The All-Star break is a good time to take stock. A little more than half the baseball season is over. Enough time has passed for unsustainable hot streaks to cool and early strugglers to find their form. It is a little late for most excuses.
By the most obvious standard, the St. Louis Cardinals are the year’s most successful team, with a .629 winning percentage that translates to a 102-win season. But the Cards won 90 games last year and played in the National League Championship Series, so most people expected them to be good.
A more interesting measure might be to compare each team to the expectations held for it before the season started.