Reviewing 2020, first half of 2021, in triennial baseball leagues

Of all the baseball leagues we run on these pages, the only one that actually happened in 2020 was the triennial regional alignment corresponding with the correct alignment for interleague play. We can compare 2020 with the first half of 2021.

It's the All-Star break in 2021 and we still haven't gotten around to publishing the results from the only baseball competition on these pages that survived coronavirus in 2020, the triennial regional leagues.

We track these leagues during the years, ideally one out of every three, in which MLB aligns the divisions for interleague play so east plays east, etc. In an ordinary season, if every team in both central divisions play each other, we end up with a round-robin, though still unbalanced, schedule of 96 games. And if we get rid of the National League and American League labels, the 10 teams in each of the three resulting leagues can be divided into two regionally interesting divisions.

As it happens, the ideal alignment for running these leagues actually has been popping up much more than every three years, due to travel cautions over coronavirus. Indeed, 2021 is the third year of the last four to be aligned this way, and the second year in a row. We tracked for the first time in 2015, the alignment returned in 2018 and it was going to come back for 2021, anyway, but 2020 was forced by the virus.

So, when we look at these leagues now for 2020, we can compare them directly with how they shape up at the All-Star break in 2021.

We'll start with the East League, where the Boston Red Sox show their cyclical tendencies. In 2015, the first year we tracked, the Red Sox were all the way down from their 2013 World Champions, 78-84, and in the East League they were 48-48, second division overall and second from the bottom of the North Division. 

The 2018 edition ended with the Red Sox dominating, as they actually did. In the East League, they were 68-28, 11 games ahead of the nearest contender. Over the full season, they won 108 during the regular slate, then won the World Championship with three playoff wins in which no opponent beat them more than once.

But we revisited the triennial leagues prematurely in 2020 because of coronavirus, and the timing was poor for the Red Sox, who perhaps didn't have enough time in a 60-game campaign and finished 24-36. Then again, Chris Sale was out for the year with Tommy John surgery, so it might have been to no avail.

We don't have this in the agate, but the playoff championship in the 2020 East League would have gone to the Rays. If two division champs in one of these leagues meets in the playoffs, we count that as the league championship series, and the Rays beat the North Division champs, the New York Yankees, in a five-game ALDS.

We come now to the All-Star break in 2021 and the Red Sox, still without Sale, are leading the East League, holding on tight with a two-game lead on the Tampa Bay Rays, who blitzed through last year's regional season with a 40-20 record, winning the East League overall and the East League South on their way to a six-game loss to the Dodgers in the World Series.

The very next year, this year, the Yankees are hapless against Eastern competition, 21-30 in this East League, protected from the bottom only by the Baltimore Orioles. Thus, it looks like the East League in 2021 will come down to the Rays and Red Sox, though the Toronto Blue Jays, third-place at the break, can be influential, as they are in the same Major League division.

The difference a year makes in the Center League is rather stark. In 2020, the Twins blew through a 60-game season at 36-24. They were the regular season champions across the league, the premiers, as they are sometimes called in Australia. 

At the All-Star break in 2021, the Twins were 39-50, a .438 winning percentage. In the Center League, they were much better, 24-27, .474. In the Center League, they're a middle entry, the top team in the second division. In the North Division, they're fourth out of five.

The Twins nosed out the Chicago White Sox and the Cleveland Indians by one game and the Chicago Cubs by two in a thrilling race last year. Through Sept. 18, the White Sox held a two-game lead on the Cubs, a three-game lead on the Twins and a five-game lead on the Indians. But the White Sox lost seven of their last nine. A six-game losing streak during that span involved getting swept four in Cleveland. Meanwhile, the Twins were winning four in a row, including two against the Cubs. By the final weekend, the Twins were a game up on the Sox, two up on Cleveland and three up on the Cubs. 

The Twins lost two of three during the final weekend at the Cincinnati Reds, who were fighting to enter the expanded playoffs. The Indians won two of three at home against cellar-dwelling Pittsburgh Pirates and the Cubs beat the Sox two out of three at the South Side venue. 

As the visiting Twins licked their wounds in Cincinnati, having lost a chance to clinch the Center League by losing, 5-3, on the final day of the season, the Cubs and White Sox were putting the finishing touches on a strange game. A loss by the Twins and a Sox win would tie them atop the final standings, and the Twins certainly lost. But anyone watching the scoreboard would also have given up on the Sox, who trailed, 10-1, after seven innings.

In the eighth, new Cubs reliever Brailyn Marquez really needed to just throw strikes with a 10-1 lead and six outs to get. But he walked the first two batters of the eighth before wild pitching them to second and third. A ground ball scored the lead runner. The next hitter struck out. The inning should have been over. Then, a walk, a hard single that advanced each runner two bases, a wild pitch, a double ... Then a new pitcher, another wild pitch and another hit. Five runs brought the White Sox within 10-6.

The second Cubs pitcher in the eighth, Duane Underwood, Jr., allowed a leadoff single in the ninth, followed by Yasmani Grandal's homer. 10-8. Two outs later, with a runner at third, still another reliever, Andrew Chafin, struck out Nomar Mazara looking at a 2-2 pitch. Game over. All around Minnesota, we presume, toasts were raised to Andrew Chafin for helping the Twins win the Center League and its North Division. The Cubs got to spoil the White Sox ... Chafin, by the way, was having quite a nice year for the Cubs in 2021 as a specialty left-hander out of their bullpen before they traded him just now to Oakland.

At the All-Star break in 2021, the White Sox and Indians have returned as contenders, but the Twins and Cubs have not. Instead, we see the Reds sitting one game behind the Sox at the pause. The Brewers, the top team in the 2021 NL Central, are strangely low in these standings, seven down at the break. In fact, the Brewers swept three from the Reds right after the break, and later won two of three from the White Sox, so they have moved to within five games of first place ten games after the break.

We've seen the Dodgers run hot before. The 41-8 run in 2013 was one for the ages. But the Dodgers were on just a slightly slower pace during the 2021 regular season, 43-17. Play at the clip over 162 games and you're finishing with 116 wins. Not happening.

So, the Dodgers won the West League without a fight. The San Diego Padres, up and coming, still were close to a week behind the Dodgers in the end. After the strong third-place Oakland Athletics, the remaining seven teams in the 2020 West League finished with losing records.

Flash forward to the West League in 2021 and we've got a smoking race with the Dodgers, Padres and San Francisco Giants all within a game of the top, and the Houston Astros three games down.

That was at the All-Star break, these standings. Since then, and including games through July 28, the Dodgers have found rough sledding in the west, going 6-6, including four losses in six games to the Giants. Those are the only games the Giants have played in the West, while the Astros were 5-1 against the West and the Padres were 1-1.

