The Tao of Standings

I’m willing to wager that this weekend ESPN will publish an article along the lines of “It’s Memorial Day Weekend! You’re able to now look at the MLB standings”.  

The union between Memorial Day Weekend (MDW) and approval to now give credibility to the MLB Standings is as cyclical for baseball pundits as Opening Day predictions in March and potential trade rumors in late July.  

As bizarre as it feels to almost discount an entire third of a sports season, I agree with the logic. 

In a decision that appears borderline superstitious but feels extremely rational, I promised myself to refrain from checking the MLB Standings until Memorial Day Weekend (MDW). There have been times that I’ve wanted to check them, but I withheld from temptation. Reason being is that I’ve had enough experience to know that the standings from April through mid-May will drastically morph over the next 100 plus games. 

Historically, one-third of a season is a good barometer for potential division winners; Since the Wild Card era began in 1995, 58% of teams in first place by MDW have won the division. 

Besides statistics, I adhere to the emotional component as a Mets fan not to get caught up in early season success. I remember 2021 when my team was on the wrong side of that 58%. Aided by Jacob DeGrom’s historic run (1.08 ERA through 15 starts) and assisted by an underachieving NL East, the Mets were first place in their division on MDW. But after a DeGrom injury, poor offense, and the Braves playing to their potential, the Mets faltered and finished 11.5 games out of first. 

This was the most recent example I’ve felt tricked by checking the Mets early season standings. No, I’m not counting the 2007 and 2008 collapses which occurred abruptly at the season’s end. Rather it was two more recent seasons, 2015 and 2018, that taught me to mistrust success in April.

Most baseball fans remember the 2015 Mets as the National League Champions. Rightfully so. What only a select group of dialed Mets fans remember is that the 2015 Mets team started off 13-3 … which became smoke and mirrors after an anemic offense dwindled them down to 52-50. Only by the grace of deadline acquisition Yoenis Cespedes was the team rerouted in a positive trajectory. 

A 13-3 record is a first round bye in the NFL, yet in baseball it’s a tenth of the season. A hot start is a reason to be excited for the present (after all it’s better than 3-13), but also a warning for fans to curb their excitement for the future.

Using April standings to project the rest of the season’s outlook undermines the longevity of a MLB season. This sentiment towards ignoring April standings was supported again by the Mets three years later. The Mets started 11-1 under rookie Manager Mickey Callaway and even the most skeptical Mets fans were beginning to give Callaway credit for forming a legit contender. One naive radio caller stated that the Mets’ start was so good, even if they took the pedal of the gas and cruised at .500 the rest of the season, they’d still win 86 games - likely contending for a Wild Card. Those 2018 Mets finished 77-85 and were unrecognizable from being April juggernauts. 

While the Mets may be the lodestar for teams who turn brilliant Aprils into sound and fury (last year’s Mets also started hot at 14-7 before faltering), my disregard for checking the standings before MDW is independent of the inherent beauty and essence of what standings represent.*

*I know that was a weird sentence, but hear me out.

What are standings?

In sports, standings (or tables in European soccer) are the portfolio-meets- spreadsheet displaying teams’ hierarchical placement relative to their competition. Each league’s standings list out every teams’ records, enclosed alongside direct competitors within a division or conference, as a way to highlight proximity from one team to another. The proximity is significant as it pertains to a team’s likelihood of surpassing teams to reach the top of the division or conference as a means of achieving a goal, like a division title or playoff entry. 

The canonical format of standings features these teams in rows with multiple columns of W (wins), L (losses), GB (games back), Home (W-L record at home stadium), Road (W-L record away at opponents’ home stadium) and L10 (W-L record in previous 10 games). 

But analogous to the non-athletic world -  to the world of business, leisure, friends and family -  what do standings really convey? What does it mean to stand - to find one’s place situated among others? 

Standings are sports’ bedrock of the check-in, the catch-up, the “How ya doing?”. If only real life provided humans a dossier with stats on their performance in multiple facets of life. It’s good to monitor our self-growth, but we don’t have the luxury that every self-assessment is quantitative. We don’t live our day-to-day life with myriad rows or columns to evaluate how our life is going, but I think it’s why people enjoy checking their stocks and bank accounts, their Twitter followers and Instagram impressions, their Apple Health and Whoop data - for many, these are all numeral measurements to assess their improvement. This is their own personal version of standings. 

