One month into the 2002 season, it's as if someone has shaken the major-league talent pool and all the sediment has settled in the shallow end of the American League.

No one would argue that baseball is facing a competitive balance crisis. In both leagues, there are the good and bad. But in some sections of the AL basement, it's just plain ugly.

	Javier Vazquez is a pitcher plenty of other teams would love to have on their roster.

Last year, two major-league teams -- the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays -- lost 100 games. But bad as the Pirates were -- and, with a .247 team batting average, a 5.05 staff ERA and an error total that topped all but one other team, they were plenty bad -- they at least had some redeeming value.

What club wouldn't welcome an outfielder like Brian Giles, a catcher like Jason Kendall or a third baseman like Aramis Ramirez?

It's much the same situation in Montreal, where the threat of contraction had other clubs salivating in anticipation. Expos outfielder Vladimir Guerrero would be one of the first players chosen if half the teams were contracted, much less two. Javier Vazquez would be a welcome addition to any starting rotation. Jose Vidro would send any number of second basemen to the bench were he to change uniforms.

But the same can't be said when it comes to the AL cellar-dwellers.

The most attractive everyday player on the Baltimore Orioles last year was first baseman Jeff Conine, who will turn 36 in two months. Conine is clearly on the back nine of his career. Jay Gibbons is showing some power potential and closer phenom Jorge Julio has been hitting triple digits on radar guns in the first month of the season, but neither is established at the big-league level.

Don't think that Orioles fans haven't noticed this dropoff in star quality. Without Cal Ripken for the first time in two decades, the O's are recording record attendance lows at Camden Yards, averaging 31,560 through 11 home dates. Last year, the O's averaged 38,686, the first time under 40,000 since Camden Yards opened in 1992.

In fact, with attendance also down in Texas and Cleveland early on this year, only four of the top 14 teams in attendance are AL teams, with only the Mariners and Yankees ranking in the top nine.

If Tampa Bay were to replace Minnesota as the AL's next sacrificial lamb at the altar of contraction, would teams be tempted to pass on their dispersal picks? The thought of adding a glorified DH like Ben Grieve wouldn't excite many general managers.

"There's no getting around it -- there are some flat-out bad teams in our league," concedes one AL executive. "And they're not just bad; they're dull."

Is it any wonder that attendance is down and falling further in places like Detroit or Kansas City?

In Milwaukee, fans can at least watch Richie Sexson and Geoff Jenkins hit prodigious homers -- or set strikeout records trying. Find a reason to go watch the Tigers in the chill of April -- or the swelter of August, for that matter.

Lump all the really bad teams in the American League into one group -- Tampa, Baltimore, Detroit and Kansas City -- and the Royals' Mike Sweeney and Carlos Beltran might be the only players out of the 100 on their combined rosters to qualify as bonafide stars.

	“	There's no getting around it -- there are some flat-out bad teams in our league. And they're not just bad; they're dull. ”
		— An AL executive

Beyond the pure pleasure of watching baseball -- in any setting, at any level -- too many American League teams offer too little incentive to the ticket-buying public. It's a tough sell to get fans in New York, Boston and Seattle to pay top-shelf prices to watch the bargain-basement talent sprinkled throughout the rosters of the bottom-feeders.

This is a particular problem in the AL East, where the huge gap in revenue from the top to the bottom has created a corresponding ever-widening chasm in talent. Thanks to the unbalanced schedule, 18 visits from the Orioles and Devil Rays make up nearly one-quarter of the home schedule for the Red Sox and Yankees.

It's no better if you're a fan of one of the also-rans, where no illusion exists about the viability of the home-town team. It's bad enough that they're not competitive, but the lack of star quality further reduces the ballpark experience. And paying to watch the stars come out on the other team has limited appeal. This is particularly true if some of the visiting teams' biggest attractions used to play for the home team, but went elsewhere because of economics (Johnny Damon and Jermaine Dye in Kansas City) or poor personnel evaluation (Luis Gonzalez in Detroit).

Small-market teams often complain that under baseball's current economic system, they can't afford to retain the players they scout, sign and develop, with Damon standing as a pefect example. But the truly ominous sign now is that some of the gane's have-nots are no longer coming up with quality prospects.

"I blame that on the failure of the draft," said another AL executive. "The draft was designed to provide the best players to the worst teams, but that's not happening anymore because the worst teams can't afford to draft the best players."

Indeed, "signability," is, for some, the top buzzword on draft day. No longer do teams grab the best player available; they're reduced to taking the best player they can afford.

Even when teams make what appear to be good selections, the moves backfire. Tampa Bay thought it had two-thirds of its outfield of the future in Josh Hamilton and Carl Crawford, but back injuries have placed Hamilton's career in jeopardy.

But why has the personnel bug not bitten the National League also-rans as hard? Cincinnati has been a massive disappointment the past couple of years, but the Reds are off to a good start and in Adam Dunn and Austin Kearns, they can at least see a modicum of hope. And in the meantime, Reds' fans can see honest-to-goodness stars (Ken Griffey Jr., Sean Casey) for their investment in the club.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the National League clearly established itself as the superior league when too many American League teams failed to integrate and take advantage of the pool of black and Latin players available. Stars like Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Orlando Cepeda and Willie McCovey made the AL pay for its prejudice and inability to adapt.

No such excuse exists now. If the playing field is uneven for some -- and it undoubtedly is -- it's also uneven for teams in both leagues. But somehow, for some teams in the American League, the disparity is growing steeper by the day.

Sean McAdam of the Providence Journal covers baseball for ESPN.com.