Put it all together and the Dodgers were tied with the Giants in first place, one game ahead of the Astros and 1½ ahead of San Diego.

Mets unify Northeast lineal, but Red Sox end 2019 with it

The New York Mets consolidated the Northeast traveling championship at the start of September 2019, but the Boston Red Sox held the title at the end of 2019 and will next defend it in 2021.

Though the American Northeast is saturated with the American League, it was in the National League where the lineal championship for this regional conference was established.

That occurred on Aug. 30-Sept. 1 in Philadelphia, where the New York Mets put their five shares up against the Philadelphia Phillies and their two shares. The winner would own the first lineal title in this seven-team region.

The Mets won two of three in that series to become the first Northeastern lineal champion. A week later, they became the first former champ when the Phillies took them down, two of three in New York. But the Phillies didn't hold it for long either. They lost both games of a two-game September series at home against the Boston Red Sox, who now have the title when the chase resumes in 2021.

However, two other teams, the Cleveland Indians and New York Yankees, were the teams that actually performed best through the year, despite neither yet winning the title. The Indians were 25-14 in their games during the play-down, while the Yankees were 20-14.

Dodgers in fight for 2020 Elite Division spot

The postseason is coming soon to Major League Baseball, and much is at stake in that process for the top two divisions of the pyramid across the game.

The Dodgers will need a big bat from Cody Bellinger to avoid a repeat of last season's postseason collapse that dropped them from the Elite Division (TonyTheTiger/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license).

Going to the final weekend of the Major League Baseball regular season, our pyramid of ordinal divisions is half set.

To a greater degree than usual, perhaps, the top of the pyramid remains to be decided in the postseason. The bottom of the pyramid is where the decisions have been made.

We've mentioned several times in these pages that baseball presents unique challenges for running a pyramid. Other long-season sports like pro basketball, hockey and soccer schedule at least a home-and-home double round-robin. Everybody plays everybody, home and home, at least once. That's a fair way to run a pyramid.

Baseball plays a 162-game season for each team, and your ball club is still playing four games against some club it hasn't seen in three years. In the way old days, you had eight clubs in a league, each club played each of the others 22 times per year and you had 154 games. You pretty much knew the opposition. Now, you need a CIA dossier to find out who you're playing. So, there is some usefulness for analytics.

Once upon a time, baseball was two separate but equal leagues, the American and National Leagues, which agreed to a strong over-seeing commissioner to maintain public faith in the game, ensure the legitimacy of transactions between clubs and keep them from poaching each other's players. Over time, it made increasing sense for the two leagues to centralize their national business operations and relationships.

Ushering in the new century in 2000, the two league offices dissolved and merged into one entity called Major League Baseball. All of the game's national operations were ceded to the commissioner's office.

The problem is that the American League and the National League are Americana. They are a folk tradition. Generations of our countrymen spent their entire lives arguing about which was better. If you're Baseball, you can't just say to the public that you have eliminated the American and National Leagues, even though this is, in fact, what you have done. People might think that baseball, itself, had come to an end.

So, Baseball undertook a charade and baseball fans, being baseball fans, played along. Baseball continued to act as though the American and National Leagues still existed as separate entities. The lie was put to all of this at the 2002 All-Star Game in Milwaukee, hometown of then-Commissioner Bud Selig. The game ended in a tie because both teams ran out of pitchers. The truer reason was because the entities allegedly being represented on the field, the American and National Leagues, no longer existed and, therefore, didn't concern themselves with winning. That's why Selig was compelled to put something on the line in the All-Star Game: home-field advantage in the World Series.

Another component of the ruse, which fans wanted, was the maintenance of scheduling as if two separate leagues existed, so each club still plays 85 percent of its games in its traditional but no longer existing "league." The crowning and focal absurdity is interleague play. The absurdity, of course, is that in order for there to be interleague play, there would have to be at least two leagues involved, and there is, in fact, only one.

Through nearly 20 years of this, Baseball has butchered the competitive integrity of its nominally separate leagues by imbalancing the schedule to accommodate interleague play, but it hasn't been able to take full advantage of interleague play that way. Once a comforting salve to a jolting change in business arrangements, the fictional maintenance of American and National Leagues now has become a limiting belief.

That shows especially when we try a competitive arrangement of universal scope, such as the pyramid with promotion and relegation. This season, 2019, is our tenth of attempting such a pyramid in baseball, and the most persistent and irksome problem, by far, is dealing with the scheduling disparities across the game.

When we look at these pyramids at the end of a year, we see that some team has played 60 games in a division and some other team played 30 in the same division. Some team played five other teams in its pyramid division, and some other team played three. This problem does not arise in any other sport where we do pyramids (the only sport where we don't is American football, simply because the seasons are so short).

MLB could solve the problem for us by facing reality and scheduling at least a home-and-home double round-robin across its universe, but we're not waiting for that. Instead, we need to make decisions about how certain performances will be valued and which achievements truly warrant promotion or demotion, especially now that we have ramped up the Elite Division and there actually is something riding on these calls.

Here's where the rubber meets the road: The probabilities tell us that it is more difficult to win 62 percent of 100 games than to win 67 percent of 50 games. The more games you play, the more your results will converge on the mean. In real baseball standings, the team winning 62 percent of 100 games is 62-38 with a .620 winning percentage, and that team is four games ahead of a 33-17 club with a .660 percentage. Typically, we have split championships in cases like this, or let percentages prevail when we needed a choice.

But when our result matters, such as when we qualify clubs for the Elite Division, do we really think the 33-17 club is better than the 62-38 club? The numbers tell us that both clubs over 162 games or some other long haul will regress toward the mean, which is .500, and that the club with the .620 through 100 games is likely to come through that process better than the club that's .660 through 50 games. The team with 62 wins out of 100 games is the better team and should be promoted.

Fortunately, the eyeballs and intuitions in this matter are supported by mathematicians who delve in baseball statistics. They don't all agree on how heavily to weight the mean over 162 games, but they do all agree that the accurate way to determine how some club would fare over 162 games from a limited sample involves adding some weight of .500 to a club's actual record and computing the percentage that results. Phil Birnbaum, purportedly following Tom Tango, says the weight is 74 games (add 37 wins and 37 losses). Fivethirtyeight.com says it's 67 games (33.5-33.5). This Bayesian approach lands on 100 (50-50).

For no particular reason, we'll weight the actual winning percentages that pop up here with 74 games of mean and let Birnbaum explain the math. Thus, the winning percentages showing up in these baseball standings will be determined by a club's winning percentage weighted by 74 games of .500. Fair enough. Problem solved!

Unless it isn't. In that case, if we discover that we're applying this wrong or we come up with a better idea, we'll try something else. For now, we'll try this.

