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.

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.

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.

Dodgers dominate to capture NL traveling title

The Dodgers are finishing May by making a big move with the National League traveling championship. Hitting and pitching at a high level, the Dodgers are angling to become the third team this year to defend the title.

Cody Bellinger hit two homers for the Dodgers in a four-game stretch for the Dodgers while they played for the National League traveling championship (Johnmaxmena2/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license).

Closing out May, the Dodgers are playing their best baseball of the 2017 season. With five straight wins through May 29, the Dodgers aren't just winning. They are dominating.

It happens that the last four of those victories coincide with the traveling championship across the National League. The Dodgers now hold the title for the second time this season.

The Chicago Cubs arrived at Dodger Stadium with the NL traveling title on May 26, but it wasn't long before the Dodgers took it away. The Dodgers won three straight from the Cubs by a combined score of 18-4.

The Dodgers began a four-game series in St. Louis on May 30 with a 5-1 win against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Looking a little more closely at this four-game run by the Dodgers, we can see how sharp they've been against the defending World Champions and another club that has been a king in the NL for this entire century.

In those four games, the Dodgers hit 10 home runs. Balance has been key. Chase Utley and Cody Bellinger were the only Dodgers with two homers in this small run, so six players hit the other six homers.

As the composite batting numbers from the four games show (courtesy of baseball-reference.com), the Dodgers batted only .250. But 16 walks and 10 homers papers over a lot of batted-ball outs. They also paper over a lot of non-batted outs. The Dodgers struck out 41 times in these four games, the one disturbing trend across the team.

Pitcher by pitcher, start by start – and especially reliever by reliever – the Dodgers were all but untouchable. Their staff ERA in the four games was 1.25

On May 26, Dodgers left-hander Alex Wood pitched five shutout innings. He won, raising his mark to 6-0 and dropping his ERA to 1.69. Pedro Baez and Chris Hatcher each pitched two shutout relief innings to secure a 4-0 win.

The next day, Brandon McCarthy pitched six shutout innings, improving his numbers to 5-1 and 3.28. Ross Stripling finished a 5-0 win against the Cubs with three shutout innings.

On May 28, all of America anticipated a pitcher's duel between Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers and Jon Lester of the Cubs. But Lester lasted not even four innings, and Kershaw hung around for barely more than that. Four Dodgers relievers combined for 4 2/3 hitless, shutout innings in a 9-4 Dodgers win.

On to St. Louis. On May 29, Dodgers starter Rich Hill gave up one run in five innings. Four Dodgers relievers combined for four shutout innings in a 5-1 win for the Dodgers.

The pitching numbers (from baseball-reference.com) are here, but one key set of numbers isn't. In these four games, the Dodgers produced 15 shutout relief innings.

Long-term, the Dodgers won't hold up if four out of five starts last only five innings. Their batters can't be striking out 10 times per game, either. Short-term, though, the Dodgers rolled up key wins against strong competition. And dominated with the NL traveling championship.

Famously, the Cardinals have owned the traveling championship in the NL since it launched in 2011. But the early indications in 2017 show that we could see different results.

The Cardinals whiffed on their first try at the NL traveler when they lost two of three at home to the San Francisco Giants May 19-21. With their Monday loss to the Dodgers, the Cardinals lost four of their first five games with the NL traveler this season.

The leading teams so far in 2017 are the Dodgers, the Giants and the Miami Marlins. The Marlins notched a title with three defenses in April. The Giants have a title with two defenses in May.

The Dodgers, Giants, Marlins, Cubs, New York Mets, Philadelphia Phillies and Cincinnati Reds all have won titles this season. But the Marlins and Giants are the only clubs to successfully defend it.

The Dodgers and Giants are the only clubs that have won it twice this season.

Orioles set April records with baseball traveling title

The Baltimore Orioles started the new baseball season with the big league traveling baseball championship and held it for the entire month of April, the longest title reign yet at the start of a season.

Jonathan Schoop led the way for the Baltimore Orioles in April with five home runs (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

In seven years of the traveling championship across big league baseball, never has a season begun quite like 2017.

The season began with the Baltimore Orioles holding the title, having won it from the New York Yankees during the final regular season series of 2016. And the traveler stayed with the Orioles for the entire month of April.

