Astros bolt to big lead in American League lineal

At the All-Star break, there is a team to beat for the American League lineal championship, and it is the Houston Astros. With 26 games of lineal title, the Astros have more than the next two clubs, combined.

At the halfway point of the 2021 baseball season, the Houston Astros have set themselves as the clear favorites in the American League traveling championship race.

The Astros strung together a title and six straight defenses, holding the championship for almost all of June.

Comically enough, the team that ended it for the Astros, they being the Baltimore Orioles, entered the series in question in a 9-38 nightmare, then swept the Astros three straight in Houston June 28-30.

Baseball is weird. The Orioles, of course, immediately dropped the championship to the Angels. The Orioles won an earlier title in April, before all the losing started, but they failed to defend that one, as well.

Oddly, then, the Orioles and Astros are tied on top of the league in lineal championships for the year, each with two. However, the Orioles couldn't defend either one, while the Astros defended their second title six times. Thus, the Orioles have six games of championship, but the Astros have 26.

The New York Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays are next in line to the Astros. However, the Yankees have 13 games of title, half as many as Houston, while Toronto has 12.

Interleague baseball lineal wide open at All-Star break

As the 2021 baseball season reached its midpoint, the lineal title across the big leagues had no clear favorites, other than a predilection to remain in the American League. But there's still time for an NL club to run a championship.

The race to the lineal championship across big league baseball in 2021 came to the All-Star break as a wide-open proposition. Except that it was all happening in the American League.

The championship has changed hands 12 time so far, each time going to an American League club. National League teams have failed in four attempts to wrestle the championship from the American League. The closest the NL came was the Colorado Rockies losing two of three at home to the Oakland Athletics in early June, and even then, the A's won the first two, so there was no rubber game.

The standings at the All-Star break show a pretty even race, with five teams reaching 10 games of championship and no one winning 20.

A Super League berth could hang in the balance here, and it will be decided by criterion. The A's and Angels have qualified for the stat-off by already reaching some combination of championships and defenses adding to five or better. The Houston Astros and Toronto Blue Jays will qualify with one more championship. 

The Boston Red Sox will qualify with their next title, so long as they don't fail in a challenge some time during the season. They are the only team among the early contenders that has not failed a challenge.

The Seattle Mariners won the championship by taking two of three from the Angels during the final weekend before the break. But the two clubs will rematch in Anaheim when play resumes.

If the Mariners win that series, they will put it up to a challenge against Colorado, another chance for the NL. But if the Angels win, they will put it up to challenge to Oakland, another chance for the A's.

Fourth year of four-by-four crowns new champions

The Minnesota Twins had a huge year in the 2019 four-by-four, winning the Northwest Conference and each of their league divisions. 

The baseball four-by-four, in its fourth year in 2019, produced two teams winning their conferences for the first time and three clubs winning league titles for the first time.

The novelty did not extend to the Southwest Conference, where the Houston Astros beat out the Dodgers for the second straight year. In the Northeast, the Cleveland Indians won for the second time in four years after winning it in 2017.

However, in the Northwest, the Minnesota Twins produced a fantastic season. They became the fourth team in the conference to win it in four years, following the Chicago White Sox, Seattle Mariners and Colorado Rockies. The Twins also won both divisions as which the conference functions, becoming the first Northwestern team to win the conference and both divisions.

In the Southeast, the Atlanta Braves broke the Washington Nationals' stranglehold on the title. The Natties tied for the championship in 2016, then won it outright in 2017 and 2018. In 2019, the Braves outlasted Washington by 1½ games. But the conference would play out a little differently as league divisions.

In the East League, for example, the Tampa Bay Rays won the South Division by one-half game and six percentage points over the Braves. For that, the Rays were considered against the North Division champs, the New York Yankees, for the East League championship. Because the Yankees won the head-to-head meetings, 12-7, they were named the league champion.

In the South League's East Division, the Rays and Braves finished all but deadlocked. The Rays got the nod because, ultimately, we go by weighted winning percentage here, but the difference was less than a percentage point. The Braves had a one-game edge, but the percentage went to the Rays. 

As the East Division champs in the South League, the Rays were pitted against the Dodgers, who won the West Division over the Astros. The Rays won the title. They were 2-2 against the Dodgers head-to-head during the year, and they held a 24-22 advantage in runs.

