Major League Baseball at All-Star Break

Well, here we are in early July and with the same sports scenario: Wimbledon tennis in England, the Tour de France bicycle races...and Major League Baseball's All-Star Game break.  It is at this time that some folks sit around and discuss how the various teams are doing at this point a little more than halfway through the regular season.  I'm one of these...

The division leaders are Boston, Cleveland, Houston, Washington, Milwaukee, and the Los Angeles Dodgers...the Brewers are the only real surprise here, although the 60-29 win-loss record of the Astros is an eye-opener.  For the wild-card playoff slots, in the American League the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay are in a near-tie, with Minnesota (divisional leader for much of the season) and Kansas City close behind.  In the National League, two surprising teams...Arizona and Colorado...both have large leads over the rest of the field for those final two playoff spots.  The Miami Marlins find themselves at 41-46 and third place in the NL East after struggling under .500 all year...let's see if they can't have a winning season at the end.  The defending World Series champions Chicago Cubs are struggling in their division, under .500 and five and a half games behind the Brewers...their playoff prospects look pretty dim right now.  In the American League, the cellar-dwellers Toronto, Chicago White Sox, and Oakland all aren't all that bad and still have time to turn their seasons around...even make the playoffs...unless they succumb to the trading season and deal off their star players.  In the National League, though, Philadelphia and San Francisco are having utterly dismal seasons and Cincinnati, though better than those two, occupies last place in their Central Division.  And Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles Angels, Texas, New York Mets, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh...teams that one might expect to be more competitive...aren't.  Oh, the Atlanta Braves seem to be having a comeback of sorts from their terrible rebuilding year in 2016, currently at second place in the NL East...