Welcome to MLB’s 2015 Projected Standings, Where Everyone (and No One) Is a Winner

Last month, FanGraphs’s Jeff Sullivan collected preseason standings projections from 2005 to 2014, averaging the outputs of several systems to produce a combined projected record for each team in each year.

For one thing, the range between the best and worst projected records has never been smaller: Just as was the case last year, only 23 projected wins separate the leaders from the laggards entering this season.

Last year was the first time since 2007 (and the second time since 2000) that no team won 100 games or lost 100 games; as Rany Jazayerli wrote on Monday, it was also the third consecutive non-strike-shortened season without a 100-game winner, a first since the institution of the 162-game schedule in the early 1960s.

Last year, only one team was; this year, only two teams are.

There’s almost no difference between AL teams in projected strength of schedule, because there’s almost no difference between AL teams.

Only the 2007 National League had a leader with a more pessimistic projection; none of the league’s 16 teams that year topped 90 wins, and the Diamondbacks were fortunate to win that many.

The Yankees had the AL’s best projected record five times from 2005 to 2012, and they were never projected to win fewer than 90 games in those years.

While some teams are still smarter and more efficient than others, there aren’t many (if any) teams making really dumb decisions, and the lack of easy marks for the best front offices to hustle reduces the variation between teams.

“With more teams qualifying for the post-season, there’s less point making yourself into a 98-win team when a 93-win team will probably be good enough,” Birnbaum wrote.

What Morgan called mediocrity, we could call competition, and what Morgan called a lack of great teams, we could call a lack of teams that make their fans want to turn their TVs off in the fifth inning.