Not until the Yankees won a three-game series against the Orioles in Yankee Stadium April 28-30 did the continental traveler change hands. Thus, the Orioles held the title for seven consecutive defenses and 23 games, the all-time record at the start of a season. It wasn't until Monday (May 1) that the Yankees put the title up for defense.

The previous records for holding the title at the start of the season belong to the St. Louis Cardinals, who claimed the prize with their World Series victory against the Texas Rangers in 2011, then held on for 19 games and six title defenses at the start of the 2012 season.

But once the Cardinals lost the title that year, they didn't get another crack at it again until they defeated the San Francisco Giants for the prize in early April of 2013.

History shows that 23 games of title defense probably won't be enough for the Orioles to claim the traveling championship across the 2017 season. No team has ever taken that distinction with fewer than 26 games of title defense.

And the Orioles still haven't won the traveling title this year. All those defenses in April followed a title they won last season.

So, the race remains wide open, even though the Orioles have opened up a substantial lead.

AL back on top of Selig West with Texas Rangers title

The Texas Rangers once more asserted the American League's success in the Bud Selig West, finishing ahead of the St. Louis Cardinals in a close race.

The Texas Rangers won a torrid race in the Bud Selig West, finishing 1½ games ahead of the St. Louis Cardinals for their second league title.

The Cardinals won the title in 2015, the only time in the league's seven-year history that a National League club won the league's undisputed championship. The only other time there has been an NL team with the title was 2012, when the Cardinals and Dodgers split it.

Only twice in the league's seven-year history has the winner of the Bud Selig West been the champion of either the Joe Cronin or Chub Feeney Leagues.

The Rangers finished second in the Cronin League in 2016, while the Cardinals finished second in the Feeney League.

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

Cardinals still only Allen winner, but barely

The St. Louis Cardinals, once more, were the best team in the Allen. It's been that way every year since 2011, when this traveling championship across the National League was started. This time, though, the Cardinals barely won.

The St. Louis Cardinals have been so dominant in the National League traveling championship, which we call the Dick Allen Award, that we can't just give it to someone else in a tie-breaker call.

So, it went to the Cardinals again in 2016, though just barely over the Miami Marlins. The Marlins actually finished 2016 with the most wins (23) and the most championships (four) for the Allen. However, the Marlins were quite lax in defending the championship, succeeding only three times in seven efforts.

Thus, the Cardinals, who won only one championship during the season, still finished the season with the most games holding the title with 19, compared with 18 for the Marlins.

The Cardinals won their championship by taking two of three from the Milwaukee Brewers in Milwaukee, then made five defenses before losing three of four at home to the Pittsburgh Pirates July 4-7.

The Marlins had several chances to catch the Cardinals going down the stretch, but they could not make their championships last. The Marlins turned in two one-and-done titles in August, then lost a challenge in Atlanta during the final week of the season that could have put them over the top.

So, the Cardinals are Team of the Year again. In six years of following the traveling championship though the National League, they lead in every category. Their record in Allen games is 199-126 with 21 titles, 50 defenses in 71 attempts and 238 games holding the championship. No other NL team is even close. The Cardinals have been Team of the Year every season, it will remain that way until someone can beat them.

The results from 2016 follow. First, here are the results from other seasons.

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

Cardinals face no challenge for Selig West

The St. Louis Cardinals took a big lead early and never looked back, easily winning their first undisputed Bud Selig West championship. The Cardinals had previously split the title once before.

The St. Louis Cardinals faced no serious competition throughout the season as they captured their first undisputed Bud Selig West championship in 2015.

The Cardinals held an 8½ game lead on July 31. Although the Bud Selig West included two other Major League division winners (the Dodgers and Texas Rangers) and one other playoff club (the Houston Astros), none came close the the Cardinals.

The Cardinals won the league by 4½ games over the Dodgers and 5½ over the Rangers.

The Cardinals also shared the Bud Selig West with the Dodgers in 2012. Other teams to win the Bud Selig West are the Angels (twice), the Minnesota Twins and the Rangers.

Mets play spoiler as Cards cop Feeney crown

In the National League, the New York Mets won the 2015 pennant. But in the Chub Feeney League, composed entirely of National League clubs, the Mets were spoilers, enabling the St. Louis Cardinals to prevail over the Chicago Cubs.

In the National League, the New York Mets won the 2015 pennant. But in the Chub Feeney League, they were spoilers.

