David SchoenfieldFeb 2, 2026, 07:00 AM ETCloseCovers MLB for ESPN.com Former deputy editor of Page 2 Been with ESPN.com since 1995Multiple Authors
One hundred fifty years ago, on Feb. 2, 1876, in a presumably smoke-filled room at the Grand Central Hotel in New York, the National League was born.
Now, 150 years later, with a labor battle looming as the current collective bargaining agreement expires on Dec. 1, it’s possible that when a new agreement is reached, MLB could look different. After all, commissioner Rob Manfred has already suggested realignment along geographic lines — though that’s more likely to happen when the sport expands.
So, entering the 2026 season, and with the Los Angeles Dodgers now chasing a third consecutive World Series title, it feels like a fun question to ask: Which is the stronger league right now?
It’s the Dodgers’ success that prompted this exercise. When the New York Yankees won four World Series in five years from 1996 to 2000, the rest of the American League upped its game, too. The Boston Red Sox increased their payroll to keep up with the Yankees, and for the rest of the league, it was either get better — or get left behind.
By the end of the 2025 season, however, the AL won interleague play, 367 wins to 353. Take out the Colorado Rockies, who went 12-36 in interleague games, and the NL holds a slight edge, but just as the White Sox’s ineptitude counted against the AL in 2024, so does Colorado’s.
The NL held the overall advantage in 2023 — when the number of interleague games expanded from 300 to 690 (and then to 720 in 2025) — and 2024. That means that in the three seasons since expanded interleague began, the NL holds a 1084-1016 advantage.
In looking just at the six playoff teams from each league, the AL teams in 2025 went 150-138 in interleague action while the NL teams went 162-126. The NL’s advantage is much larger over the three seasons, however, with NL playoff teams winning 58.3% of their games compared to 52.6% for the AL playoff teams.
Add it up and the NL went 68-49 — that’s a .581 winning percentage, good for a 94-win pace. The best in the NL seemed to get especially focused when playing the best in the AL. Taking in all this evidence, the top of the NL does appear to be stronger than the AL — perhaps a sign of the best NL teams trying to keep pace with the Dodgers.
The correlation between payroll and winning has never been higher and four of the six highest payrolls in 2025 (the six teams above $250 million, via Cot’s Contracts) belonged to NL teams, including the small-market Padres coming in at No. 6.
We can see this in free agency spending. I went back to the 2022-23 offseason and checked out ESPN’s top 10 free agents to see where they signed:
The Yankees retained Aaron Judge and signed away Carlos Rodon from the San Francisco Giants while Jacob deGrom went from the Mets to the Texas Rangers (only to barely pitch his first two seasons in Texas). The Mets countered that loss with Justin Verlander and Kodai Senga while also re-signing Brandon Nimmo.
Shohei Ohtani was the headliner in a relatively weak crop of free agents, and that shifted nearly 10 wins away from the AL to the NL. The only NL-to-AL move was Josh Hader going from the Padres to the Astros. The Dodgers also signed Yoshinobu Yamamoto while the Giants signed Blake Snell and Matt Chapman, with Chapman switching leagues. The Arizona Diamondbacks’ signings of Jordan Montgomery and Eduardo Rodriguez — both from AL teams — didn’t work out.
Three of those seven belong to the Mets: Juan Soto plus re-signing Pete Alonso and Sean Manaea. The Dodgers turned to Japan once again with Roki Sasaki while also signing Snell away from the Giants. The three AL signings were Alex Bregman (Astros to Red Sox), Max Fried (Atlanta Braves to Yankees) and Jack Flaherty (Dodgers to Tigers).
OK, it’s one thing to sign players to big contracts. But are these deals the reason the NL is arguably a little stronger at the top? Let’s look at those 2025 playoff teams and all the $100 million contracts on those rosters.
• Blue Jays (5): Vladimir Guerrero Jr., George Springer, Jose Berrios, Kevin Gausman, Andres Gimenez
• Dodgers (7): Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith, Tyler Glasnow
• Phillies (6): Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler, J.T. Realmuto, Nick Castellanos
The answer is … no, the big free agents aren’t the reason for the NL’s margins at the top. The AL received more total value (67.5 WAR) from its $100 million players than the NL did (63.2), even though the NL had three more such players.
The Phillies originally did that with Kyle Schwarber, when they signed him to a four-year, $79 million deal in 2022. Most teams weren’t willing to do that for a DH, but it paid huge dividends for the Phillies (and after re-signing with them this offseason, Schwarber is now in the $100 million club).
The Cubs have generally avoided the $100 million deals in recent years — they’ll now have Bregman to go along with Dansby Swanson as their recent two — but have had success in the mid-tier market with Ian Happ, Seiya Suzuki, Matthew Boyd and Jameson Taillon.
