Weekly Standings Check In: Heavily Redacted Edition

Weekly Standings Check In: Total Wins and Losses Edition

We're just about  month into the season and it looks like all of MLB is treading water at .500 with 328 wins and 328 losses. Let's hope they can pull things together and a get winning record this year. Very disappointing...

Weekly Standings Check In: Alphabetical Edition

This week, we examine what happens if the standings were to be seeded alphabetically. The biggest losers are all the relocated and rebranded teams. Had Miami kept Florida as it's region, it would have been in the top ten. Same with the Angels, who originally were known as the California Angels, would have been in the top five. And they would have been first overall had they kept Anaheim in their name instead of attempting to compete with the Dodgers for the hearts of Los Angeles. Speaking of the Dodgers, had they stayed in Brooklyn, they also would have been among the top teams in baseball. The biggest loser is the last place Washington Nationals, considering they would have been ahead of the New York Yankees had they stayed in Montreal.

Also, too bad for the Blue Jays. After all the hope the fans harboured for improvement this year, they end up 2nd last in the entire league. Next year, I anticipate we'll see some teams moving to Albuquerque and Alaska...

Weekly Standings Check In: Wild Early Projection Edition

This is obviously going to be a record breaking season! The Dodgers are on pace to get 145 wins and the Rangers will be close behind with 130!  Too bad for the Padres though, they're on pace for only 30 wins. 

Oooh, and it was so close, but the Orioles will win the East based on their head to head record against the Jays. And what a quick rebuild by the White Sox, getting the wild card after trading away Sergio Santos, Carlos Quentin and Ozzie Guillen? Some smart moves by Kenny Williams.

Wow! This year is exciting, too bad it's over already...

Weekly Standings Check in: Existential Version

It all means nothing...

Weekly Standings Check In - Short and Sweet

In honour of last week's existential Weekly Standings Check In, I'll keep this short. After all, this'll all change in a week or so anyways, right...?

Existential Weekly Standings Check In

Remember when Boston had that horrid start back in April...? Yeah, so until we get into August and September, it all means nothing.

Also, I didn't get the chance to see any of the games this weekend against the Red Sox. Based on the lopsided scores I think this series shows just how much work the Jays still need to do before they'll be considered a "contender". And is it me, or does Kyle Drabek have a temper tantrum after every start? Maybe if he could control his emotions a little bit, he'd have better results on the field...

Weekly Standings Check In - Draft Day

Nothing too groundbreaking to note in the standings this week. The only interesting thing that I've noticed is that Detroit's only 2.5 games behind Cleveland for the lead in the Central division. And it's possible that one of those two teams will win the wild card instead of a team out of the East division. It looks like all the teams in the East are gonna devour each other until one team eventually emerges as the division winner, while the rest will have records around .500...

Oh and today's draft day for the MLB. I have no clue who the Jays will target, but the only one that I don't want them to draft is Wayne Gretzky's kid. For 2 reasons: He's only 18 years old, so lots can change about him after 4 years in college and the 2nd reason is that he's Wayne Gretzky's son. There's no way that he'll get the opportunity to progress quietly in college or the minors. It'll be 10 times worse then the Brett Lawrie situation.

We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Weekly Standings Check In...

I was going to do a Weekly Standing Check-in this week, but since not much has changed from last week (other than the AL East getting even tighter with 2.5 games separating 4th from 1st), I'm going to do a post about an MVP candidate not named Jose Bautista.

Adrian Gonzalez is not-so-quietly building his case for MVP. He's 3rd in the AL with a .342 average, 1st in RBI and has found his home run swing. The fact that he plays in an extremely hitter friendly park will help his cause as well. But the one uncontrollable factor that he has in his favour is that he plays in one of the biggest markets in the league. Sure technically Toronto is something like the 5th biggest market in MLB, but they don't get anywhere near the attention that Boston does. At this point in the season, it's obvious that Jose Bautista deserves the MVP, but assuming he keeps batting at this pace, Adrian Gonzalez may win based on the team he plays for. The only thing that could put Jose over the top in terms of attention would be if the Jays could make the playoffs this year.

Anyways if you were wanting to look at the standings here they are:

Weekly Standings Check In

So Tampa's turned their season around, eh? They've gone from worst to first in the clusterfuck that is the AL East. I'm also pretty enthused that the Jays are tied with the Red Sox after going through a real rough stretch in April. It's still very early, so at this point, the division is wide open for the taking with 3.5 games separating worst (Baltimore's still technically in this!) and first.

The NL East is mirroring the AL East story line as well - traditional powerhouses (Philadelphia & Atlanta) battling it out in the division along with an upstart team from Florida who's finding a way to win on a budget.

I caught some highlights from the Cincinnati-St. Louis series and that rivalry is alive and well. It looks like the contending teams in the NL Central (Milwaukee, Cincinatti & St. Louis) are starting to separate from the pack.

