Two months into the MLB season, the American League is experiencing an unusually weak start, with only four teams above .500 as of May 28, while the National League has 11. Since MLB expanded to 30 teams in 1998, those are the fewest and most teams from either league, respectively, to be above .500 at this point in the season. The imbalance is being driven by a cluster of struggling AL clubs, including the Toronto Blue Jays, who have been hurt by injuries, the Detroit Tigers, who have fallen to the bottom of the league after Tarik Skubal’s elbow surgery, and the Houston Astros, whose pitching has collapsed and left them at 26-32.
At the same time, two of the AL’s strongest teams were not expected to contend. The Tampa Bay Rays own the league’s best record at 34-19 despite a preseason projection of only 77.5 wins from DraftKings. The Chicago White Sox, projected by sportsbooks to finish with the fewest wins, are instead 29-27 after strong performances from Davis Martin and the arrival of Munetaka Murakami from Japan.
A major factor behind the AL-NL split is MLB’s balanced schedule, introduced in 2023. Before that change, teams played only 20 interleague games per season, or about 12% of the schedule, so league-wide quality differences were less likely to show up clearly in the standings by late May. Under the new format, teams play 48 interleague games, or about 28% of the schedule, which makes any talent gap between the leagues more visible in the records.
Even so, the head-to-head interleague record is not dramatically one-sided. The National League has won about 57% of those games, a rate that would rank among the highest in interleague history, behind only the American League’s marks in 2006 and 2008. In earlier seasons, however, interleague games were concentrated in a shorter window, mostly in June, so the standings would not have reflected a league-wide edge as early as they do now.
The 2023 schedule changes also reduced division games from 76 to 52, making it more likely that an entire division could finish below .500. That is already the case in the American League West, where the Seattle Mariners lead the division despite a 28-29 record.
Historically, teams with losing records do not make the playoffs. Outside of strike-shortened seasons and the expanded 2020 postseason, no MLB team has reached the playoffs with a losing record, and the closest example was the 2005 San Diego Padres at 82-80. With the season still young, that could change this year if the current imbalance continues.