What does 74 games of .500 weight do to our example? Well, 62-38 plus 37-37 is 99-75, a winning percentage of .569. And 33-17 plus 37-37 is 70-54, a winning percentage of .565. So, the 74 weight agrees with our intuitions about which team is better and also has working credibility among baseball researchers. The 62-38 club also comes out better if we apply weights of 67 or 100. They all do roughly the same work.

This will come up a couple of times as we run through the pyramid.

The most striking aspect of this pyramid as we look out across the standings is how well it conforms to the playoff entries across Major League Baseball. The top five clubs in the First Division at this moment all are ticketed for the playoffs, as are the top three in the Second Division and the champions of the Third Division and the Fourth Division. If the Cleveland Indians can somehow catch the Tampa Bay Rays or Oakland Athletics for American League wildcard spot, that won't be the case, but it's unlikely with three games left in the season that the Indians can do it.

The upside, for us, with the scheduling imbalances in baseball is that when the playoffs arrive, we just go ahead and include them. In other sports, the regular season pyramids work so well that including the playoffs would ruin them, but the proportions in baseball are so screwy that there is no integrity to ruin, so we include playoffs.

Often, something big happens in some division during the playoffs, though more of the action in the early years took place in the lower divisions. In 2016, though, the Dodgers rode a good run of playoffs to the First Division championship. It's hard, sometimes, to convince Dodgers fans that they've ever accomplished anything in the postseason, but they have.

Looking at the very top of the First Division, we see the New York Yankees, Houston Astros and Tampa Bay Rays bunched tightly together. The Rays just beat the Yankees twice in St. Petersburg this week to arrive within two games of the top. If the Rays can make it through the wildcard playoff round, they're playing the Astros or the Yankees, and the winner of that series is likely to play the Astros or the Yankees. Any of these clubs could go up or down during the playoffs.

Of course, there is a cost to going too far down. The top four clubs in the First Division go to the Elite Division. The fifth-place club does not. Dodgers fans in the know remember how this went down last year. The Dodgers were the fourth-place club entering the postseason, then got knocked down the standings with a five-game loss to the Boston Red Sox in the World Series and missed the Elite Division.

This time, the Dodgers are 19-17, fourth place again, thanks largely to the Arizona Diamondbacks winning two of three from the St. Louis Cardinals in the desert this week, pushing the Cardinals down to 8-8. By our rules of the pyramid, a team needs 10 wins to qualify for the Elite Division, so the Cardinals are short at the moment. However, if it gets to the Cardinals and Dodgers meeting in the playoffs, two wins for the Cardinals make them eligible and a series victory would put them in fourth place. Pending the World Series.

The top of the First Division is up for grabs. The bottom is settled. The Boston Red Sox, two-time defending First Division champions, fell all the way to the bottom of the First Division in 2019 and will be demoted. In ten years of the pyramid, the Red Sox have won the First Division three times, including 2010, the first year. No other club has won the First Division more than once.

Following their 2010 victory, the Red Sox fell to the Second Division for 2013 and to the Third Division for 2014. Then the Red Sox went on a streak of four straight years winning pyramid division championships, capturing the Third Division in 2015, sharing the Second Division title with the Cleveland Indians in 2016 and winning lopsided First Division titles in 2017 and 2018.

The Indians, who were promoted with the Red Sox to the First Division in 2017, appear to be headed back to the Second Division with the Red Sox in 2020. A slim chance remains that the Indians can slip into the playoffs and fight their way through there to avoid relegation, but it is slim.

The top of the Second Division remains open, but not like the top division. The Milwaukee Brewers and Washington Nationals could meet in the playoffs, and either of those clubs could play the Minnesota Twins in the World Series. It's not likely that any combination of results could dislodge the Brewers from the top, especially if they can win just a couple games in a series against either of these Second Division foes.

But if the Nationals get hot in the playoffs, they could overtake the Twins for the second promotion to the First Division. If we're just looking at winning percentage, the Twins have a formidable advantage at .619 (13-8) to .551 (16-13). But when we add the weights, the Twins are up only 11 percentage points, .526 to .515.

At the bottom of this pile, we see another example of weighting. The Pittsburgh Pirates actually are well ahead of the Toronto Blue Jays and Texas Rangers by raw percentage, even at a modest .400. But the Blue Jays have played so few games that they barely lost the 10 required for relegation, and the Rangers played not many more. Adding the weights put 102 points on the Blue Jays, raising them from .375 to .477. The Pirates gain on .500 with the weights, too, but not nearly so much because they played at least twice as many games as either of the other clubs. The weights are getting the Pirates relegated.

The weights are making an impact on top of the Third Division, too. They don't matter so much for the Oakland Athletics, who roared through this group and would have won it under any scenario. Under the old rules, though, the San Francisco Giants would be joining the A's both in promotion to the Second Division and entry to the Elite Division. With the weights, though, the Giants finished fourth in this level.

With that, the Philadelphia Phillies took in the big payout they sought with the Bryce Harper contract, rising to second place in the Third Division and the glorious credentials that come with it. The Phillies will go both to the Second Division and the Elite Division in 2020. The Seattle Mariners made a surprising bid to capture Third Place.

With no other clubs in the Third Division playoff bound except for the Athletics, there will be no change in these standings. That's no consolation for two forlorn American League Central clubs, the Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers, who drop to the Fourth Division and join the Chicago White Sox, a long-time dweller in that cellar.

Down in the Fourth Division, we saw crushing performances by the Atlanta Braves and the Cincinnati Reds, who both will be promoted to the Third Division in 2020. The Braves, for winning the Fourth Division, also will enter the Elite Division.

The teams being held over in the Fourth Division have, more or less, established permanent residence there. The San Diego Padres entered the basement in 2013 and still haven't come out, a seven-year streak that stands as the longest ever. But the Baltimore Orioles actually have spent the most time in the Fourth Division, eight of the 10 years since we began running the pyramid. The Orioles were an original Fourth Division member before making a brief escape.

The Chicago White Sox entered the Fourth Division in 2012 and got out in 2016 only because of a special ruling necessitated by the light schedule at the bottom level. They returned in 2019. The Royals, an original Fourth Division club and the last to finally escape after the 2013 season, now are headed back to the lowest tier.

Tri-annual regional leagues crown new champions

Three years in baseball is long enough for clubs to go from way up to way down. The results from the 2018 tri-annual regional leagues show some of the difference three years can make.

Every three years, the major league baseball schedule gives us a chance to work out a favorite toy, an overlay of three regional leagues over the two existing big leagues. It works during those years when the interleague schedule pits the divisions east vs. east, central vs. central and west vs. west.

During those years, we can just follow the schedule to an East League, a Center League and a West League, dividing each of them into north and south divisions. So far, those years have been 2015 and, now, 2018.

