14 wild stats that explain the season so far

Believe it or else, we are roughly 40% of the way through the season.

That’s a pretty crazy number to those of us who feel like Opening Day was just a couple weeks ago.

But there are other crazy numbers that illustrate the major storylines that have emerged.

So here are 14 that explain how we got to where we are so far.

*Note: We are focused here on team and league-wide trends, as opposed to individual seasons. Because frankly, there’s already enough fun stuff here before we even touch Shohei Ohtani’s dual-sided dominance or Cristopher Sánchez’s scoreless innings streak or Yordan Alvarez putting up enormous WAR value from the DH spot, among many others.

.697

There are a lot of reasons the Braves have jumped from a frustrating fourth-place finish in 2025 to a massive early edge in the NL East this season. But what they’ve done on the road is potentially the most statistically significant. This road winning percentage is not only the best in MLB this season but would be among the 11 best in a full season in the Modern Era (since 1901) and the third-best in the Integration Era (since 1947), trailing only the .728 mark of the 2001 Mariners and the .704 mark of the 2018 Astros.

.700

On the flip side is what the Rays are doing at Tropicana Field. It’s not as historically significant as the Braves’ rousing road record, but it would mark just the 18th time this century that a team had a mark of .700 or better at home in a full season. And of course, this is coming in the Rays’ return to The Trop after Hurricane Milton forced them to play home games at the Yankees’ Spring Training complex last year. The Rays went 41-40 at “home” last year (.506 winning percentage), so that’s a pretty large jump in home happiness.

Plus-126

We’re all pretty numb to the Dodgers’ greatness by this point, but a year after sort of sleepwalking their way to a division title that they won by three games, with a plus-142 run differential, it’s notable how dominant this 2026 club has been. Its plus-126 run differential through 60 games was the 10th-best of the Expansion Era (since 1961). Seven of the nine teams with a better run differential at that point in a season reached the World Series and five won it.

Teams with run differential of +126 or better through 60 games
Expansion Era (since 1961)

2026 Dodgers: +126 (???)
2023 Rangers: +155 (won World Series)
2022 Yankees: +127 (lost ALCS)
2020 Dodgers: +136 (won World Series)^
2018 Astros: +128 (lost ALCS)
2016 Cubs: +151 (won World Series)
1998 Yankees: +138 (won World Series)
1976 Reds: +135 (won World Series)
1974 Dodgers: +138 (lost World Series)
1969 Orioles: +133 (lost World Series)

^60-game regular season

.286

At plus-93, the Yankees have by far the best run differential in the American League. So why haven’t they been able to run away from the pack? The answer lies here, in their lowly winning percentage against teams with .500 or better records. That ties the Twins for the lowest such winning percentage in the AL.

Now, the Yanks have only played 14 such games (going 4-10), so this could be small-sample noise. But it is a surprising stat that explains why their record is worse than their run differential would lead you to believe. The Yanks were 45-44 against teams with .500 or better records last season.

.323

The Red Sox’s MLB-worst home winning percentage. This would be the 35th-worst home winning percentage in the Modern Era. But what makes this so wild is that Fenway Park has traditionally been one of the best home-field advantages in MLB. The Sox have a .568 winning percentage at Fenway going back to its opening in 1912. The only teams with a better home winning percentage in their current parks are the Yankees at “new” Yankee Stadium (.615) going back to 2009, the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium (.587) going back to 1962 and the Braves at Truist Park (.569) going back to 2017… and all of those are in smaller samples, obviously.

.80

Homers allowed per nine innings by Brewers pitching. The Brewers went into the weekend with both Jacob Misiorowski (250) and Kyle Harrison (263) wielding ERA+ marks above 200, or more than 100% better than the league average. The 1907 Cubs are the only team in AL/NL history to have two qualified starters post ERA+ marks of at least 200 (Carl Lundgren and Jack Pfiester), so that’s something to keep an eye on. The Brewers are also getting elite, multi-inning performances from Aaron Ashby and DL Hall in their bullpen and have generally been a force of nature on the mound since the middle of May.