In the NL West, San Francisco is on top after Colorado lost 2 games in a row to San Diego (?). The Giants have a good pitching staff, so hopefully they'll stay in the race to make the battle for the division interesting. Early on, it was looking like Colorado would run away with the NL West title.

Now that we're about a quarter of the way into the season, I think that we can proclaim that the Cleveland Indians are for real. They're 3.5 games up on a surging Detroit Tigers team and surprisingly the Royals are one game over .500. After watching the Jays man-handle the Twins this weekend, they are in serious trouble.

The NL West seems to be a three team race between Anaheim, Oakland and Texas. I give the edge to Texas based on their strong offense and defense and the fact that Anaheim has dug themselves a karmic hole by acquiring Vernon Wells.

Weekly Standings Check in

So the good news? Toronto's not in last place of the AL East! The bad news? The Jays are behind Boston, Tampa and New York. And it looks like Derek Jeter may have found his swing after a 2 HR game against Texas yesterday. Based on that one game sample-size, the Yankees will only be stronger. The Rays have all of a sudden become pretty strong too. Too bad none of there fans will see it... I'm somewhat optimistic for May considering the fact that Toronto's been hit by the injury bug for most of April. Hopefully this week Lind, Hill and Bautista will be able to play simultaneously, in the same game.

Surprisingly, Cleveland is still on top of the AL Central. Looks like Chicago and Minnesota are comfortable dwelling at the bottom of the division. After watching the Tigers-Jays series this past weekend, the Royals and Indians better watch their backs. Detroit has very good starting pitching and once they put a bit of a winning streak together and climb over .500 (which should be this week), it's going be an interesting race to watch.

In the NL Central, the surprise for me this week is that the Pirates are at .500. I'm too lazy to actually check on this, but they probably haven't been this good, this late into the season since a skinny, arrogant kid named Barry Bonds played for them... Also I thought Milwaukee was supposed to be a World Series contender this year. At 14-20, they'd better start winning some games, otherwise they've got a deep hole to climb out of.

The NL East is shaping out to be just as tight, if not more, as the AL East. I caught the Atlanta-Philadelphia game last night (which was pretty entertaining) and on top of taking 2 out of 3 from the Phillies, Atlanta is pretty much matching them in the pitching department, but at a much cheaper price. Florida is keeping pace with both teams as well and I know that Washington isn't close to contending, but they've started to turn the corner and are playing close to .500 baseball.

With all the close races so far (I know it's still very early...), if Emperor Selig decides to expand the playoffs and add more teams next year, it's going to be a tight race right down to the last day of the regular season. Sure, it'll definitely be entertaining as a fan to watch. But from a Blue Jays perspective, I hope they don't try to force any trades for the sake of "now" and stick with the plan to aim to win the division instead of just squeezing into the playoffs.

Weekly Standings Check in

Starting at Home in the AL East
The Yankees are still leading the division and the Red Sox are still dwelling at the bottom. Not including their matchup against Jared Weaver (6-0),Boston's got a relatively easy week with the Angels and the Twins, so they should climb into at least 3rd spot in the division by this time next week. So now's probably the last time we can say that the Jays are ahead of the Red Sox in the standings... Tampa's turned their season around and Baltimore's meeting all expectations by playing .500 baseball.

The Rest of the Baseball World

In the AL Central, Cleveland and Kansas City are still leading the AL Central. I'm too lazy to check the prospect ranking, but my hunch is that the Indians and the Royals have 2 of the best farm systems in all of baseball and it's paying off for them sooner than everyone expected. Also, Minnesota looks to be in deep trouble, they're digging a deeper and deeper hole down at the bottom of the division with a 6 game losing streak.

The Al West is pretty tight, with the Angels and Rangers tied for the lead. As expected, Seattle is last, and Oakland is hovering at .500.

In the NL, everything's predictable as usual. The Phillies, Cardinals and Rockies are leading their division, while the Mets, Astros and Padres are sitting comfortably at the bottom of their respective divisions. The only surprise right now is that the Marlins are currently leading the Wild Card race.

Weekly Standings Check in

It's been a rough couple weeks after an exciting start for the Jays. Here's a link to the standings. By the way, if anyone knows how I can embed the standings in this post, I'd love to know how to do it. The whole luddite thing rings true when it comes to web design.

Toronto's facing the Texas Rangers who are leading the AL West with a 14-7 record tonight, so it's not going to get any easier. Kyle Drabek's going to start tonight's game, but I don't anticipate him going more than 6 innings. I liked how the bullpen performed yesterday afternoon and hopefully they'll be able to duplicate that performance today. And let's hope that the Jays are more patient and take a few 1st pitches (I'm looking at you Adam Lind...). This is going to be a rough road trip - Texas, then the Yankees and they finish off in Tampa.

I'm wondering how long it will take for Kansas City and Cleveland to move down to the bottom of the AL Central, and it looks like the White Sox will have company in May. They've both got 3 game losing streaks going and Detroit and Minnesota are slowly gaining momentum.

Also, I keep forgetting that the Houston Astros have a team in the MLB...