With late help from the Mets, the St. Louis Cardinals won their third consecutive Chub Feeney League championship, this time by 1½ games over the Chicago Cubs. The Cardinals have won all three championships since the league expanded to eight teams in 2013 due to the Houston Astros moving to the American League and, therefore, the Joe Cronin League.

The Cincinnati Reds won the first seasons of the league, 2010-2012, when it had six teams.

The Cubs held a one-half game lead, at 54-33, over the St. Louis Cardinals (54-34) entering the National League Championship Series, which happened to feature two Feeney clubs, the Cubs and Mets.

Of course, the Mets swept in four games, which didn't help their own case much. With the sweep, the Mets (37-31) still finished fourth in the Feeney League.

But the four losses killed the Cubs, who fell all the way to 54-37, finishing 1½  games behind the Cardinals.

First Division title a three-way split in 2015

We ended up declaring tri-champions for the First Division in 2015, giving equal due to the St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco Giants and Tampa Bay Rays. On the bottom end, the Angels defended their 2014 title poorly to earn relegation, along with the Atlanta Braves.

There was never much clarity on top of the First Division in 2016 as the St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco Giants and Tampa Bay Rays set a strong pace all year and never came apart from each other.

In the end, it came to a split championship between those three clubs.

Normally, the call is made by winning percentage, but we always split titles when there is a discrepancy between winning percentage and the games behind column. In this case, the Cardinals were 15-10, .600, to lead the way in winning percentage. But that's one-half game behind the Giants (26-20, .565), who led in the games behind column.

Then again, the Rays (19-14, .576), finished ahead of the Cardinals in the games behind column and ahead of the Giants in winning percentage. At the same time, they tied with the Giants in the games behind column and behind the Cardinals in winning percentage.

So, there was no boiling this one down to one club, or even two.

The split championship was a first in the First Division in more ways than one. It also marked the first time the Cardinals claimed even a share of the title, even though they are the only club that has been in the First Division continuously since tracking began in 2010.

On the bottom of the First Division, the Dodgers escaped relegation by winning 12 of their last 20 after finishing July in last place at 10-18. The Dodgers finished 22-22, sixth place, ahead of the Atlanta Braves and the Angels, who both will be relegated.

The Angels won the First Division in 2014, but came back with a last-place performance in a limited 2015 schedule, finishing 6-16.

Coming up from the Second Division to replace the Braves and Angels in the First Division will be the Kansas City Royals and Texas Rangers.

Long Cubs rally captures Central League crown

None of our regional leagues had more strong clubs at the top in 2015 than the Center League. The Cubs staged a furious rally from the end of July through the playoffs to capture the championship.

 

The Chicago Cubs rallied from nowhere to win the Center League in 2015, covering eight games in just more than two months and putting themselves over the top with a strong showing in the National League playoffs.

On the morning of July 31, the Cubs were 27-27 in the Center League, 7½ games off the pace set by the Kansas City Royals (37-22), who led the St. Louis Cardinals (36-23) by a game. Even the Detroit Tigers (33-27) were ahead of the Cubs.

But the Cubs mounted a fierce rally through the final two months, capping the regular season with eight consecutive wins to come up 56-40, bringing themselves to within one game of the Cardinals and Cubs, both 57-39.

The Cubs then took care of their business, given a chance during the playoffs, which gave them two Center League foes. Beating the Pittsburgh Pirates in one game, then winning three of four from the Cardinals in the National League divisional series, the Cubs surpassed the Cardinals and the Royals, who did not have Center League opposition during the playoffs.

The Cubs wound up winning the Center League, dramatically, by a one-half game over the Royals and Cardinals.

Cardinals continue Allen dominance in 2015

Another year, another season of the St. Louis Cardinals dominating in the National League Ear of Corn. It remains for someone other than the Cardinals to win the Dick Allen Award five years after the prize's inception.

Shortstop Jhonny Peralta has been a big piece for the St. Louis Cardinals in their recent success with the Dick Allen Award (Johnmaxmena2/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license).

The St. Louis Cardinals continued their dominance of the National League Ear of Corn in 2015, winning it right away and stomping to their fifth Team of the Year designation in as many seasons.

The Cardinals won five titles, defended them 11 of 16 times, held the league corn for 51 games and finished 44-28. No other team was close.

It wasn't even close to the best season the Cardinals have ever had with the NL Ear of Corn. In 2013, the Cardinals were 51-25 with five titles, 13 defenses in 18 tries and 56 games with the prize.