It’s the stinginess on the home run front that really stands out, as this rate of homers per nine is on pace to be the lowest since the 2015 Pirates had a 0.66 mark. And this is coming despite American Family Field rating as more homer-friendly than the average MLB park.

.375

Our intent was to highlight what the Guardians do well, which is work deep counts, draw walks, steal and/or take the extra bag. Small ball. Guards ball.

But it’s easier to illustrate what they don’t do well, which is generate extra-base hits. This is their slugging percentage, which is abnormally low for a team on track to win the division title. Only two teams in the Wild Card Era have won a division with a sub-.380 slugging percentage -- the 2014 Cardinals (.369) and … last year’s Guards! Additionally, Cleveland had a .383 slugging percentage when it won the AL Central in 2022 and a .395 mark when they won it in 2024. So maybe this isn’t bonkers, because this is simply what the Guardians do. But the fact that they have this much success with this little slug is one of baseball’s beautifully bizarre realities.

4

The 2026 Tigers have underperformed for a variety of reasons, including Tarik Skubal’s absence. But the craziest thing about them is they’ve allowed four walk-off home runs when leading. They have ALREADY TIED THE SINGLE-SEASON RECORD for walk-off home runs allowed when leading, matching the mark of the 1985 Twins and 2006 Cleveland Indians. And it’s only early June.

67.3

The Mets are also among the most disappointing teams in MLB, and this stolen-base percentage is one reason why. Entering the weekend, it was not only the lowest in MLB this season but the lowest for any team since MLB instituted bigger bases and pickoff limits in 2023. Granted, that’s not an enormous period of time, but just last season the Mets had the highest stolen-base percentage (89.1%) of any team on record in a full season in MLB history! What a difference a year can make.

.518

The National League’s winning percentage. Never in AL/NL history has a league finished a season with a winning percentage this high. The closest was the AL’s .512 mark in 2006.

NL teams have a .557 winning percentage when facing AL teams. This is one explanation for why the AL is so tightly bunched together this season (12 of 15 AL teams entered the weekend within four games of a playoff spot). The younger league is getting a lesson from the Senior Circuit.

.216

Batting average might be down across the board, but the Padres are really taking that condition to an unusual extreme. This team batting average would be in the bottom 10 all-time in a full season in the Modern Era.

1910 White Sox, .211
1908 Dodgers, .213
1968 Yankees, .214
2022 A’s, .216
1972 Rangers, .217
2026 Padres, .218
1910 St. Louis Browns, .218
1963 Mets, .219
2024 White Sox, .221
1964 Mets, .221
1909 White Sox, .221

50

Home runs at home by the Mariners. That was the most in MLB, entering the weekend. This is odd, because T-Mobile Park notoriously suppresses the long ball more than most parks, and it’s not as if the Mariners’ total has been impacted by, say, a catcher en route to 60 homers, like last year. Their rate of one home run every 22.7 at-bats would be their best since then-Safeco Field hosted its first full season in 2000.

7.1

The ABS Challenge System not only ensures we get more ball-strike calls right, but has also reshaped approaches by both pitchers and hitters alike. This is the percentage of pitches in the middle of the strike zone. In the pitch-tracking era, dating back to 2008, this number has ranged from 7.0% to 7.8%. We reached the upper end of that spectrum just last season, but now it’s all the way down to the low end. (These might look like small percentage changes on paper, but we’re talking about tens of thousands of pitches.)

As a result, pitches are being taken at their highest rate (52.8%) in a full season since 2018, and the walk rate (one per 10.9 plate appearances) is the highest since 2000. Though the league-wide batting average (.241) tells us it hasn’t been this hard to get a hit since the Year of the Pitcher in 1968, on-base percentage is up four points from last year.

17.08

Everybody’s walking … except the Giants. This is how many plate appearances they’re averaging for every walk. We haven’t seen a team draw walks this infrequently since the 1960s. The last two teams to average this many plate appearances per walk were the 1964 Mets (17.12) and 1966 Cardinals (17.29). Since the mound was lowered in 1969, the most plate appearances any team has averaged between walks was 16.31 by the 106-loss Tigers in 2002.