Do you have a sensation that even the best teams in the majors this year are not as good as usual? That they go into the kind of sustained tailspins not befitting what you think of as elite squads?
There were five teams that concluded the weekend jammed at either 70-49 (Yankees and Orioles) or 69-49 (Dodgers, Guardians, Phillies), leaving them all on a 95-win trajectory. That can obviously change in the coming weeks. But if those trends were to persist, we are looking at the first season without a team playing .600 or better since 2013.
Maybe it is an aberration, since a combined nine teams played .600 or better the past two years.
Or are we seeing something shift? I have asked folks in the game I respect, and none were sure we are going through a sea change. A couple threw out the possibility that the alteration in playoff format the past two years — in which six teams make the playoffs in each league — might have an impact.