As individuals, we don’t have a public W-L record in the backpages of our local paper or sprawled out on a Times Square billboard. We can’t share with outsiders a short quantitative snippet how we’re gaining ground or falling behind. 

For those whose fandom encapsulates a portion of their identity, their team’s placement in the standings can give others an unsolicited idea of their well-being. You might not be able to monitor their bank account or the number of unanswered texts they’ve sent a romantic interest, but you can still gauge a sliver of their state of being by checking where their ballclub stands. 

If the season ended today….

When we check espn.com or mlb.com for updated standings, and scroll down each teams’ records, we’re scanning for a few factors. Who’s in first place? Who’s in last place? 

But subconsciously we’re not only just honed in on place ... .but also time. 

One common hypothetical, whether we articulate or not, is the thought  “if the season ended today.” In other words, if all remaining games were canceled, where would our team and the teams around us finish right now? 

“If the season ended today” is the fraternal twin of “at this pace” - both sayings are fodder for a lot of naive predictions and extrapolations. This line of thinking explores an aspect of human nature in which we want to control time. The season may only be in April, but we want to speed time up or slow it down - depending on the benefit to our team. If our team is in first place, we may dream of a postseason berth or delude ourselves with an image of our star player hoisting the World Series trophy. But this daydream of grandeur resembles an aspect of superstitious fandom, thinking we can control what we can’t. 

No matter how many years of baseball we’ve watched, some things can’t be learned. The excitement of our team playing well early on tricks our mind into thinking we’re able to control time or that the present - like the lack of injuries, fortunate bounces, and easy matchups - can continue on. 

W-L in Last 10 Games

Of the many parallels I make between one’s evaluations of a baseball team and their life, I think the standings column of a team’s W-L record in their most recent ten games (commonly called L10 or Last10) is most apropos. It’s great to look at a life event once it’s matured, but while form is taking place, it’s also important to note how it's trending. 

When evaluating my own personal trends, the version of “my last ten games” is constituted as the length of a week - a consistent, chronological increment for reflection. At the end of each week, before I attend a communal Friday night meal, I like to reflect and jot down notes about the past week’s breadth of work. Was my output the equivalent of going 2-8, 8-2, or 5-5? Am I feeling positive and productive as I’m building something? Or have I perhaps stagnated and regressed? Just like reviewing a team’s L10, I want to see what course I’m heading towards and if I need to steer myself in the right direction. 

There are many associations between the human and baseball fan within - the desire to check-in with oneself, the need to control one's progress, and the understanding where that progress is headed. There’s something very beautiful about even the most simple 6-column standings that can reflect these different human elements all under the facade of baseball and sports in general. 

So it’s finally Memorial Day Weekend. I’ve set aside my philosophical persona and have come back down to earth as Adam Sheinman, the baseball fan. 

Sifting through the columns of espn.com/mlb/standings, I take about four minutes to paint a picture of baseball’s first two months. I haven’t quite been living under a rock so I’m aware the Yankees have been great and the Dodgers, as expected, are the cream of the NL West crop. The AL West features a mediocre bunch and the AL Central teams continue to play their annual game of Division Champ Musical Chairs.  

I’ve followed the Mets' futility for a few weeks, but now I associate a specific number with the severity of distance between them and their goals. Fortunately that distance in the Wild Card is only 3 games. A weekend sweep is all that’s needed to suddenly become the envy of half the league’s fanbases.  

With four months remaining in the baseball season, it still feels dubious to let a national holiday be a precursor to a team’s long-term fate. Perhaps Memorial Day Weekend is a psychologically satisfying benchmark or that people associate the beginning of summer with a heightened investment in baseball.

But alas it’s now time to monitor the standings, refreshing and obsessing on a regular basis for the next four months. As you do so, remember that while league standings serve to display the status of teams, the concept of standings can be used beyond sports. It’s a foundation of parameters for which people can evaluate and construct their lives.