NL to AL talent drain

[joncarlos]

So I was thinking about this earlier today and figured I'd actually go look it up. I thought the NL had lost all their top tier talent to the AL. But I checked the top 25 free agents from Baseball Prospectus and it doesn't look that bad.

I guess the trades of Chapman and Kimbrel also take some top NL talent away, in addition to free agency. (EDIT - and Frazier)

Price, C Davis, Gordon, Wieters, Rasmus, Iwakuma - stayed in AL
Heyward, Greinke, Lackey, Span, D Murphy, Leake, Brett Anderson - stayed in NL

Upton, J Zimm - moved to AL
Shark, Zobrist, A Cabrera, Kazmir, WY Chen - moved to NL

Cueto - sorta stayed in the NL after a brief sojourn to the AL

Who knows? Cespedes, Fowler, Desmond, Kendrick

[Sharky]

This is not a new problem. The payrolls are different but the core cause is the absence of the DH in the NL (and presence of the DH in the AL). The potential to shift an aging slugger to DH removes a lot of the risk of big contracts.