Through the 2015 season, the Cardinals have won the National League Ear 20 times in the prize's five-year history, compiling a 182-118 record 45 title defenses in 65 attempts and 220 games holding the corn. All of those are the all-time records in the National League or in any Ear of Corn.

Cards, Giants start top tier stretch

The San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals are right next to each other on top of the First Division standings, separated by 10 percentage points through Tuesday's games. They will meet five more times in little more than the next week, and the championship is likely to ride on those games.

St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina, right, delivered a big home run for the Cardinals against the San Francisco Giants Tuesday night. Here he is with his brother, Benji Molina, during a 2007 meeting between the Cardinals and Giants (shgmom56/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

The First Division race will go into hyper-drive in the next 10 days, which feature the only seven games this season between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals, the two front-running teams in the top tier.

If the first two of these meetings are any indication, this stretch of the race will be memorable.

The Cardinals won the opener in St. Louis Monday night, 2-1, on a solo homer for Yadier Molina and an eighth-inning scratch run that scored on an infield out by Mark Reynolds. The Giants prevailed, 2-0, in the second game, thanking an RBI double by Brandon Crawford, a hit batsman with the bases loaded, six shutout innings for Madison Bumgarner and a stiff bullpen.

The Giants improved to 21-10 (.677) in the First Division, while the Cardinals fell to 10-5 (.667). It is winning percentage that will decide this, so, even if the Giants have a three-game lead, that matters little.

After Tuesday's games, the Giants have 11 games left in the First Division, the first of which is the finale to this series with the Cardinals Wednesday in St. Louis. The Giants will end up with 43 games in the First Division. The Cardinals have 10 games left, bringing their total in the tier to 25. So, each individual game weighs more heavily on the Cardinals, for well or ill.

The Giants and Cardinals, we all know, have rather parallel fortunes in recent postseasons. The Giants win it every time they are in it, which is only half the time. The Cardinals are always in it, but they only win it when the Giants aren't in it, which is half of the time.

In the First Division, their histories are rather like that.

The Cardinals are the only team that has been in the First Division every year since these standings were first kept in 2010. But the Cardinals never even came close to winning it until last year, when they fell short at the end.

The Giants weren't even in the First Division in 2010. But their 2010 postseason pushed them to the Second Division championship and promotion to the First Division for 2011, when they lost the top tier title to the Tampa Bay Rays by a mere eight percentage points. Then the Giants lost the 2012 First Division title to the New York Yankees by only 13 percentage points.

In 2013, the Giants and Yankees both plummeted so far that they both were relegated to the Second Division in 2014. The Giants flourished and easily won the Second Division in 2014, winning promotion to the First Division for this season with a great chance to win it.

So, it's wildly fluctuating ups and downs for the Giants, while the Cardinals have been steady and consistently excellent, without the peaks and pits that are well known to the Giants.

The Giants went a long way towards whittling down the First Division race last week, winning four straight from the Washington Nationals right after the Nationals lost two of three to the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium. With that tailspin, the Natties fell from contention and now are 17-18 in the top division.

The only other club in the mix for the First Division fight is the Tampa Bay Rays (17-10, .630), who are two games down the the Giants in the games column. But the Rays have only six games left in the First Division, all against the Toronto Blue Jays during the final week of the season.

Remaining First Division games

ANGELS (six games): August 21-23, three at home against Toronto; September 7-9, three at home against DODGERS.

DODGERS (10 games): August 31-September 2, three at home against San Francisco; September 7-9, three at ANGELS; September 28-October 1, four at San Francisco.

Atlanta (13 games): September 3-6, four at Washington; September 15-17, three at home against Toronto; September 29-October 1, three at home against Washington; October 2-4, three at home against St. Louis.

San Francisco (11 games): August 19, one at St. Louis; August 28-30, three at home against St. Louis; August 31-September 2, three at DODGERS; September 28-October 1, four at home against DODGERS.

St. Louis (10 games): August 19, one at home against San Francisco; August 28-30, three at San Francisco; August 31-September 2, three at home against Washington; October 2-4, three at Atlanta.

Tampa Bay (six games): September 25-27, three at Toronto; October 2-4, three at home against Toronto.

Toronto (12 games): August 21-23, three at ANGELS; September 15-17, three at Atlanta; September 25-27, three at home against Tampa Bay; October 2-4, three at Tampa Bay.

