Usually after a full month of the Major League Baseball season, several teams have taken a commanding lead in their divisions and already separated from the pack. Often the team with the best roster, this side can generally stroll to a division title and a playoff appearance in October. But so far in the 2014 MLB season, few teams have been able to take that big step, and the races are generally very tight, making for an exciting summer of close races!
Only 3 teams have gotten off to a hot start, including the Milwaukee Brewers, the Atlanta Braves, and the Oakland Athletics. While these teams have decent talent and should be expected to do well, their high marks at this point of the season are a bit of a surprise. While these teams certainly could reach the playoffs, they are by no means major contenders for the World Series! Instead, sides like the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Detroit Tigers, the Philadelphia Phillies, the New York Yankees, and the Boston Red Sox (teams with burgeoning payrolls and All-Star rosters) are meandering around .500 as they simply haven’t been able to generate strong winning streaks. This should make for a great season ahead!
As the relatively unknown squads continue to win, they will eventually get pressured by the high spenders, and we should expect enticing drama come August and September in several divisions. Right now, each of the AL East, NL East, and the AL Central are only separated by roughly 5 games from 1st place to last place! Basically, each of these teams could still turn around their year and compete for the playoffs!
Even in divisions where teams like the Houston Astros, Arizona Diamondbacks, or Chicago Cubs have come out to woeful starts, all the other teams are still hovering around .500 and could make a move. In fact, those 3 teams are probably the only ones that anyone could consider hopeless for the year, especially given their weak rosters.
But for all the other teams like the Cincinnati Reds, or the Los Angeles Angels, or even the Miami Marlins, this baseball season is just getting started and they are right there within the race.
What will be intriguing is to look ahead two or three months from today and guess how the standings will look. While injuries to key players will pile up and certainly become a problem for the average teams, where as the rich teams with depth will be able to push on to more victories, we should expect those big-budget clubs to begin catching up to the leaders and even starting to pull away. But what’s fascinating about baseball is when a club without many superstars can organize a strong run! Such is the case right now with the Athletics, the Brewers, and the Braves. Will these teams be able to keep up the pace? No matter what happens ahead, this current tight MLB standings should make for a closely contested and an exciting summer as these teams push and pull on their way on to the MLB playoffs!
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