The Southwest Conference's other division, the South Division of the West League, ended with the Astros ahead of the Dodgers by 10½ games. However, the Astros could not prevail as the West League champions, as they lost four of seven meetings during 2019 against the Twins, who won the West League's North Division.

The Twins were not so fortunate in their guise as the West Division champions of the North League. As such, they had to contend for the North League championship against the East Division champion New York Yankees, and that pairing almost never goes well for the Twins. The Yankees swept the Twins, 3-0, in an American League division playoff series, claiming the North League championship.

Balance across divisions shows need for 'Super League'

The reason for running the newly-named Super League is simple. Every year, baseball contenders emerge from all over the pyramid. The Super League gives us a better chance to put those clubs in top competition.

The Elite Division made its first run in 2019, and if we're just looking at the top of the standings, it looks like the First Division. The New York Yankees won it, finishing one game ahead of the Houston Astros.

One reason for having an Elite Division – oops! First, this: We're changing the name of the Elite Division to the Super League, in honor of the public, legislative and media outrage that destroyed a plan by American sports conglomerates to monopolize European soccer earlier this year. A group of the leading English clubs owned by American magnates attempted to corral elite clubs from France, Germany, Italy and Spain into a permanent franchise arrangement, the like of which has made their American franchises increasingly valuable. It also would have wrecked the professional pyramids in each of these nations. It was to be called the Super League. But it was not to be.

Good name, though, and it suits our purposes here, so we'll use Super League instead of Elite Division across the sports where we have them, which are the North American versions of pro baseball, pro basketball, pro hockey and pro soccer.

All right, then, why do it? The Super League. Why do it? Just to see. What the hell?

We've been running the pyramids in baseball for 10 years through 2019, and there is a strong sense in which the pyramids rightly render the relative strengths of the teams through the game. It could be a lot better, but it would take a change in the schedule, rather than the structure, and we only control the structure. And the structure is simple. Eight teams each in the first three divisions and six in the fourth. At the end of the season, the top two in each division go up and the bottom two go down.

We started it in 2010. At the end of every year, the top two go up and the bottom two go down. And it has worked out that, if we use Major League playoff berths as a measure, then, year by year, the First Division is the best division, the Second Division is the second best, etc. 

Taking a look at entrants to the Major League playoffs, 96 of them in the 10 years that we have run the pyramid, we find that 41 of them played that year in the First Division. With eight teams each year, the First Division is 26.7 percent of the big league teams, and they are accounting for 42.7 percent of the playoff berths.

Seems about right. The difference between the top and bottom in Major League Baseball is not large, so you wouldn't expect the top division to monopolize the playoff bids. But you would expect a strong plurality, and this is what we have here.

The Second Division has kicked in 25 playoff teams. The Third Division has contributed 17, and the Fourth Division, with only six clubs each year, has contributed 12 playoff teams in these 10 years.

No big surprises. Here's what is surprising: when if comes to getting beyond the playoffs and actually winning the pennant, or even the World Series, the Second Division rules. Out of 20 pennant winners in those 10 years, nine are Second Division teams, compared with seven First Division teams. Out of the 10 World Series winners, five were Second Division clubs, compared with three from the First Division. Two World Champions have emerged from that year's Third Division.

One big difference between a pyramid and the permanent franchise system, as this exercise illustrates, is that teams can and do rise faster without the pyramid. There is no such thing as going from worst to first in the pyramid because any team in the Fourth Division is at least three years from joining the First Division, let alone winning it. 

So, teams rise in the pyramid much more slowly, and many – seven of the last 10 – win the World Championship without being in the First Division. We've seen some of the pennant winners of the last 10 years, like the Chicago Cubs, Kansas City Royals and Texas Rangers, peak either as they reach the First Division, or before they can even get there. 

Reaching and remaining in the First Division takes years of sustained excellence, and there aren't a lot of clubs with the resources for it. Especially for smaller market teams, the game is to build quickly and take your shot before the players get too expensive. One can track the trajectory of any small market club through 10 years of the pyramid and see abrupt rises and falls. That's just how a lot of these teams have to play it. And it means we can expect to see premium short-run teams below the First Division.

