rays, they were awful this year.
Tipping what, his 84 mph fastball? Every AL-castoff pitcher the Cardinals pick up that feasts on the Cards' divisional opponents (Cincy, Pitt, even Milwaukee and Chicago were trash this year) and then the Nats and Padres to do well, is revealed to have been tipping pitches by Dave Duncan. They said it about Piniero when they got him. Notice that Lugo also turned into a productive player when he joined Holliday in LaRussa and Duncan's fountain of youth. Cliff Lee is a very good pitcher but wasn't vying for a repeat of the Cy Young in the AL this year (to his credit, Cleveland gave him no support) to being the actual Cy Young in the NL (still, with a nice Phillies offense).
Before the 1969 expansion, the best team in each league went to the World Series. There weren't 30 teams in MLB back then and there were a lot of meaningless games--the Yankees teams of the 50s would clinch really early. The reason why the best team might not always be the one who wins the most games isn't just because of the non-balanced schedule but because a team can be structured to destroy teams with weak pitching but not teams that have both good pitching and good hitting. Head to head, the second or even third best team in terms of record can beat the team with the overall best record. So really, who would be the best in that scenario?