ST. LOUIS — The Cardinals own the best record in baseball, at 72-40.
The Pirates own the second-best record in the National League, at 65-45. The Cubs own the third-best record in the NL, at 63-48. You know what all three of those teams have in common: They all reside in the same division, the incredibly tough NL Central.
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For some, that’s a source of pride, to exist in that type of intense competition.
“I mean, it’s awesome,” Cardinals second baseman Kolten Wong told Sporting News after his team edged the Pirates, 4-3, on Tuesday night. “It definitely is. Just shows the kind of talent that we have in the Central right now.”
Over in the American League, only the Royals can boast a better mark than either the Pirates or Cubs (they’re 68-44), which means the Central actually hosts three of the best four records in baseball. If this was college football, chants of “SEC! SEC! SEC!” might have broken out as you read that sentence. SEC coaches love to talk about the level at which their conference has dominated college football over the past decade or so.
Cardinals manager Mike Matheny won’t be leading any “NLC! NLC! NLC!” chants, though. “No,” Matheny said with a wry smile, “I’m not that excited that there are that many other good teams in our division.
“Not surprised, though. Early on, we talked about how we knew that Chicago was for real, that they’re getting better. And we knew this team (the Pirates) wasn’t going anywhere, and we were hoping we weren’t going anywhere.”
So, obviously, if the season ended today, both wild-card teams would come from the Central. The NL’s other division leaders are the Mets (61-52) in the East and the Dodgers (63-50) in the West. If this current NL hierarchy holds up, it would be rather unprecedented.
In the three-division wild-card era (starting in 1994), no division has been able to lay sole claim to the three best records in a league. In 2007, the NL West came close. The Diamondbacks won an NL-best 90 games — it wasn’t a banner year for great NL teams, obviously, with that low total — and the Rockies and Padres each won 89 (the Rockies reached 90 wins with a one-game tiebreaker to claim the wild-card spot). In the East, the Phillies won 89, too.
But that’s it for the three-division setup.
It wasn’t even common in the two-division era (1969-93) for one division to hold sole claim to the three best records in a league. That only happened seven times — the 1973 NL West, the 1978 AL East, the 1979 AL East, the 1984 AL East, the 1987 AL East, the 1987 NL East and the 1989 AL West.
The 1984 AL East deserves special mention. That year, the West was won by Kansas City and its 84 victories, but five East teams won more: Detroit (104), Toronto (89), New York (87), Boston (86) and Baltimore (85). Crazy.
This year, the Central’s best have been beating up good teams outside the division. Last weekend, the Cubs swept four games from the Giants in a Wrigley Field series that had huge wild-card implications. At the same time, the Pirates were sweeping the West-leading Dodgers in a three-game set in Pittsburgh.
The Pirates have been pretty amazing outside of the NL Central this year. They’re 14-2 against the NL West, 18-8 against the NL East and 13-7 against AL teams, which adds up to 45-17 record, a .726 winning percentage. Since the beginning of June, they’re 29-9 against teams outside the NL Central, for a robust .763 winning percentage.
The Cardinals have been dominant against the NL East/West this season (30-14) but only 11-9 against AL teams. Since the beginning of June, they’re 23-12 (.657) against non-NL Central teams. The Cubs are 25-16 (.610) against non-Central teams in that same stretch.
“You just look at it as there’s something to be said about the way you’re going about playing baseball every day. We’re doing something right, and so are the other teams around us,” Jason Heyward told SN. “It’s fun. It’s competition, and that’s what you want. I feel like, coming down the stretch, from my experience you want to be playing against good teams instead of going and feeling like you didn’t play the best teams.”
That certainly won’t be the feeling in the NL Central this year.