A lot can change across the game in three years. In 2015, the New York Mets won the East League and drove to the World Series. In 2018, the Mets were well down, while the Boston Red Sox tore up the eastern competition to the tune of 68-28. In 2018, the Atlanta Braves finished last in the East League South. In 2018, the Braves won that division.

The Red Sox were unstoppable, finishing 13 games ahead of the New York Yankees in the East League's North Division. They also finished 11 games ahead of the Braves in the league standings and, for good measure, they claimed the league title for their 5-1 record against Atlanta during the regular season.

In 2015, the Dodgers overtook the Houston Astros during the second half of the season and claimed this tri-annual West League championship. In 2018, the Astros were strong all the way to the end and finished 2½ games ahead of the Dodgers both across the league and in the South Division.

The North Division witnessed a reversal. The San Francisco Giants, who won the division when it was last played in 2015, finished in the 2018 cellar. The Colorado Rockies, who occupied the division basement in 2015, came back and won it in 2018.

The Rockies hung tough in their interleague "rivalry" games with the Astros, splitting the four games. But the Astros outscored the Rox, 23-11, to claim the league championship.

In 2015, the Chicago Cubs were up-and-coming, and they rose to the Center League championship with a strong playoff run. For 2018, we decided to leave playoffs out of the regional baseball leagues, just to see how it looks. But it wouldn't have helped the Cubs, who still finished 7½ games behind the Cleveland Indians in the Center League.

The Cubs could still have won the league championship after capturing the North Division, but they lost three of four during the year to the Indians. Thus, the Indians were named the 2018 Center League champions after holding off the pesky Pittsburgh Pirates during the regular season.

Elite Division adds juice to 2018 baseball pyramid

The establishment of an Elite Division for 2019 made the 2018 baseball pyramid chase all the more interesting. Somehow, though, the Dodgers are left out of the party.

The 2018 baseball season began with a decree that a new competition would be established for 2019, a champions league that would include the top finishers at every level of the promotion/relegation pyramid from the previous season. It shall be called the Elite Division.

The idea is along the lines of the various continental champions leagues produced each year by FIFA, the international governing body of soccer. Each of the national leagues has an allotment of teams in its continental champions league, depending on the strength of the league.

In this baseball arrangement, of course, we're just looking at the big league clubs across North America, but we do have them in four divisions. And it does seem, without putting pencil and paper to it, that the leading clubs from the lower divisions wind up being competitive year by year. So, we'll find out, sort of.

Here's the scheme, which will run across every promotion/relegation pyramid in these pages. In sports with four levels to the pyramid, the next year's champions league will include the top half of the first division (four teams), the top three in the second division, the top two in the third division and the top team from the fourth division.

The effect, one supposes, would be to add a bit of juice to the middle of the top divisions and create a little more value for winning the bottom rung. The top two clubs from every division except the first always have been promoted. But there has been nothing in it for the second-place team in the top division. Now, there is a prize for finishing in the top half of the top tier, and also for the third-place team in the second division.

The new league will embrace all of the pyramid champions from the previous season, along with a few others with demonstrated competence. Not only will the new league juice the pyramid, but it shall stand at the top of the pyramid system as a fascinating competition in its own right. That is the dream.

The additional competition succeeded in making the baseball pyramid in 2018 even more interesting than usual. And more heartbreaking. Yes, the dream already is coming true.

Take, for example, the First Division. As the regular season ended, the Dodgers were in fourth place at 13-12, followed by the 13-13 Arizona Diamondbacks. Neither club was eligible for promotion or relegation at that point, because each had only two opponents from the First Division (three is the minimum). However, that stipulation will not apply to eligibility for the champions league. If the season had ended then, the Dodgers would be in the 2019 champions league.

However, because of the imbalance in baseball schedules, it is the one sport with a pyramid in which the postseason is included. And it happens that the Dodgers lasted to the World Series, where they met the Boston Red Sox of the First Division.

The Red Sox already had clinched the First Division championship and still would have won it by five games even if they had been swept by the Dodgers. The stakes for the Dodgers were much higher, for they would have to win the World Series to make the champions league. If the Dodgers took it to seven games and lost, they would have finished 16-16, .500 with the Diamondbacks in fourth place, and the Diamondbacks held the tiebreaker for their 11-8 record head-to-head against the Dodgers.

We all know, of course, that the World Series went badly for the Dodgers. The Red Sox beat them in five games. The Dodgers finished 14-16 in the First Division, fifth place. The Diamondbacks are going to the champions league. The Dodgers were the best club across the National League for two years running, but in these tests weighted to the top teams in the game, their failures against the Diamondbacks and Red Sox cost them dearly.

The Dodgers, however, never had to fear relegation, a fate that the Cleveland Indians escaped, but the Washington Nationals and Toronto Blue Jays did not.

In the Second Division, the added arrangement produced a new prize, for while first and second places always have earned promotion, third place now has the champions league sweetener. And that still wasn't enough to account for the strong group of clubs that bunched in the middle of that second tier, all from the National League Central Division.

None of them could match the Houston Astros, who now have climbed the ladder in the three-year minimum after spending 2011 through 2016 in the Fourth Division. The Astros will be in the First Division in 2019 after a 21-8 showing to top the 2018 Second Division.

The race for the other promotion was much more thick, made juicier by the addition of a champion's league berth for the third-place club. Four teams were in this thick, and they know each other well.

The St. Louis Cardinals won the scrum with a 38-32 (.543) record among Second Division clubs, still 3½ games behind the Astros. Within 1½ games of the Cardinals were the Pittsburgh Pirates (36-31, .537), the Chicago Cubs (35-32, .5223) and the Milwaukee Brewers (36-33, .5217).

So, the Cardinals, along with the Astros, are promoted to the First Division in 2019, and now they have the additional distinction of joining the champion's league. The Pirates, finishing third, also are ticketed to the 2019 champion's league.

Not necessarily for nothing, we note that this result is almost precisely opposed to how it actually went down in the NL Central race. In that form, the Brewers nosed out the Cubs by a game, with the Cardinals finishing well down and the Pirates even further back.

It is unusual for any of these pyramid divisions to include four clubs from the same Major League division. These 2018 results show what a difference it makes, because the games those four clubs play amongst themselves are weighted much more heavily in the pyramid divisions than in the Major League standings.

The Brewers were 27-31 in their games against the Cubs, Cards and Pirates. They won their big league division over those teams without beating those teams. They were 69-36 against everyone else. Head-to-head among the four clubs, the Cubs were 30-28, while the Cardinals and Pirates each were 29-28. The Brewers won the NL Central. In the Second Division, they're out of the money.

The Cardinals actually made the race for second place more interesting than necessary, dropping five of six to the Brewers and Cubs during the final week of September. Third place actually came down to the one-game playoff for the NL Central title between the Cubs and Brewers on Oct. 1. The Brewers won it, 3-1. The Brewers were out of contention by then, but a win for the Cubs would have put them in a flat-footed tie with the Pirates. The Cubs held a 10-9 tiebreaker, but they also might have faced the Brewers and Astros later in the playoffs.