Seeing it happen that a Third Division champion is better than the sixth-place team in the First Division, we formed an over-arching division that takes in the leading finishers from each division the previous year. Thus, the Super League includes the top half of the previous year's First Division, the top three from the Second Division, the top two from the Third and the champion from the Fourth. 

Thus, any year's Super League will have six of the eight teams in that year's First Division, three teams from the Second Division and one from the Third Division. In addition, teams can qualify through the lineal championships and the four-by-four. Typically, the Super League will have 10-12 clubs.

Indians fall short, Astros claim 2019 AL lineal

The Cleveland Indians, falling from the First Division in 2019, needed to snag a traveling championship to at least qualify for the Super League. But the Houston Astros outpointed them.

The 2019 lineal championship in the American League offered up five contenders, each with such a different story to tell that one longs for a bygone day when decisions about them did not have to be made.

But that day is not today. Now, we need to name a winner, and no such thing emerges from these standings. Fortunately, we've worked up criteria so we won't go to the Christmas holidays every year arguing with ourselves about it.

First, of course, we decide which clubs are entered into the glamorous criteria stat-off that will decide which club will win the Super League berth that goes to the winner. For that decision, we also have criteria, which amount to requiring some combination of championships and defenses adding up to five or more. Five teams made that cut: the New York Yankees, Houston Astros, Cleveland Indians, Tampa Bay Rays and Seattle Mariners.

One interesting team that did not make it: The Toronto Blue Jays, who won the championship three times, tied at the top, but could not produce two defenses to go with them. Until mid-September, the Jays had only one undefended championship to their credit, but they then beat the Yankees two of three in Toronto before defending that title with a sweep of the Baltimore Orioles.

Now, the Jays were two series of championship away from the stat-down, but it was not to be. The Yankees took them down in Yankee Stadium, two-of-three, Sept. 20-22. A week later, as the season ended, it happened that the Rays had taken the title from the Yankees when they arrived in Toronto. The Blue Jays won that series, putting themselves at three titles and one defense. All they needed was one defense to make cut. But the season was over.

Next, we run the five remaining teams through the criteria. The winner in each category gets a point, which is split in cases of ties. Here's how it ended up:

1. Most championships. (New York .5, Tampa Bay .5)

2. Most title defenses per championship. (Cleveland)

3. Best winning percentage in traveling championship games. (Houston)

4. Most victories per time playing for the championship. (Houston 2.22, Cleveland 2.14, )

5. Most games as champion per time playing for the championship. (Cleveland 2.71, Houston 2.44, New York 2.28)

6. Fewest failed challenges. (Houston, Cleveland)

7. Head-to-head record in traveling championship games (Houston).

The last of those, the head-to-head record in traveling championship games, really functions as a tie-breaker. The only teams worth considering are those that are within a point of the top when we get to it. In this case, those teams were the Astros and Indians. The Astros were 3-0 and the Indians were 2-1.

So, it was close, but the decision matters. The Super League goes to the Astros, who didn't need it because they finished in the top half of the 2019 First Division. The Indians, relegated to the Second Division, still could have gone to the 2021 Super League by winning this traveler. Didn't happen.

 

No winner as Southwest launches lineal in 2019

After a full 2019 season of attempting to play down the Southwest Conference for a lineal champion, the task was not yet completed. The Houston Astros and Arizona Diamondbacks each ended the season with four of the eight title shares.

The basis of the four-by-four baseball standings on these pages is a division of the big league baseball markets into four ordinal directions (northeast, southeast, southwest and northwest, going clockwise) and, intending the most equal distribution and geographic integrity possible, placing the teams into these four new "conferences."

In addition to playing each year for this important conference championship, these ordinal conferences also are purposed as divisions in corresponding new leagues based on cardinal directionality (north, south, east and west). Thus, the Northeast Conference is simultaneously the North Division of the East League and the East Division of the North League. 

As the East Division of the North League, the Northeast partners with the Northwest, which is the West Division of the North League. As the North Division of the East League, the Northeast partners with the Southeast, which is the South Division of the East League. The Southeast Conference, in turn, also is the East Division of the South League. And so on. This pattern of relationships between ordinal conferences and cardinal leagues generalizes across the four-by-four.