These types of players can backfire though. The Mets paid $100 million in 2025 for Manaea, Starling Marte, Frankie Montas, Senga, Jeff McNeil and Jesse Winker — all for a grand total of 4.1 WAR. The Phillies paid over $36 million for Taijuan Walker, Max Kepler and Jordan Romano, who combined for negative WAR (that doesn’t even include the $20 million for Castellanos and his minus-0.8 WAR).
Under their late owner Peter Seidler, the Padres certainly tried to beat the Dodgers — extending their payroll beyond their market size more than any other franchise while A.J. Preller emptied the farm system in win-now trades. As some of the core players get older and remain on expensive long-term contracts, their window may be closing.
The one AL team pushing all its chips to the center of the table is the Blue Jays. They added a sixth $100 million player in Cease while also signing third baseman Kazuma Okamoto out of Japan to a four-year, $60 million contract. They lost Bichette to the Mets, but their estimated payroll, via Roster Resource, has jumped from $217 million in 2024 to $258 million in 2025 to $282 million for 2026.
Here’s what’s a little scary. The best time to beat the Dodgers was probably in 2024 and 2025 — the two years they won the World Series. Check out their win-loss records and run differentials since 2017:
To compete with the Dodgers, teams will need young talent. Using FanGraphs WAR, here are the teams with the most value from their age-26 and younger players in 2025:
For now, everyone is chasing the Dodgers, even if that margin of dominance has been acutely exaggerated, and the National League does seem to have a slight edge on the American League. The Dodgers, meanwhile, will be chasing history in 2026: No NL team has ever won three straight World Series.
In 1901, the American League declared itself a competitor to the NL, jumping up from its minor league status (where it had been called the Western League). The two leagues agreed to play a World Series in 1903, and for the next 90-odd years the leagues served as heated rivals. The NL’s dominance in the All-Star Game from 1963 to 1982 — it won 19 of the 20 contests — was offered as proof of its superiority, certainly by its players and fans. The leagues had different presidents, different umpires and even different rules starting in 1973 with the advent of the designated hitter.
At one point last season, you could have made an argument that the five best teams were in the NL: The Dodgers were the Dodgers, the Philadelphia Phillies were on their way to another playoff appearance, the Milwaukee Brewers and Chicago Cubs actually had a better record than L.A. at the end of July, and the New York Mets hadn’t yet collapsed. Meanwhile, in the AL, the Detroit Tigers had slowed down after a hot start, the Toronto Blue Jays were just starting to get buy-in, the Yankees weren’t doing anything special, the Seattle Mariners hadn’t gotten hot, and the Houston Astros were battling a lot of injuries.
This offseason has been more evenly distributed, including four players switching leagues: Bregman going to the Cubs, Dylan Cease to the Blue Jays, Bo Bichette to the Mets and Alonso to the Baltimore Orioles. Japanese stars Tatsuya Imai (Astros) and Munetaka Murakami (Chicago White Sox) both landed with AL teams. While the Dodgers and Mets dominated the previous three years of top free agents, the nine players who have signed this winter — Framber Valdez remains unsigned — have done so with nine different teams.
The Mets led the majors in payroll in 2022 and 2023 and reached the NLCS in 2024 with the second-highest payroll but missed the playoffs in 2025. There hasn’t been a coherent plan along the way other than to spend money, although David Stearns, now in his third season as head of baseball operations, is finally formulating one, ditching some of the long-time franchise faces and leaning into more of a pitching-and-defense operation. We’ll see how the Alonso/Bichette flip works and the Freddy Peralta trade is certainly an “all-in” deal, trading two top-100 prospects for a rental pitcher.
The Dodgers won in 2024 despite an injury-ravaged starting rotation. They won in 2025 despite a bullpen that had mostly fallen apart in the regular season. Via run differential, those were the two weakest Dodgers teams since 2016. More than anything, this is probably the best testament to how the rest of the NL has improved: The Dodgers haven’t crushed the regular season the last two years. With a healthier rotation in 2026, however, plus a highly rated farm system (No. 4 in Kiley McDaniel’s latest rankings), we’ll see if the Dodgers return to those plus-200 run differentials.
You’d love to see the Brewers go all-in more than they do — instead, they traded Peralta to the Mets. The Red Sox are poised for a long run of success with their position players and starters Payton Tolle and Connelly Early ready as well. The Blue Jays came in eighth — although much of that value came from Guerrero, Gimenez and Alejandro Kirk, who will be entering their age-27 seasons. But you can see why they are all-in, with their core players all in their prime and now Trey Yesavage joining the rotation after his impressive postseason run. The Tigers are worth watching, with a solid core of young players plus potential stars Kevin McGonigle and Max Clark on the way.