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It’s Memorial Day, MLB fans! And you know what that means: You can now officially look at the MLB standings.
The saying goes, among baseball fans, that you should avoid checking the standings until Memorial Day, which puts us two months into the season. That gives teams time to play enough games to add meaning to what we’re seeing happen in every division.
And while your team’s position in the standings this holiday might not serve as a guarantee to where it will finish the season, there is some truth to the concept: According to Elias Sports Bureau data, 58% of teams (87 of 149) that were in sole possession of first place on the morning of June 1 have gone on to win their division in the wild-card era (since 1995 and excluding 2020).
Keeping that in mind, we asked ESPN MLB experts Alden Gonzalez, Joon Lee, Jeff Passan and Jesse Rogers to take a good look at the standings to help us make sense of where things stand in the 2022 MLB season so far.
What’s the first thing that jumps out to you when you look at the standings?
Gonzalez: The New York Yankees’ dominance, and what it says about how quickly they’ve flipped the script. There were lots of questions heading into the offseason about whether Brian Cashman should blow up his roster and whether he should fire Aaron Boone as his manager. When the season began, there were just as many questions surrounding whether enough was done to improve the team. But the Yankees look like the type of force they were supposed to be last year. Their offense has been explosive, and their starting rotation — the most uncertain part of this team heading into 2022 — has helped carry them to the top of baseball’s most competitive division. That’s a very encouraging sign.
Lee: That we might finally get an opportunity to see Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout in the playoffs together. Just given the history of the Los Angeles Angels, I did not expect the team to make the playoffs. To see them not only flourishing but challenging the Houston…
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Source : espn
