In Case You Missed It Last Year

Here's a link to last year's post

It's been another fantastic year of baseball, and as we've entered the latter half of the 2011-2020 deca-season, we're starting to see some divisions, especially in the

Here's a nice table of this year's standings, and how they've changed from last year:

Wait, WHAT?!

For fans who only follow MLB baseball as an annual race and competition, these results may be surprising - last year's World Champions and the team with 200 combined wins in the last two years is dead last in their division? And trailing the first place team by 79.5 games?

Fun fact: The only World Series Champion team from this decaseason who leads their division is the St. Louis Cardinals. The Red Sox, Royals, Cubs, and Giants (twice!) won the WS, but none are within 20 games of their division leader.

Updated All-Star Roster

With the heavily positive reception of last year's methodology for picking each league's All-Stars, MLB has chosen to further refine their selection process as follows:

• Position players will be chosen based off combined rWAR for the first 6 years of the season
• The DH for the NL team is the player with the highest Rbat who isn't starting at another position in this ASG
• Minimum appearances for position players/DHs is 2500 PAs; for pitchers is 120 games started
• All ASG Starters must have been in their respective league for the entirety of the 2016 MLB season

^{! - Denotes player who started last year's ASG at the same position}

^{* - Denotes player who started last year's ASG at a different position}

• Yes, the entire American League team has remained the same. For your consideration:
  • Jonathan Lucroy would have been the AL catcher, if not for the rule change requiring players to have been in their league for the entire year

Looking Ahead

While all but two division leaders (the Tigers and Angels) have seen their leads grow in the past year (in the latter case, losing their division-leading spot entirely), it's clear that no division is locked up yet, though the Nationals and Cardinals could find themselves in very comfortable spots next October if they can keep their leads near the 50-game mark.

But even as we begin locking down division races, the Wild Cards will continue to heat up. In the AL, 8 teams are within 30 games of the second WC spot with 648 remaining, and even though the NL only has 4 in such close proximity, the surging Cubs are going to be a force in the next few years.

Realistically, the Twins, Astros, Rockies, Marlins, and Padres are out of contention for the deca-season playoffs, so we'll see how they approach these last few years and prepare for the 2021 season.