Take a gander at the standings through the first month-plus of the season, and any number of things may jump out at you. Perhaps it’s the surprising teams at or near the tops of their divisions, like the Rangers, Pirates and D-backs.
Or maybe it’s the entire AL East, where every team is .500 or better entering Tuesday, each with a positive run differential.
This division has the potential to be historic. Let’s dig in.
First, the context and its implications. This is the first year of the new, balanced schedule. The last time the schedule was balanced, interleague play didn’t exist. Now, every team plays every other team.
That means fewer games against divisional opponents, which can go multiple ways. If there’s a less successful team in a division, its peers in the division have fewer chances to theoretically pad their records against that team. But it also means that if every team in a division is good, those teams will have fewer chances to cut into each other’s records, and more turns to add on elsewhere.
Could it be the winningest division ever?
The AL East has a combined .623 winning percentage. Divisions began in 1969, and in that span, the best combined winning percentage for a season was .566 by the 2002 AL West.
But wait, the current AL East has the potential to be even more impressive, as five teams have compiled that .623, instead of the four in that ‘02 AL West. Next on the list is the ‘01 AL West (.565) and that same division in ‘12 (.542).
The fourth division on the list is the leader among those with five teams, and it should be familiar. It’s last year’s edition of the AL East, at .541. This combined strength has been building to this point.
Currently, the Rays are at .793, Orioles .679, Blue Jays .621, Red Sox .533 and the Yankees are at .500. If all teams are above .500 again at some point, this may be of interest: the latest into a season that an entire division has been above .500 was the NL East in 2005, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. All five teams were over .500 through October 1, the second-to-last day of the season. The Nationals then lost their finale to finish 81-81.
How? Winning outside the division
By definition, a division will go .500 against its own division. As noted above, each division now plays more games outside of it. The AL East has built this record with prowess against non-divisional opponents.
The AL East currently has a .670 winning percentage outside the division. The best for a season, excluding 2020 (when outside the division consisted of only the same division in the other league), was .603 by the aforementioned ‘02 AL West, followed by .601 by the ‘01 AL West.
The highest for a five-team division was the next on the list, the 2022 AL East (.577).
The AL East has played 106 non-divisional games, third most behind the AL Central (117) and AL West (111). The NL Central is next with 105, followed by the NL East (99) and West (90).
Beyond forecasting placement on season-long historical lists, we can already rank what the AL East has done so far.
The AL East’s .623 winning percentage in April was the third highest by a division in a calendar month, minimum 70 games, behind only the 2001 AL West’s July (.648) and the 2002 AL West’s August (.625). But of course, as we’ve established, those were four-team divisions, meaning that the 2023 AL East’s April was the highest for a five-team division in a month.
The prior record for a five-team division in a month? That would be the ‘22 AL East again, at .619 last June.
It’s only early May. There are plenty of games left, both inside and outside divisions. But this year’s AL East could be historic.