In addition to their own composite regular season championships, these conferences and leagues also are tracked for lineal championships. The standard practice for starting a lineal is to begin it with the league's champion from the previous year. Sometimes, though, like this, there is no such pre-existing entity as a North League, East League or Northeast Conference that has an established champion.

For these conference lineals, this means there is no obvious team to be "it" as we begin this perpetual game of tag. How is that decision reached?

For these new baseball lineals established in 2019, we took a mixed approach. For the cardinal leagues, we just started it with the teams for which the best argument could be made based on the 2018 results. For these ordinal conferences, we're doing it the better, harder way, which is to put it up for grabs.

Consider the Southwest Conference. It has eight clubs – the Dodgers and Angels from Los Angeles, the San Diego Padres of far Southern California, the Arizona Diamondbacks of the desert Southwest, the Houston Astros and Texas Rangers of Texas, the Kansas City Royals of cattle country, and the St. Louis Cardinals, who owned the American Southwest before any of these other clubs arrived and before all but the Dodgers even existed.

We began the lineal championship by giving each of these clubs one share of it. When any of these two clubs met, each put up its shares, winner take all. Eventually, all of the shares will consolidate with one team. At that point, we have a champion.

In every other cardinal conference lineal we launched in 2019, a decision was reached before the end of the season, sometimes, well before then. But not the Southwest.

At the end of the 2019 season, the Astros and Diamondbacks each held four shares. How those shares ended up in those two places is two different stories.

The Astros actually lost their share to the Texas Rangers at the start of the season, so they were empty-handed entering a rematch April 19-21 in the Metroplex, which the Rangers entered with three of the title's eight shares. And the Rangers won again.

So, the Astros had nothing when they went to Anaheim during the first week of May to play the Angels, who entered with one share. This time, the Astros won. After that, they were scorching.

The Rangers still had their three shares when they met with the Astros in Houston for four games May 9-12. The Astros won all four. Now, they held four shares, half of the championship. And they have guarded them jealously. The Astros ran the table, winning each of nine series against conference teams through the end of the season. However, none of the teams they played held any of the championship, so the Astros ended the year with their same four shares.

The story of the other four shares begins right after the Astros consolidated their four shares. Within a week, the Dodgers defended their two shares from the Padres and the Rangers swiped two shares from St. Louis. A week after that, the Angels took those two shares from the Rangers. The Angels and Dodgers met at Dodger Stadium for two games June 10-11, each club putting their two shares on the line. The Angels won both, so the wait was on for the moment when the only teams with shares would meet to narrow it down once and for all.

It never happened. Instead, these four shares owned by the Angels changed hands twice before July, once to the Cardinals, then the Padres. The Dodgers won those shares at the start of August, then lost them to the Diamondbacks at the start of September. Then, the Diamondbacks defended those shares four times ending the season.

The chase will resume in 2021. In 2019, the Astros were, by far, the best performer in this group, going 31-12. But they don't have a championship to show for it, and nor does anyone else.

Astros rule easily in South League lineal

The Houston Astros began the new South League lineal championship with the first defense in 2019, then they showed why that was the right call.

There was no better big-league baseball team in the American South than the Houston Astros before the 2019 season, and there certainly was none better during that season.

The Astros were the obvious pick to start the Southern lineal after winning 103 games and the American League West in 2018. The schedule makers did us a favor and pitted the Astros against another strong Southern club, the Tampa Bay Rays, to begin the 2019 season.

The Rays won that series, then defended the new title twice. The Astros won the title in May, then defended it twice.

Right after the Fourth of July, the Astros won it again. And they never lost it for the rest of the 2019 season. After 11 Astros title defenses, the schedule simply ran out.

So, the Astros mark up two titles and a gigantic 45 games of championship in first year of this effort. The Rays, with 10 games of title, finished second.

The only other teams to win the Southern championship in its first year were the Angels, the Cincinnati Reds and the Kansas City Royals.

Yanks lead Elite Division, but playoffs will decide

The New York Yankees lead the Elite Division at the end of its first regular season, but this chase probably won't be decided until the end of the postseason.

