MLB: 2013 Results, the Impact For Now // NBA: Standings; Denver Nuggets, the Challenges Ahead

sports-notebook.blogspot.com . . . FOR MORE ANALYSIS, GO TO "MILE HIGH SPORTS RADIO," AM1510 or FM93.7, and to Denver’s best sports blogging team---milehighsports.com. SPORTS NOTEBOOK posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week. Ed., Publ., Marvin Leibstone; Copy & Mng. Ed., Gail Kleiner. . . //.. MLB: 2013 Results, the Impact For Now; NBA: Standings; Denver Nuggets, the Challenges Ahead. . . // . . MLB: NO-one has ever been directly in charge of any of the six MLB divisions, there’s no manager hired to push any MLB division ahead of other league-assigned division so that at the end of a season a best could be handed a huge trophy and a championship title. Yet curiosity can take hold, and we then ask, “With 2014 about to begin, which is the best division in baseball?” Of course, there are different ways to arrive at the answer. To reach a conclusion, the math junkies could play with number of wins, plus OBP’s, RBI’s, fewest runners left in scoring position, ERA’s, total strikeouts, saves, lot’s more. However, since it’s number of won games that reflects a team’s standing no matter which organizational category a team resides in---division, league, both leagues---the total number of a division’s won games within the 162 played every season by each team seems criteria enough for determining best division as MLB-2014 approaches. Going with that, last season’s top MLB division turned out to be the American League’s number one, the AL East. Coming in as second best division within both leagues was the National League’s number one, the NL East. Here’s how that played out---AL East, 433 won games; NL East, 420. Not far behind and third best division within both leagues was the NL Central, 411 wins; fourth, AL Central, 400 wins; fifth, NL West, 399; sixth, AL West, 389. The gap between best and worst was only 44 won games. The indication here is an important and also simple one, “As a totality, the majors are fair enough.” Too, from adding up all of 2013’s won games and finding that the AL’s total is 1,222, only eight less than the NL’s 1,230, we can again agree that there’s sufficient fairness among the 30 clubs, that there’s AL and NL parity of sorts. BUT---the data that counts most isn’t the macro, it’s the local stuff, what one’s favorite team could put on the board. Which teams had the most won games during 2013? The AL’s Red Sox and the NL’s St. Louis Cardinals were tied at the top, 97 wins each. Next best were the NL East’s Atlanta Braves, 96 wins. Third best, the Pittsburgh Pirates, 94. Fourth best, the AL’s Detroit Tigers, 93. Fifth, a three-way tie for the AL’s Cleveland Indians, the Tampa Bay Rays and the NL’s L.A. Dodgers, 92 wins each. Sixth, a tie for the AL’s Texas Rangers and the Miami Marlins, 91 each. That’s 10 of 30 ball clubs finishing 2013 with 90 or more wins per, contributing to a total of 935 of 2,452 wins. When adding the 12 more MLB teams that finished 2013 with between 73 and 90 wins per, we have another indicator that the majors in 2013 were closer to fairness than otherwise, that MLB-2014 won’t be kicking in as a mostly lopsided affair. . . NBA---AS of yesterday, nearly all of the 30 NBA teams have between 18 and 20 games left to play before the 2013/14 season ends and playoffs begin. What each conference within the greater league will look like when that last game completes in April is no longer immune to informed guesses, for of the six division leading franchises only one is at risk of being toppled by a second place team today: the 36-27 Toronto Raptors could give way to the 33-30 Brooklyn Nets. All other division first place teams have leads of four and more wins above their number two’s, the best being the 47-17 Indiana Pacers over Chicago by 12 wins and the 44-18 Miami Heat atop the Washington Wizards also by 12, though leading the West now, and also the entire league, are the West’s Southwest 48-16 San Antonio Spurs. Traveling back 18 to 20 NBA games, to early February, noted is that the franchises leading the six divisions today were those holding the division number one spots then. It’s a fair guess that NBA-2013/14 will end without significant changes at the top from those and today’s rankings. So, within the foreground for the mid-April and beyond battles, visible will be the West’s Spurs, the 47-17 Thunder and the 45-20 Clippers, and within the East the Pacers, the Heat, the Raptors or the Nets. Okay, this isn’t breaking news. Still, as of today, and except for the Raptors, each of these teams has won between 44 and 48 games, a differential so narrow “Square one” is the landing. It’s safe to say that determining which team will prevail, and which will drop out in the playoffs, is anyone’s guess. . . //. . DENVER NUGGETS---THE now 28-36 Nuggets haven’t upcoming playoffs winking at them from a horizon, and they can’t say that rising to a record reflecting more 2013/14 wins than losses is definitely within their future. Left for this team, however, is a grand plus, that which could be construed as great and useful basketball. Numbers and season objectives aside, there’s a 2013/14 challenge that the Nuggets can be grateful for, the six of 18 2013/14 games left for the Nuggets to play that will be against the NBA’s now leading franchises. Between tomorrow and the last day of the NBA season for the Nuggets, April 16, the team will be facing the Spurs, the Thunder, the Heat, the Clippers, the Wizards, and the Warriors. Forget that the Nuggets have fallen to fourth place within the West’s Northwest Division, 19 games behind first position team, the Thunder. Surely Nuggets defeats of these NBA leading teams, or Nuggets losses to them by only a few points, could underscore a Nuggets squad that is a lot better than its numbers and its position within the standings. Outcomes different from this will signal starkly those imbalances among the team strengths and vulnerabilities that could drag the Nuggets down during 2014/15, the bright outlook on this being valuable “classroom” for the Nuggets. END/ml.