More heartbeak in the Third Division, where the Angels, Colorado Rockies and Minnesota Twins tightly bunched at the top. Percentage rules here, so the Rockies took it at 15-9, .625.

The Twins (27-18, .600), and Angels (15-10, .600), were right there. But the Twins took the second promotion for their lead over the rest in the games column. When the championship  is split like this between the categories, the percentage leader is declared champion, but the games leader also will be promoted. In principle, a team playing to some high percentage in more games is more accomplished than another team reaching that same percentage in fewer games.

There was much less controversy at the bottom of the Third Division, with the Miami Marlins and Chicago White Sox ticketed downward. Two American League West clubs, the Oakland Athletics and Seattle Mariners, were clearly the best two clubs in the Fourth Division. Between them, the A's were better. Both are going up to the Third Division, but the A's are going to the champion's league.

Rays rally with big September for 2018 AL traveling title

The Tampa Bay Rays aren't saying a lot for their 2018 season, but their strong September run against playoff clubs put them ahead of the rest of the American League in the traveling championship.

The Tampa Bay Rays were going nowhere when the Boston Red Sox dropped into St. Petersburg on Aug. 24 with the American League traveling championship in hand. The Rays were 67-61 overall, which could happen to any club on a steady diet of the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.

The Rays were nine games behind the nearest playoff spot and 22½ games out of first place in the American League East. And they somehow salvaged something from their season.

The Rays are the Team of the Year in the AL traveling championship in 2018 for their 20-9 late to a 31-17 record for the season, which included 37 games of title defense. The Rays tied four other teams for the league lead with two championships, but the Rays came out on top in wins games of defense.

The Rays took the prize with a three-game sweep when the Reds Sox went to their dome, then they produced seven straight defenses. Counting the win against the Red Sox, four of the first five series in this title defense came against teams that would be in the playoffs. As they continued their streak, the Rays surpassed the New York Yankees, Cleveland Indians and the Houston Astros on their path to the top of the traveling championship standings.

Cards capture 2018 interleague travel title with torrid finish

The St. Louis Cardinals, who once could not lose the traveling championship among the National League clubs, finally have an undisputed crown across the big leagues after a strong finish to their 2018 season.

The St. Louis Cardinals dominated the early years of the National League traveling championship, topping the standings in each of its first five seasons. But their laurels in the traveling title across all of baseball have been limited to a disputed decision over the Boston Red Sox in 2013.

The Cardinals finally won the big league traveler, decisively, in 2018, with a title run that consumed all of August. The Cards knocked the Cincinnati Reds off the top position long before Cincinnati thwarted their ninth defense attempt Aug. 31-Sept. 2 in St. Louis by winning two of three.

The Reds still could have caught the Cardinals with four or five defenses, but they couldn't even start the first one, losing a three-game sweep to the Pittsburgh Pirates Sept. 3-5 in Pittsburgh. The Cardinals finished with 32 games of title defense, compared with 20 for the Reds. The Cardinals were 28-15 in title games, well ahead of the second-place Reds at 15-10.

The title had spent all but 10 days in the American League when the Reds put a two-game sweep on the Detroit Tigers in Cincinnati June 19-20. The Reds succeeded with three title defenses before dropping two of three to the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field July 6-8.

Red Sox make mark, fly through First Division

The Boston Red Sox won their second First Division title in 2017, setting the record for the largest winning margin in the games behind column. The San Francisco Giants and Texas Rangers fell to the bottom.

New to the First Division in 2017, the Boston Red Sox cruised to the title by five games on their partner in promotion, the Cleveland Indians.

The First Division title normally is a pretty tight affair, but the Red Sox ended the campaign with the largest margin in the history of this competition. The Red Sox won the inagural First Division in 2010 by four games on the Philadelphia Phillies and the Tampa Bay Rays claimed the 2011 top tier title by the same margin over the San Francisco Giants in the two previous largest margins.

The 2010 title was Boston's only previous First Division championship.

The Giants and Texas Rangers fell to the bottom of the First Division in 2017 and are headed to the Second Division in 2018. Coming up from the Second Division to the First Division are the Arizona Diamondbacks and the New York Yankees.

The Diamondbacks will be in the First Division for the first time in their history. The Yankees were an original First Division team in 2010 but finished last in the tier in 2013 to be demoted and are headed back to the top level for the first time since then. The Yankees won the Second Division in 2017 by one game over the Diamondbacks and the Milwaukee Brewers, who missed the second promotional spot by percentage points.

The Detroit Tigers and New York Mets both won promotion to the Second Division for 2017, but both found the soup a little too thick at the higher level and they're both going back to the Third Division in 2018. In their place are the last two World Champions, the Chicago Cubs (2016) and the Houston Astros (2017), the top two Third Division clubs of 2017.

The fight to stave off relegation to the Fourth Division came down to two losers and one survivor, with the Miami Marlins coming out of it in the preferred position. The Seattle Mariners and Atlanta Braves are going down to the Third Division in 2018.

The Colorado Rockies and Minnesota Twins, easily the best two Fourth Division teams in 2017, are going up to the Third Division in 2018.

Playoff teams top all divisions as baseball season nears end

It's never happened like this before in eight years of following promotion and relegation across professional baseball. The top two clubs in each division at the end of the regular season are going to the playoffs. Which doesn't mean the titles are decided.

Boston Red Sox left-hander Chris Sale was 7-3 with a 3.04 ERA in 13 starts this season against First Division clubs (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

It isn't all settled, yet, but this much we know: for the first time since we began following promotion and relegation in baseball – and this is the eighth year of it – the top two clubs in each division at the end of the regular season also are going to the playoffs.

And in the First Division, which should expect to have the best clubs, the top four clubs will last into October.

So, it isn't all settled. The championship in each division remains open. There remain some decisions in the bottom of the Third Division as to which clubs will survive and which clubs will be banished to the Fourth Division next year. 

But it's mostly settled.

The championships in each division remain open because, in baseball, we count the postseason. The other sports with promotion and relegation – pro basketball and pro hockey – play reasonably balanced schedules throughout the season, so there's little reason to upset that balance by including the playoffs, while the baseball schedule is so imbalanced that including the playoffs doesn't hurt anything.

So, we look at the First Division and find the Boston Red Sox comfortably on top, as they have been for most of the season. However, these decisions are made by winning percentages, and it remains that the Dodgers, the Cleveland Indians or the Washington Nationals could still pass them. 

The Indians and Red Sox will meet in the American League Championship Series (ALCS) if the Red Sox win their divisional series with the Houston Astros and the Indians win their game against the AL wild card survivor.