Washington (10 games): August 31-September 2, three at St. Louis; September 3-6, four at home against Atlanta; September 29-October 1, three at Atlanta.

2015 First Division standings, through games of August 18

First Division W     L      Pct.     GB San Francisco 21 10 .677 — St. Louis 10 5 .667 3 Tampa Bay 17 10 .630 2 Washington 17 18 .486 6 DODGERS 15 19 .441 7½ Toronto 10 13 .435 7 Atlanta 13 22 .371 10 ANGELS 5 11 .313 8½

Henry Aaron Award: Royals move prize to AL

The Kansas City Royals have become the first American League club to hold the Henry Aaron Award this year, thanks to their dominance over the Milwaukee Brewers this week. The Royals also happen to hold the Harmon Killebrew Award, making them the first double champions this season.

Kansas City Royals left-hander Jason Vargas got his team off right in a Harmon Killebrew series last week in Minneapolis with six shutout innings. Vargas has since gone on the disabled list (Jeff Dunn [UCinternational crop]/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license).

By BILL PETERSON

Big Leagues in Los Angeles

A recent run of victories has enriched the Kansas City Royals in ways that they don't even know.

With their three-game sweep of the Minnesota Twins last week and a two-game sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers this week, both on the road, the Royals became the first team this season to simultaneously hold the Harmon Killebrew Award and the Henry Aaron Award.

The Aaron, of course, is the traveling trophy that crosses the two Major Leagues, while the Killebrew is the traveling trophy that stays in the American League. The Royals also are the first American League club this season to hold the Aaron Award. Although the Aaron had been in the National League for the entire season until the Royals nabbed it this week, no club has at the same time held the Aaron and the Dick Allen Award, which is the traveling trophy that stays in the National League.

The Royals went to Minneapolis June 8-10 and won three straight to take the Killebrew Award from the Twins, who had held it for four consecutive defenses. In addition to giving the Royals the Killebrew Award, the three-game sweep had the more obvious virtue of giving the Royals a two-game lead on the Twins in the American League Central division.

Credit three terrific starts from the Royals rotation. Jason Vargas began it with six shutout innings in a 3-1 win, Chris Young followed with 6 1/3 shutout innings in a 2-0 win, then Edinson Volquez gave up one run while striking out seven in a 7-2 win to close out the series.

The Twins and Royals are shaping up as the principle players in the race for Team of the Year in the Killebrew. The Twins still lead the overall standings with 16 wins and 22 games of title defense, but the Royals now are 13-5 in games for the Killebrew, and they have tied the Twins with two titles this season. 

Following their series with the Twins, the Royals lost two straight to the St. Louis Cardinals. The Killebrew was safe with the Royals, however, because it doesn't go on the line in interleague games.

However, the Royals ran into the Aaron this week in Milwaukee, one of the Aaron's spiritual homes. The Milwaukee Brewers took the Aaron from the Pittsburgh Pirates June 8-10 by winning two of three on the road, then they defended it in a four-game split at home against the Washington Nationals (There is no tiebreaker in the Aaron, so it doesn't change hands unless the challenger wins outright).

The Royals and Brewers now have played three games this week, and the Brewers have yet to belong in any of these games. The Royals took the Aaron from the Brewers by sweeping two Monday and Tuesday in Milwaukee. The Royals won the opener, 8-5, with the Brewers scoring three times in the bottom of the ninth to make the final score artificially close. Next night, the Royals tacked up a 7-2 win to claim the Aaron.

This particular set of interleague series being played across the Major Leagues right now — two here/two there arrangements between 15 specific sets of two clubs — is being treated in a lot of media as if they were four-game series home-and-road. Here, each two-game set in each location is treated as a separate series. 

So, with the Brewers and Royals both going to Kansas City for two starting Wednesday night, a new series began. But it hasn't made any real difference. The Royals won, 10-2, Wednesday night, clinching their first title defense of the Aaron.

And that means the Aaron and the Killebrew both will be on the line this weekend, with the Royals defending both of them against the Boston Red Sox. It has been a lean season for the Red Sox. If they can win the series and take both traveling awards, it's likely to be the best thing that happens to them all year.

First Division: Angels, Dodgers both facing trouble

The Angels and Dodgers both are in First Division trouble coming through the first week of June. Both are at the bottom of the division, which spells relegation to the Second Division for 2016 if they don't rise in the top tier. That means beating top-level clubs, which neither Los Angeles club has done very much of this season.

