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Three months to recollect – by G. Scott Thomas

July 19, 2022

It’s arduous to peg the exact midpoint of the baseball season.

Traditionalists erroneously cite the All-Star break, which really happens properly previous the midway mark. The San Diego Padres had performed 93 video games by the point final 12 months’s break arrived, leaving them solely 69 extra. Three different golf equipment had solely 70 video games left. Not precisely the center of the schedule.

One other well-liked benchmark, July 4th, comes nearer to the reality, although it additionally falls wanting being a dependable midpoint.

The proper reply is variable. Deviations of their schedules trigger totally different groups to succeed in the 50/50 line at totally different instances, although most hit it across the finish of June. Three golf equipment — the Padres, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Oakland Athletics — had been the primary to play their 81st video games in 2021, concurrently reaching that rely on June 29.

We’re not there but, however the midway mark of the 2022 season will quickly be upon us. That makes it a great time to look again on the golf equipment that loved the very best first-half performances within the Fashionable Period, relationship from 1961 to the current. My rankings are primarily based on profitable percentages as of June 30 — reflecting every staff’s efficiency in April, Could, and June — a considerably higher boundary than the others mentioned above.

On the high of the listing are the 1998 New York Yankees, who possessed two exceptional attributes, as they eagerly confirmed to anyone who would hear.

The primary was their unalloyed brilliance. New York went 114-48 (.704) to turn into certainly one of two Fashionable Period groups with a profitable share higher than .700. Their team score of 96.123 factors stamped them because the second-best squad to take the diamond since 1961.

“They’re as nice as any staff there has ever been,” bragged proprietor George Steinbrenner after his Yanks swept the Padres within the World Sequence.

Their unbelievable consistency was equally notable. The Yankees broke from the gate with 17 wins in 23 video games (.739) in April. Their information in subsequent months had been just about an identical: .741 in Could, .731 in June, .741 in July. They eased off the accelerator in August (.688) and September (.593), although even the latter tempo would have been ample to win both of the American League’s different two divisional crowns that 12 months.

“If you play in addition to now we have for six months,” asserted first baseman Tino Martinez, “now we have to be thought of among the many greatest.”

The primary half of their 1998 season, actually, was the perfect within the Fashionable Period. The Yankees went 56-20 for a .737 profitable share by way of June 30. Subsequent on this listing are the 2001 Seattle Mariners, the one different fashionable staff to complete a season above .700. They went 58-21 (.734) within the first half, leaving them simply three share factors behind the 1998 Yanks.

Look beneath to see the period’s 10 winningest first-half golf equipment. (Effectively, it’s really 11, since there was a tie for tenth place.) You’ll see the information by way of June 30 and the tip of the season for every membership, in addition to its postseason end result.