The Dodgers and the Nationals will meet in the National League championship Series (NLCS) if the Dodgers survive against the NL wild card and the Nationals can get past the Chicago Cubs.

And any World Series combination involving the Dodgers, Nationals, Red Sox and Indians will count in the First Division.

So, who's the winner? We won't know for a while. And it could be fun to find out. Last year, the First Division came through quite a tangled web in the postseason, with the Dodgers prevailing for the very first time. The top five First Division club all were in the playoffs.

And who are the losers? That, we do know. They are the bottom two clubs – the Texas Rangers and the San Francisco Giants – both of which will be relegated to the Second Division in 2018.

The results from the last week weighed heavily on that decision. The Giants lost two of three at home to the Dodgers Sept. 22-24, enough losses to drive them into the basement. With one more win against the Dodgers, the Giants would be 12-16 instead of 11-17. The difference is huge – the difference between .429 and .393 in winning percentage.

At .429, the Giants would have had a prayer earlier this week, when the Toronto Blue Jays went to Boston. However, the Jays won two of three in that series to finish 22-29, a .431 winning percentage. One more Toronto loss would have sent the Blue Jays down instead of the Rangers. One more Giants win to go with it would have sent the Rangers and the Blue Jays down, saving the Giants.

The Tampa Bay Rays, (22-29, .431) have been sweating all of this out ever since losing two of three at home against the Red Sox Sept. 15-17 to end their First Division schedule. But they survived, which would not be the case if the Giants had swept the Dodgers and the Jays had swept the Sox. The Rays remain the longest continuous member of the First Division actively and they will become the longest continuing member all-time.

The Rays won promotion to the First Division for the 2011 season and have stayed there ever since. So, the 2018 season will be Tampa Bay's eighth straight in the top tier. However, they barely hung on this time.

The St. Louis Cardinals had been the record holder, playing for seven straight years in the First Division, starting as a charter member of the top tier in 2010 and continuing until they were relegated to the Second Division for the 2017 season, giving them seven straight seasons at the highest level. 

The championship in the Second Division this year remains up for grabs. The New York Yankees (17-9, .653) and the Arizona Diamondbacks (20-12, .625) are right at each other on top, even in the games column and with the Yankees in the percentage points lead. Conceivably, though it isn't likely, the Yankees and Diamondbacks could meet in the World Series.

First, though, the Diamondbacks have work in the Second Division this weekend against the Kansas City Royals. They play three games this weekend in Kansas City. Just down the standings, the Cardinals play three at home this weekend against the Milwaukee Brewers. If the Cardinals or Brewers can sweep, then there remains a ray of hope for that club to back into a promotion, depending on what happens with the Diamondbacks against Kansas City and, possibly, the Yankees.

At the bottom of the Second Division, the Royals settled the matter by winning two of three at home this week against the Detroit Tigers. The Tigers needed to win two against Kansas City and they needed the Royals to lose three against Arizona in order to escape relegation.  The best Detroit can hope for now is that an Arizona sweep of Kansas City brings the Tigers and Royals both in at 13-20, but the Royals hold the tiebreaker by winning 11 of 18 between them this season. So, the Tigers are going down to the Third Division, as are the New York Mets.

Coming up to the Second Division from the Third Division, we already know, are the Houston Astros and the Chicago Cubs. Again, those clubs could meet in the World Series to change the order between them, though it isn't likely. The Astros are the first-place club by percentage points.

The lower half of the Third Division is where it gets interesting. The Chicago White Sox ensured they won't be relegated with a 5-4 win against the Angels Thursday night. So, it's between the Seattle Mariners, the Miami Marlins and the Atlanta Braves. Two of those club are going down to the Fourth Division. The decision will come during the weekend.

The Braves and Marlins are playing a four-game series in Miami. The Marlins won the opener, 7-1, Thursday night. The Mariners are playing three at home against the Angels. The Mariners, Marlins and Braves all remain so close at the bottom that anything could still happen between them.

In the Fourth Division, we have two more playoff teams on top – the Colorado Rockies and the Minnesota Twins. Each club is the last in its league to enter the playoffs as the second wild card.

Bosox, Indians take early First Division lead

The Boston Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians, two new First Division clubs, are the early leaders. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Phillies went off to a fast start in the Third Division.

With Freddy Galvis (13) at shortstop, the Philadelphia Phillies won their first six games in the Third Division (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

We shouldn't too surprised by the early going in the First Division. The two new teams are on top.

It's only the first week of May, of course. But history says new promotions thrive in the First Division. And recent champions flounder.

The Cleveland Indians (3-0) and the Boston Red Sox (5-2), newly promoted, are the early leaders. The San Francisco Giants (4-3) are right behind after winning two of three this week from the Dodgers (3-4) in Los Angeles.

The Washington Nationals, the only team yet to debut in the First Division, play their first game within the tier on May 29 in San Francisco. That will begin a run of nine First Division games in two weeks for the Nats.

The Second Division still awaits participation from half of its clubs. The New York Yankees have the early lead, thanks to a three-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals. But the Cardinals will have plenty of chances to catch up because this level includes two other National League Central clubs, the Milwaukee Brewers and the Pittsburgh Pirates.

By contrast, the Third Division has seen heavy participation. The Philadelphia Phillies took the early lead, winning their first six games at this level before visiting Chicago and losing two games so far this week against the Chicago Cubs.

The Cubs, of course, won the World Series last year, but they still couldn't escape the Third Division, despite a 26-13 showing at this level. As it happened, the Detroit Tigers (35-16) and the New York Mets (28-13), surpassed the Cubs for promotion with their over-whelming performances.

At the bottom of this group, the Seattle Mariners already have cause for concern, losing 10 of their first 15 games. 

In the Fourth Division, it's still very early. The team to watch is the Baltimore Orioles, who were knocked back into this group as a result of the 2014 playoffs and haven't been able to escape. 

BoSox, DBacks win Second Division bids for 2016

The Boston Red Sox rallied and the Arizona Diamondbacks held firm to finish 2015 as the top two clubs in the Third Division and win promotion for 2016. But the Colorado Rockies and Oakland Athletics are going down.

The Boston Red Sox won five of their last six games in the Third Division and rallied to the championship in 2015, overtaking the Minnesota Twins for promotion.

The Red Sox finished 16-10 in the Third Division to prevail over the Arizona Diamondbacks (21-16)  by one-half game.

The Arizona Diamondbacks finished second in the Third Division to take the second promotion to the Second Division for 2016. Ordinarily, placement is decided by winning percentage, but the Diamondbacks made it in on a rule that went into effect before the season to compensate for the inequities in baseball scheduling.