Angels manager Mike Scioscia won't be able to argue his way into remaining in the First Division for 2016 if his club doesn't improve its performance against this top tier of teams (Googie man/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license).

By BILL PETERSON

Big Leagues in Los Angeles

The First Division is heating up with a lot of action during these last couple of weeks, but the Dodgers and Angels aren't heating it up with it.

Far from it. The inability of the Angels and Dodgers to handle top teams has been noted in the First Division standings, among other places. Both Los Angeles teams came through this first week of June fighting against the possibility of relegation to the Second Division in 2016, which is the fate of the two clubs finishing at the bottom of the First Division in 2015.

The Angels lost two of three last week at home against the Tampa Bay Rays, dropping the first two games after winning the opener. The Dodgers have not succeeded in purchasing the goods to take down the two elite clubs in the National League, the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants, posting a combined 4-11 against the two clubs that have accounted for the last five National League pennants.

The Angels need to get their getting quickly, as they'll play fewer than two dozen games, total, in the First Division. At 3-7 in the First Division, the Angels are defending their 2014 top tier title with a last-place performance, six games behind the front-running Giants. The Angels will get another crack at the Rays next weekend in St. Petersburg. After that, though, the pickings will be slim.

Following next weekend's series at Tampa Bay, the Angels will have only nine games left in the First Division this season – six against the Dodgers and three against the Toronto Blue Jays. Being six games down in the First Division is a lot different from being down 5½ to the Houston Astros in the American League West, which is another position they've taken. The Angels have a lot more time in the AL West, and the Astros (12-10 against clubs at or above .500 and 22-13 against clubs below .500) are likely to cool off as they play against better clubs.

Teams have won ordinal divisions with fewer than two dozen games, but it requires a superior winning percentage for that team, and there can't be another team that's both playing a lot of games and winning a big share of them. The record for fewest wins to take a division belongs to the Texas Rangers, who won the First Division in 2013 with a 13-8 record in their 21 games. The second place team, Tampa Bay, finished 18-15.

The team with the fewest games played to win a division was the Angels in the 2013 Second Division. The Angels played only 19 games, but finished 14-5. The Angels beat the Nationals (25-18) by one game and 156 percentage points (.737 to .581). Both clubs were promoted to the First Division for 2014, and the Angels went on to win it.

That has a way of happening in the First Division. In three of the last four years, the First Division winner had been freshly promoted that year. In addition to the Angels in 2014, the Texas Rangers did it in 2013 and the Rays did it in 2011. It's worth pointing out that the Giants are working on precisely the same achievement, leading the First Division after being promoted to the top tier this season. 

However, the Rangers were swiftly demoted to the Second Division after an injury-plagued 2014 season. That does not appear to be a danger for the Giants.

The Dodgers have a different kind of job in front of them. The Dodgers actually are last in the games behind column of the top tier, seven games down, compared with six down for the Angels. However, the Angels have a lower winning percentage (.300, compared with .333 for the Dodgers), and promotion and relegation ultimately comes down to winning percentage.

Last week was no better than a break-even proposition for the Dodgers, who won two of three at home against the Atlanta Braves, but lost two of three at St. Louis last weekend. All of those were First Division games. The Braves went on to split last weekend on the grounds of the division-leading San Francisco Giants. This weekend, the Dodgers have lost two of three at home to the Cardinals, with the final game of that series coming Sunday night.

The Giants lead the First Division with an impressive mark of 12-4, thanks largely to their combined 10-2 performance against the Dodgers and Angels. The Rays are pressing the closest pursuit, only a game down at 9-3 after taking two of three in Anaheim last week. The Nationals (7-5) and the Cardinals (6-3) are the only other clubs breaking even in the division.

As the schedule lays out, the Giants will play about 40 games this year in the First Division, so their work is far from done. Same with the Dodgers. But the Dodgers are on the other end of the standings from the Giants. While the Giants vie for the leadership and the championship, the Dodgers now hold seventh place, which will get them relegated to the Second Division in 2016 if they do not improve their performance against this top tier of clubs.

First Division: Dodgers, Cardinals, vie to challenge Giants

The Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals will see a lot of each other in the next 10 days in games that should matter a lot to the First Division. But the San Francisco Giants are off to such a good start in the top tier that there's a chance no one else will matter.