Outfielder Aaron Judge is one of many who has powered the New York Yankees to the top of the Elite Division entering the 2019 playoffs (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

The baseball season that is entering its final and deciding stages happens to present our first reckoning of an Elite Division, which also will crop up in some other sports.

In concept, the Elite Division is a tournament of champions, but they are the champions documented in these pages. In short, the best teams from the pyramids, traveling championships and regional four-by-four arrangements shall be entered into the next season's Elite Division.

For example, the 2019 Elite Division is composed of the top half of the 2018 First Division, the top three clubs from the Second Division, the top two from the Third Division and the top club from the Fourth Division. Any traveling champions who haven't qualified in the pyramid will be entered, as well as qualifying teams from the four-by-four who haven't qualified in the pyramid or the travelers.

The mix this created for the 2019 Elite Division has produced a robust, even competition that remains far from decided entering the postseason. Seven of the top eight clubs in this 11-team Elite Division are going to the playoffs, with a mere 6 1/2 games separating first place from eighth place.

The New York Yankees lead the Elite Division ending the regular season, but their position is far from secure. It unlikely that the Yankees will finish on top of this pile without winning the World Series, and anything short of that for the Bronx Bombers stands to leave this championship up for grabs.

The Houston Astros are in second place, two games down and trailing the Yankees by 13 percentage points (.543 to .530) weighted to the mean, as we do these standings. The third-place club, the Arizona Diamondbacks, are the only contending club not in the playoffs. Thus, they are frozen at a mean weighted percentage of .528, which could win it if the Yankees and Astros both falter.

Or, the Atlanta Braves (.524), St. Louis Cardinals (.521) or Oakland Athletics (.511) could make a move. Anything can happen in these playoffs. If one of these clubs can turn up a four-game sweep anywhere in this near future, it's a race changer.

Way down these standings, almost at the very bottom, we find the Boston Red Sox, and this tells us something interesting about the Red Sox. It's true that the Red Sox have fallen a long way after winning two consecutive First Division titles and the 2018 World Championship. It's also true that it still took a pretty good club to beat the Red Sox in 2019.

Against this prestigious stack of clubs from the Elite Division, the Red Sox finished 25-39. But they were 88-74 overall, meaning they were 63-36 against everyone else. They did beat the teams that you have to beat. They just didn't beat the teams that you need to beat.

The Red Sox will not be in the 2020 Elite Division. However, the Yankees, Astros, Braves, Cardinals, Athletics, Minnesota Twins and Tampa Bay Rays already have either qualified for return to the Elite Division in 2020, or have all but qualified.


The winner of the Elite Division also will be qualified for next year's version so that it can attempt a defense of its championship.

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.

Yankees rip up September, win big league traveler in October

The Baltimore Orioles appeared to be all but guaranteed of winning the big league traveling championship deep into September, but the New York Yankees won eight title series during a torrid six-week stretch drive to prevail as the 2017 Team of the Year.

The New York Yankees mounted a furious rally in September and deep into the Major League playoffs to claim the 2017 big league traveling championship.

When the Yankees won two of three from the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium Sept. 4-7, it appeared the Orioles could retire comfortably with the prize. They had just won their second traveling title of the year and defended it twice, and even after losing to the Yankees they still had 39 games of title defense, well ahead of second-place Tampa Bay at 27. The Yankees, with a mere 12 games of title defense at that point, were an afterthought in the standings.

But the Yankees took off from their victory against the Orioles, claiming two of three on the road against the Texas Rangers and the Rays successively, then returning to Yankee Stadium to win three of four from the Orioles and sweep the Twins in three games.

The Toronto Blue Jays took two of three from the Yankees Sept. 22-24 in Toronto, but the Yankees won the return series at Yankee Stadium the next weekend to finish the regular season with the title in their hands, a wild-card playoff bid to keep it alive and 28 games of championship defense in their pockets.

It would be impossible to pick one hero for the Yankees in their run to the Team of the Year title for the traveling championship. In the wild card game, they fell behind the Minnesota Twins, 3-0, in the bottom of the first inning. But Didi Gregorius hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the inning to tie the game and the Yankees went on to an 8-4 win.