The rule says that if the third-place team by percentage finishes within one-half game of the top, plays 150 percent as many games as the second-place team by percentage, finishes ahead of that second-place percentage team in the games column and is within 20 percentage points of that second-place percentage team, then that third-place team by percentage gets second place and the promotion.

In this case, the Diamondbacks played 37 games, compared with 24 for the Twins. The DBacks finished one-half game behind the Red Sox, while the Twins finished one game behind. The Twins had the better winning percentage, .583 to .567.

The rule isn't ideal, but we have to work with what's really there. The Diamondbacks participated more fully in the Third Division than the Twins (or the Red Sox, for that matter) and won at a rate just below the Twins. We can argue with the rule, but we can't argue that the Diamondbacks don't deserve promotion.

The Twins led for much of the year, but stumbled out of a promotional spot by losing three of their last four while the Red Sox surged. The Chicago Cubs also came up fast, winning six of their last eight games.

The Cubs (12-10) and Seattle Mariners (22-20) finished in fourth, two games out.

The Colorado Rockies and Oakland Athletics were, without contest, the two lowest teams in the Third Division. Both are being relegated to the Fourth Division in 2016. Coming up from the Fourth Division are the New York Mets and the Chicago White Sox.

While the Red Sox and Diamondbacks go up to the Second Division in 2016, the Cincinnati Reds and Detroit Tigers are coming down from the Second Division to the Third Division.

Red Sox rally for disputed Aaron crown

The Boston Red Sox won only half of the games they played for the Henry Aaron Award in 2015, but it was enough to push them barely past the Dodgers and Baltimore Orioles for Team of the Year.

Okay, they didn't really hang this banner on the Massachussetts State House in recognition of the Boston Red Sox winning the Henry Aaron Award in 2015. But they could have (Albany NY/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)!

The Dodgers began the 2015 interleague Ear of Corn season with a championship run that almost carried them to honors for the season.

Unfortunately, for the Dodgers, the Ear was out of the National League for good as of June 15, so the Dodgers had no chance to expand on their winnings. And with that much time in the American League, it wouldn't take a great performance in the junior circuit to catch them.

So, the Dodgers were caught by two teams, which each surpassed their single championship and six title defenses in seven tries for 22 days with the prize.

The Baltimore Orioles snagged their second title of the year in  September and defended it four times to temporarily move ahead of the Dodgers. Then, along came the Boston Red Sox.

The Red Sox won only four of their first 13 games in the interleague corn, but they stormed past the Orioles with a three-game sweep in Boston Sept. 28-Oct. 1 for their third victory of the season.

As it would happen with the Red Sos in 2015, they were swept out by the Cleveland Indians to end the season. Thus, the Red Sox limped in as the Team of the Year with a 21-21 overall record.

But this really should be viewed as a split decision. Sometimes, a team will be lucky enough to play for the Corn several times. Eventually, like the Red Sox, that team gets it right.

Can we really say the Red Sox were better with the Corn this year than the Dodgers, or even the Orioles? We can't say that.

But we want to pick one for Team of the Year. And, since the Red Sox put on a nice rally at the end of the season, they're a good enough choice.

Bosox welcome Dombrowski with Aaron

The Henry Aaron Award and David Dombrowski arrived in Boston right at the same. With Dombrowski taking over as President of Baseball Operations for the Red Sox, the hub club has popped up with enough unlikely heroics to mount a second Aaron defense, and against the Kansas City Royals, even.

New Boston Red Sox baseball chief David Dombrowski doesn't have to like everything he's seeing from his club this week, but he has to be liking the wins (Cathleen Carrigan/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license). 

As it happens, the Boston Red Sox began a defense of the Henry Aaron Award on Monday, and David Dombrowski arrived in Boston a day later. 

Not to say that prosperity comes in pairs, but the Red Sox made their first successful defense of the Aaron right as Dombrowski took the reigns as their President of Baseball Operations. Coincidence? You decide. (Hint: it is.)

Coincidence or not, it's still the high point of a disappointing Red Sox season. By the accounts, Ben Cherrington did everything as well as he could and as right as he could as the club's general manager before stepping down right after the Dombrowski hire. However, bringing Hanley Ramirez as the left fielder and Pablo Sandoval as the third baseman to a team playing half of its games in Fenway Park looked like a bad fit on paper, and it looks even worse on the field.

Even worse than that, though, is the Red Sox pitching staff. The Red Sox have one pitcher on the roster right now with any kind of achievement this season, reliever Koji Uehara. As a staff, the Red Sox entered Friday's games with a 4.59 ERA, nearly two-thirds of a run higher than the American League ERA of 3.94.

In their 121 games entering Friday, the Red Sox allowed 592 runs. If they had just a league average pitching staff/defense, they would have allowed 508 runs in those games and the team's Pythagorean expectation would be 63-58 instead of 56-65 (the Red Sox actually were 55-66). At 63-58, the Red Sox would be tied with the Angels for the second American League wildcard.

So, pitching has killed the Red Sox, and we can be sure that having Sandoval and Ramirez defend the left side against the opposing right-handed lineups recommended by Fenway Park hasn't helped. 

And it might even get worse for the Red Sox. Now, they don't have Clay Buchholz for the rest of the year, and he was pretty good (7-7, 3.26 ERA in 18 starts).

It's anybody's guess what Dombrowski will do now with the Red Sox, though upgrades for the pitching and defense are pretty clear priorities. Then again, it's anybody's guess why Detroit Tigers owner Mike Illitch let Dombrowski go less than three weeks ago, making Dombrowski available to the Red Sox. 

The Tigers won the American League Central four consecutive times before this season. This year, three circumstances overtook them. 

First, the Kansas City Royals. Second, the Tigers, in effect, and by various causes, lost big-time starting pitchers Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander this year, and replaced them with only one, David Price, acquired at the trade deadline last year. So, the Tigers needed to replace a 10-games-over-.500 starting pitcher. If all you've got in replacement is a 10-games-under-.500 pitcher, that's costing your club 20 games. If all you've got is a .500 pitcher, that's still 10 games. So (and third), the Tigers were looking for that top pitcher at the trade deadline and, when they saw what the Royals gave for Johnny Cueto, they knew they couldn't play in that market.

Dombrowski then recommended the sensible course to Illitch. Punt. You can't expect to score a touchdown every time you have the ball. When you have that bad year, you have to salvage it. And the Tigers did, particularly in their subsequent trade of Price to the Toronto Blue Jays.

Everyone knows Illitch wants to win the World Series before he dies, and he's 86, so he doesn't have forever. But it does seem that showing Dombrowski the door for this one poor season is a tad impulsive. Illitch might complain that when you look at the Royals doing what they're doing with a $113.6 million payroll, then the Tigers have plenty enough resources to win with their payroll of $173.8 million. But would an 86-year-old Illitch put up with the losing Kansas City has endured to develop its less expensive contender?