Andre Ethier is swinging a strong left-handed bat for the Dodgers, hitting .317 with a 165 OPS-plus. The Dodgers will need him for the next couple weekends against the St. Louis Cardinals (LiAnna Davis/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license).

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

The Dodgers' greatest natural rival, of course, is the San Francisco Giants. But the team that really has stood in their way the last couple years is the St. Louis Cardinals.

The Cardinals have eliminated the Dodgers from the last two years of playoffs, offing them in a six-game National League Championship Series in 2013 and again in a four-game divisional series in 2014. In each of those seasons, though, the Dodgers won four of the seven regular-season meetings between those clubs.

The 2015 version of those games is coming right up – three in St. Louis this weekend and four at Dodger Stadium next weekend. All of these games should be thick with implications in this year's First Division competition, although the San Francisco Giants are threatening to make everyone else irrelevant.

The Giants are off to an 11-2 start in the top tier, winning seven of their nine meetings with the Dodgers and sweeping the Angels earlier in the season. Now, the Giants have added a team from outside Southern California to their hit list, beating the Atlanta Braves, 7-0, Thursday night in the first game of a weekend series in San Francisco.

The Dodgers slightly improved their First Division situation this week by winning two of three from the Braves at Dodger Stadium, but they're still only 4-8 in the division, 6½ games behind the Giants. The Cardinals have played only three games this year in the First Division, going 2-1.

Across the National League, the Cardinals are 31-16 and the Dodgers are 28-18, the two best records going. Both have been NL playoff semifinalists for the last two years.

The Cardinals are the only club across Major League Baseball that has been in the First Division for every year of its existence, starting in 2011. The Dodgers have been a First Division club every year except 2012. But neither club has ever won the First Division, and the Cardinals never came especially close until last year.

The 2014 First Division season ended with the Dodgers and Cardinals meeting in the divisional playoffs. Either club could have captured the First Division with the right outcome in that series. But the Dodgers won just enough of those playoff games – one – to give the Angels a one-half game championship margin over St. Louis.

So, the Dodgers and Cardinals will meet seven times next 10 days with serious implications for the First Division.

Unless the Giants keep doing what they're doing.

Center League: Royals, Cardinals fight for lead

The St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals are meeting this weekend in Kansas City for the Center League lead. The Royals won the opener Friday night, 5-0, behind two homers by designated hitter Kendrys Morales.

Kansas City Royals center fielder Lorenzo Cain enters Saturday's games with a 2.8 WAR, according to baseball-reference.com, second only to the Angels' Mike Trout among American League position players (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

The key series of the weekend is in the Central League, where the St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals are meeting for the lead.

It happens that the Royals have the best record in the American League (27-14) and the Cardinals have the best record in the National League (27-15), but it's the Cardinals and the Detroit Tigers with a half-game lead on the Royals in the Central League, even after the Royals carried a 5-0 win out of Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City Friday night.

The Royals have advanced from mere feel-good story to real going concern in a very short time. One can tell they are real because they can replace real talent and keep winning.

During the offseason, they lose their ace right-hander, James Shields, the player who, more than any other, lurched them towards credibility. Shields went to the San Diego Padres as a free agent. Instead, now, the Royals have Chris Young, who now has 69 career victories as he approaches his 35th birthday on May 25. Young threw six innings of goose eggs at the Cardinals Friday night, allowing six hits. He's 4-0 now with a 0.78 ERA.

During the offseason, the Royals lost their long-time designated hitter, Billy Butler, to free agency.  In his place, the Royals signed Kendrys Morales, who, being a switch-hitter with power, pretty obviously trumps Butler, who signed with the Oakland Athletics.  Morales accounted for all of Kansas City's scoring Friday with a three-run homer in the first inning and a two-run homer in the third.

The centerpiece for the Royals remains, of course, that core of young, veteran talent. It would be hard to pick just one, but, if you had to, it would probably be the center fielder, Lorenzo Cain. As of Saturday morning, Cain was second to Mike Trout of the Angels in WAR (2.7) among American Leaguers who aren't pitchers, according to baseball-reference.com. Friday night, Cain hit himself onto base twice so he could score on Morales homers.

As of Saturday morning in the Central League, the Cardinals are 20-11, the Tigers are 23-14 and the Royals are 18-10. Now, 30 years after the Royals and Cardinals met in the World Series, they are meeting on the weekend before Memorial Day. Perhaps they will meet again in October.