Next, the Yankees faced the Cleveland Indians in the American League Division Series (ALDS). The Indians almost finished the Yankees off, taking a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five affair. But the Yankees rallied with three straight wins and advanced to the American League Championship Series (ALCS) against the Houston Astros.

Entering the ALCS, the Yankees had 34 games of title defense, still five short of Baltimore's leading total of 39. It meant that even if the Yankees couldn't win the series, they still could clinch the traveling championship for the year if they could make it last at least six games.

That, they did, and just a little more. After losing the first two games of the series, the Yankees took an 8-1 victory in Game 3 behind six shutout innings by starting pitcher CC Sabathia. In Game 4, the Yankees trailed, 4-2, going to the bottom of the eighth inning at Yankee Stadium. But Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez each hit RBI doubles against Astros reliever Ken Giles to trigger a four-run inning and give the Yankees a 6-4 victory.

With that win, the Yankees guaranteed that the ALCS would go at least six games. In fact, it went seven games before the Astros prevailed to win the league pennant.

But the Yankees had the traveling championship across the major leagues to show for a fantastic six-week run, during which they went 23-14 with two traveling titles, six title defenses in eight attempts and 29 games of title defense through motivated competition.

The season began with the Orioles carrying in the title from the end of the 2016 season. The Orioles were loath to let go of it for a long time, defending that championship in their first seven attempts of 2017 as they went off to a 14-6 start. They already had a 23-game head start on the whole rest of the world in title defenses when the Yankees finally knocked them down with two wins in three games at Yankee Stadium April 28-30.

But that loss to the Yankees wasn't the beginning of the end for the Orioles. That came in September, when the Yankees did the same thing to them again.

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.

Any way we slice it, Astros are dominating

Our way of keeping baseball standings has at least one thing in common with the official way: The Houston Astros are ahead, lopsidedly ahead, in every one of their divisions.

George Springer has five homers and 10 RBI on the Houston Astros' present road trip (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attributon-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

The knock against the Houston Astros all year is that they haven't played any good teams. Which raises the question: What counts for a good team in the American League, besides the Astros?

The New York Yankees, you say. They lead the American League East. The Astros beat them three out of four at Yankee Stadium last month.

Who else? Anybody?

The Astros haven't played the Boston Red Sox, who have the third best record in the AL, behind the Astros and the Yankees.

There is one club that has their number. The Cleveland Indians, defending the AL pennant, have beaten the Astros in five of six meetings this year. The Astros are 41-11 against everyone else.

In August, the Astros will play three at home against the Washington Nationals, who are trouncing the National League East. But that's really about it when it comes to "good teams" still to play the Astros. Maybe the Red Sox are that kind of team, but maybe they aren't. Same with the Baltimore Orioles.

When we consider that the Astros play in the American League West, which doesn't have another .500 team and probably won't have one before the end of the year, it's not hard to imagine a run at 116 wins, which the Seattle Mariners reached in 2001.

But it is a lot easier to imagine than it is to achieve. At this point in their 2001 season, the Mariners were 46-12, nearing the end of a 15-game winning streak. The Astros are merely on an 11-game winning streak.

The last seven of those wins have come on a road trip during which the club is batting .326 (87-for-267). Jose Altuve is batting .484 on the road trip (15-for-31) and he has reached base now in 32 consecutive road games, going back to last Sept. 19.

George Springer is batting .457 (16-for-35) on the road trip with five homers and 10 RBI. Catcher Brian McCann had a mere one hit on the road trip before Monday, when he smashed a two-run homer in the fourth inning to give the Astros a 4-2 lead against the Kansas City Royals.

Ever heard of Yuli Gurriel? He hit a back-breaking three-run homer in the top of the ninth Monday night against Kansas City relief ace Kelvin Herrera. The Royals still had a little of a chance before then, but that homer gave the Astros a 7-3 lead. On the road trip, Gurriel is eight-for-18 (.444) with two homers and eight RBI.

The point of all this is that the Astros have it working, not just in the official Major League standings, but just about however you want to slice it. 

The way we slice it around here, we've got the Astros in three divisions, and they are dominating all of them. Last we checked, that wasn't quite so. The Astros were tied with the Texas Rangers on top of the Southwest Conference, 2 1/2 games ahead of the Arizona Diamondbacks in the West League South and one game ahead of the Dodgers in the South League West. Now, the Astros have leads of two, six and 4 1/2 games, respectively, in those competitions.