Anyway, Dombrowski never particularly had to worry about money with the Tigers, and that's not going to be a problem for him in Boston, either. 

Right now, his problem is pitching. And left-side defense.

But those problems haven't slowed the Red Sox on this present run with the Henry Aaron Award, which began when they took two-of-three from the Seattle Mariners at Fenway Park Aug. 14-16 to capture the prize.

The Red Sox put the Aaron on the line against the visiting Cleveland Indians in a three-game set that started Monday with a 8-2 loss. The next day, though, the Red Sox introduced Dombrowski, the immortals Mookie Betts, Brock Holt and Blake Swihart each drove in two or more runs and Eduardo Rodriguez pitched an uncharacteristic good game (eight innings, one run) in a 9-1 victory. Then, the Red Sox won the rubber game on Wednesday, 6-4. The key was a four-run fourth inning featuring a three-run homer by Jackie Bradley, Jr., and a solo blast by Ryan Hanigan.

If you don't see the Red Sox' future in all of those names, you're probably not alone. Then again, they were playing the Indians.

But now the Red Sox have won the first two of a four-game series in Fenway against the Royals, enough to defend it once again.

Thursday, the Red Sox took the opener from the Royals, 4-1. The six, seven and eight hitters (Travis Shaw, Hanigan and Bradley) drove in all the runs and Lefty Wade Miley horsed up with 7 1/3 innings, allowing only one run. 

The Red Sox won again Friday, 7-2, roughing up Cueto with 13 hits in six innings. The bottom four Red Sox hitters (Rusney Castillo, Shaw, Swihart and Josh Rutledge) scored all the runs and drove in four of them.

In the last two days, then, the Red Sox won when their mediocre pitchers put up good games and their low-order hitters beat up Corey Kluber and Cueto. Probably not the formula the Red Sox can count upon long-term, but it's good for now, and it is bringing the Red Sox their best moments of this season.

Assuming the Red Sox hang on in this title defense, that will bring them up to two defenses and assure them of more than 10 games holding the title.

Can they make a run with it and challenge the Dodgers on top of the standings?

At this point, they've got nothing better to do.

Henry Aaron Award
Standings through games of August 21
	W	L	P	T	G	D	A
DODGERS	15	10	8	1	22	6	7
San Francisco	15	15	8	1	17	4	6
ANGELS	14	5	6	1	16	4	5
Texas	12	10	7	2	16	3	5
San Diego	10	7	5	1	13	3	4
Boston	9	9	6	2	8	1	2
Baltimore	7	6	4	1	7	1	1
Pittsburgh	6	3	3	1	6	1	2
Seattle	7	6	4	1	6	1	2
Milwaukee	5	7	4	1	6	1	2
Kansas City	5	4	4	1	5	1	2
Washington	2	2	1	0	0	0	0
Colorado	6	10	5	0	0	0	0
Arizona	2	7	3	0	0	0	0
New York (AL)	2	2	1	0	0	0	0
Chicago (NL)	1	2	1	0	0	0	0
Miami	1	2	1	0	0	0	0
Minnesota	1	2	1	0	0	0	0
Atlanta	3	4	2	0	0	0	0
Cleveland	1	5	2	0	0	0	0
Houston	0	3	1	0	0	0	0

Numbers in bold indicate league leaders.

W — Wins. L — Losses. P — Times played for title. T — Titles won. G — Number of games that team held title after winning it. D — Title defenses. A — Title defense attempts. Standings are given in order of games holding the title.

2015 Henry Aaron Award results 
(There is no tiebreaker for the Aaron. The champion keeps it unless the challenger wins outright. However, the runs are given for series ending in ties).

San Francisco 2, Arizona 1 — April 6-8 at Arizona.
San Diego 3, San Francisco 1 — April 10-12 at San Diego.
San Diego 2, Arizona 1 — April 13-15 at San Diego.
San Diego 2, Chicago (NL) 1 — April 17-19 at Chicago.
San Diego 2, Colorado 2 — April 20-23 at Denver (San Diego, 26-16).
DODGERS 2, San Diego 1 — April 24-26 at San Diego.
DODGERS 2, San Francisco 1 — April 27-29 at Los Angeles.
DODGERS 3, Arizona 0 — May 1-3 at Los Angeles.
DODGERS 2, Milwaukee 2 — May 4-7 at Milwaukee (DODGERS, 28-16).
DODGERS 2, Colorado 0 — May 8-10 at Colorado.
DODGERS 2, Miami 1 — May 11-13 at Los Angeles.
DODGERS 2, Colorado 2 — May 14-17 (Colorado, 16-12).
San Francisco 3, DODGERS 0 — May 19-21 at San Francisco.
San Francisco 2, Colorado 2 — May 22-24 at Denver (Colorado, 31-26).
San Francisco 3, Milwaukee 0 — May 25-27 at Milwaukee.
San Francisco 2, Atlanta 2 — May 28-31 at San Francisco (Atlanta, 17-16).
Pittsburgh 3, San Francisco 0 — June 1-3 at San Francisco.
Pittsburgh 2, Atlanta 1 — June 5-7 at Atlanta.
Milwaukee 2, Pittsburgh 1 — June 8-10 at Pittsburgh.
Milwaukee 2, Washington 2 — June 11-14 at Milwaukee (Washington, 20-16).
Kansas City 2, Milwaukee 0 — June 15-16 at Milwaukee.
Kansas City 2, Milwaukee 0 — June 17-18 at Kansas City.
Boston 2, Kansas City 1 — June 19-21 at Kansas City.
Baltimore 2, Boston 1 — June 23-25 at Boston.
Baltimore 3, Cleveland 0 — June 26-28 at Baltimore.
Texas 3, Baltimore 1 — June 29-July 2 at Baltimore.
ANGELS 3, Texas 0 — July 3-5 at Arlington.
ANGELS 2, Colorado 0 — July 7-8 at Denver.
ANGELS 2, Seattle 2 — July 9-12 at Seattle (Angels, 20-19).
ANGELS 4, Boston 0 — July 17-20 at Anaheim.
ANGELS 2, Minnesota 1 — July 21-23 at Anaheim.
Texas 2, ANGELS 1 — July 24-26 at Anaheim.
Texas 2, New York (AL) 2 — July 27-30 at Arlington (New York, 35-19).
Texas 2, San Francisco 1 — July 31-August 2 at Arlington.
Texas 3, Houston 0 — August 3-5 at Arlington.
Seattle 2, Texas 1 — August 7-9 at Seattle.
Seattle 2, Baltimore 1 — August 10-12 at Seattle.
Boston 2, Seattle 1 — August 14-16 at Boston.
Boston 2, Cleveland 1 — August 17-19,at Boston.
Boston 2, Kansas City 0 — August 20-21, at Boston, continuing.