This season in MLB has been interesting. The Detroit Tigers came roaring out of the gate and established a 7 game lead in their division. They would then go into a slump and give it all back. Then they got hot again for a short while to climb back to the top, but just recently they dropped 3 out of 4, at home, to the last place Tampa Bays Rays (who just went 10-2 on a road trip -- go figure).
The same can be said for San Francisco. They started out like Giants indeed opening up a big lead in the NL west, then went into a tail-spin, and currently find themselves in a nip and tuck battle with the LA Dodgers for first place.
In the AL East, the Toronto Blue Jays were once sitting comfortably on top, but they tanked, the Baltimore Orioles quietly got semi-hot while everybody else was mediocre, and now the O birds find themselves on top by a couple games.
Similar battles are going on between the Oakland As and LA Angels in the AL West, and the Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals in the NL East.
For a while the Milwaukee Brewers were heads and shoulders above everybody else percentage wise, but they've come back to earth somewhat and only lead the NL Central by 4 1/2. Hardly an insurmountable lead with over 70 games remaining.
With roughly half the season yet to be played, which teams will wind up in the playoffs is anybody's guess. Teams like the Yankees, Cardinals , Red, Marlins, Indians, Pirates, are all no more than a handful of games out their division leads. If any one of them gets on a roll -- who knows?
And that's the thing about MLB. Parity. Sure, on paper, one team can supposedly have the best pitching staff in the game, another might be the best hitting team, still another might be the most talented overall, considering defense, speed, and other intangibles. But when any game actually starts, nobody would doubt who will win is little more than a coin flip. The team with the best record in all of MLB might well get swept in a series by the team with the worst record. It happens.
Consider that a baseball team that wins 97 games over the course of the season would be hailed as excellent. That would be a winning percentage of .600. Yes, occasionally a team will win over 100 games, but it's getting rarer in recent years.
Further consider just exactly what a winning % of .600 consists of. Out of every 10 games, the really good teams win 6. If just one of those games goes the other way, they drop to .500, the epitome of mediocre.
The really "bad" teams check in somewhere in the .400 range. One more win out of ten and they become average. It's not like they're getting slaughtered every time out. For that matter, as mentioned above, a last place team in MLB can knock off a first place team on any given night, and it comes as no great surprise. Happens all the time.
Look around the league(s). Right now, the Oakland As are the best of the bunch while posting a 55-33 record. The media would crow they're a whopping 22 games over .500, and technically they have a point. But actually, over the course of 88 games, they've won 11 more than they've lost, for a winning % of .625. Looked at from that perspective, it doesn't seem so impressive. Winning 6 out of 10 is the best in all of MLB? While being excellent in baseball, merely winning almost 6 out of 10 every year might get coaches fired elsewhere in sports. Like several NBA and NFL teams and their fans that have become accustomed to a standard of excellence far higher than a mere .625.
And right now, the Houston Astros are bringing up the rear in all of MLB with a .400 winning percentage. The difference between them and top dogs Oakland? About two games in ten. On any given day or night between any two teams in MLB -- ya never know. A recent Cy Young award winning pitcher might get out-dueled by some kid recently called up from the minors. A team with a bunch of sluggers leading the league in home runs and/or batting average might get beat 10-0 by another team known for their anemic hitting and "small ball". That happens sometimes too.
Whether or not parity in MLB is a good thing is certainly open to debate. It's probably good that some teams can't buy their way into championships anymore. And it's nice to see "new blood" win a title here and there. Even blood that's older than Dracula's can be a refreshing change of pace if they somehow manage to win a World Series after a long drought. Loved the Bosox a few years ago, and never lose the faith, Chi-town northsiders. One century soon, your Cubbies will rise from the ashes like the Phoenix and -- hmm -- the Suns are almost as bad as the Diamondbacks. Bad analogy. Sorry.
Odds are the parity thing has to fall your way eventually. But it will happen if you live long enough and keep believing. Yes, you might have to have the longevity of, say, a giant sequoia tree or an old testament biblical patriarch, but things could be worse, ya know.
You could be a Detroit Lions' fan. At least Cubs' fans have learned not to expect to win, and don't have a local media trying to sell them snake oil every year as to the grand possibilities of their team if everything falls just right. Football fans around Motown are suckers for that. Always have been. But they're not going to get within sniffing range of a championship any year soon either. Most times accepting reality is a good thing in the long run. Saves the inevitable heartbreak later.
If you know in your mind and heart that your team is a loser, then why not just kick back and enjoy it for what it is? That's why they remain the loveable Cubbies, while the Lions wind up as punch lines on late night TV. They take themselves too seriously, with their kool-aided media fanning the flames every year, when they know, or should know, the Lions have ZERO chance at winning the Super Bowl. But I digress.
No doubt, teams will go up and teams will go down in the second half of the MLB season. Winning streaks here, and losing streaks there. Such is the nature of the game. The "best" team doesn't always win, because the difference between best and worst is pretty thin at the major league level. Everybody on a big league roster beat out thousand of other guys just to get there. In other words, the last player on the bench or in the bullpen for the last place team is really good.
The stat monsters can keep coming up with stats from hell that nobody ever heard of before. There's something called sabermetrics which is all the rage these days, though the average fan has no idea what it consists of, and mostly doesn't care, because it doesn't matter.
In the end, the only thing that matters, like it has since the inception of MLB well over 100 years ago, is wins and losses. Win 6 out of 10 for the whole season, and guaranteed that team is going to the playoffs. Win 4 out of 10, and guaranteed that team won't. Post somewhere near a .500 record and, depending on what division a team is playing in -- they could actually qualify. In other words, mediocrity, see parity, is sometimes good enough.
And once the playoffs start, MLB's ridiculous one-game knockout preliminary aside, anybody can beat anybody else in the best 4 out of 7 series. Yes, in the NFL, a lower seed can rise up on any given Sunday to knock off a favorite in a playoff game. One or two unlikely plays here and there can often make the difference. The NHL has certainly seen its share of lower seeds go on to win the Stanley Cup in recent years. In the NBA -- not so much. Everybody knows going into the playoffs that only 3-4 teams have a legitimate chance of winning the title, and higher seeds typically prevail over those same 7 game series'.
But baseball is different. Come October, it truly is a crap shoot. A team that won their division by 15 games can sometimes go down to a team that barely qualified as a wild card. Ya never know....
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