Here's a look at the conferences.

We can see that the Colorado Rockies have cooled down a little bit in the Northwest, where the Chicago Cubs have moved to within two games. In the Southeast, the Cincinnati Reds have come down a little after losing two of three at home against the Atlanta Braves last weekend.

We know Brandon Phillips didn't especially hurt the Reds in that series, and we also know that Jose Peraza homered for the Reds. But we're still going to say that, unquestionably, the dumbest off-season move for any club this year was the Reds giving the Braves Phillips, plus $13 million of the $14 million needed to pay him.

The Reds had tried for years to dump the salary, but Phillip refused to be traded. So, the Reds dumped the player and ate the salary, which defeated the whole purpose of trading him. In return for Phillips (who is from Stone Mountain, GA), the Reds received Andrew McKirahan and Carlos Purtuondo. Okay.

The Reds saved $1 million in the exchange, but when you consider that whoever took his roster spot was going to cost at least the big league minimum of $535,000, the savings becomes $465,000. For $465,000, the Reds removed Brandon Phillips from their lineup.

In his place, they're trying Peraza. At 23, Peraza may become a good player. If you're saving $13 million by playing him instead of Phillips, this year is a good time to find out. If you're only saving $465,000, it isn't. With Phillips in their mix, the Reds might have a good enough club to reach 85 wins and shoot for the playoffs. With Peraza in his place, they probably don't.

The metrics say that Phillips has a 0.6 WAR and Peraza is at 0.3, according to the reckoning on baseball-reference.com. The same metrics say that Peraza is 0.3 WAR to the good offensively, even though his OPS-plus is 64, which is really a minus, The only good offensive numbers for Peraza are his stolen bases, 14 for 16. Offensively, he's Billy Hamilton Lite.

More likely, in the rattle and hum of the Cincinnati offense, the Reds would be a couple games better right now with Phillips in their lineup. That would have them breaking even. More to the point, this trade probably will end up costing them a good amount of money. 

Figuring that the average paid admission runs $100 through the cash register between the ticket, parking, concessions and souvenirs, the Reds would make up the $465,000 they saved by putting an extra 4,650 people in their stadium, total, through the course of the season. Does a playoff contenting Reds club with Phillips in their lineup lure an extra 4,650 people to Great American Ball Park during the course of the season? It probably lures 20 times than many. 

We'll never know, but it could be that this deal costs the Reds about $10 million in lost revenues, and a chance to contend. In these days when 85 wins makes a playoff contender, no club should ever give up on the season before it starts. The Reds did that with the Phillips trade, and it could cost them a lot more than they saved.

Hey, though, the Reds are still right there with the Washington Nationals on top of the East Division in the South League. In the West Division, no one is with the Astros.

In the West League, it appears that the Astros are packing that South Division away. But the North Division race between the Colorado Rockies and the Minnesota Twins remains interesting and tight. We keep waiting for the Chicago Cubs to make a move, but they've actually lost a game against the lead since we last checked.

In the East League, we see the Indians and the Detroit Tigers so far are lightly scheduled in that North Division. That will change. Meanwhile, the Baltimore Orioles are stinking up the South League just a little, but they've opened up a two-game lead on the Nationals in the South Division of the East League.

Among the Northeast Conference clubs, the Tigers have slight leads in the stand-alone competition and in the East League North. But the Yankees are two games ahead of the Indians and the Tigers in the North League East. In the North League West, the Rockies are four games in front of a big scrum in the middle.

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Pray for rain: Reds take baseball traveler (finally) to NL

The Cincinnati Reds captured the continental baseball traveling championship in an unlikely way, by a combination of Billy Hamilton's mad dash from first base one day, and a rain out the next. Now, the Reds are locked in a split series with the Philadelphia Phillies with the rubber game coming on Sunday.

Billy Hamilton scored from first base on a ninth-inning single to left field on May 24, carrying the Cincinnati Reds to baseball's continental traveling championship (Public domain image).

It took a rain out, perhaps (we'll never really know), but the traveling championship in baseball finally crossed over to the National League last week for the first time since the middle of last August.

It happened when the Cincinnati Reds beat the Cleveland Indians in what ended up as a one-game series in Cleveland.

After the Indians won the championship last weekend against the Houston Astros by sweeping three on the road, the schedule set them up for their interleague series, two of them, against the Reds this week.

The first, a two-gamer in Cincinnati, went down in a split. Because the continental traveler doesn't change hands in a split series, the Indians kept it for the return series between the two clubs in Cleveland.

So, they commenced in Cleveland on May 24 for the second two-game series, and the Reds prevailed in the first game, 4-3, when Billy Hamilton scored the winning run all the way from first base on a single to left field in the ninth inning.

The next day, May 25, rain. The game was postponed until July. Of course, the traveling championship isn't postponed. It goes to whichever team leads the series, if that's the end of it.

So, the Reds finally took the traveling championship on their fourth try this season, and on the sixth try for the National League.

This weekend, the Reds took the prize to Philadelphia, where they have split their first two games with the Philadelphia Phillies entering the games of May 28. So, the continental traveler stays in the National League for at least a couple of more games, whichever teams leaves Citizen's Bank Park with it Sunday afternoon.

But maybe for not much longer than that. The Reds will go from Philadelphia to Toronto for three against the Toronto Blue Jays, an American League club. Could be that the AL will snatch it right back. Or maybe not. The Phillies will open a series on the road Monday against the Miami Marlins.

Will the NL ever regain the traveling championship?

So far, the National League is zero-for-four this season in its efforts to snatch the continental traveling baseball championship from the American League, which took over the championship last August.

Yan Gomes drove in five runs Sunday for the Cleveland Indians, who took baseball's continental traveling championship from the Houston Astros (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license).

Six weeks into the baseball season, the traveling championship across the game has been stubbornly unwilling to cross into the National League.

The same could be said for the final six weeks of the 2016 season. Which is to say that the traveler hasn't been in the senior circuit since last Aug. 12-14, when the San Francisco Giants lost two of three to the Baltimore Orioles in San Francisco.

No other NL team even took a crack at it for the rest of 2016. But that hasn't been the case this year.

First, the Orioles took the title to Cincinnati during their long April run and won two of three from the Cincinnati Reds to hold it. After the Yankees took the championship from the Orioles by winning two of three at home this April 28-30, the Orioles put it on the line at Wrigley Field against the defending World Championship Chicago Cubs the next weekend. It wasn't even close. The Cubs swept three games.

Next, the Yankees went to Cincinnati and gave the Reds another shot. Though the Yankees and Reds split that series, the Yankees kept it because the continental champion holds the title in case of a tied series.

Right after the Houston Astros prevailed against the Yankees, they went to Miami to give another National League club a try. It ended with a Astros sweep.

Now, another opportunity presents itself for the National League. The Cleveland Indians took the traveling championship from the Astros by sweeping three in Houston during the weekend.

So, the Indians now will put the title up against the Reds this week in two separate two-game series, back-to-back. The first series will open in Cincinnati Monday night.

While the traveling championship and the National League can't get together, another stubborn trend for the continental traveler has ended. 

The Astros broke a five-year run without the title, the longest ever for any team, when they won three of four from the New York Yankees in New York last weekend. And they even defended it once, a first, by sweeping the Miami Marlins on the road in their next series.

The Astros held the traveling championship only one other time in history, claiming it with a two-game sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers at home May 16-17, 2012. Five years is a long time in baseball these days. The Astros were a National League club in 2012.

That Astros club finished the year 55-107, the second of three consecutive Houston clubs that failed to win 60 games. The heroes of that title for the Astros were Carlos Lee, who went three for four with two runs, three RBI and a homer in an 8-3 win on May 16, and J.A. Happ, who pitched six shutout innings in a 4-0 win the next day.

The Astros failed to defend that title, immediately losing two of three at home to the Texas Rangers.

Being fair to the Astros, the traveling title hasn't often crossed their path in the last five years. In fact, they never again played for it until Aug. 3-5, 2015, when they lost three straight on the road to the Rangers.

The Astros also failed in their only crack at the prize last season, losing three of four to the Rangers in Arlington June 6-9.

Following are the standings and results in the national traveler through May 21.