My friend Mike and I were chatting yesterday (IM-ing actually), and the topic of a sub-.500 team winning the NL West came up. Mike said that with all of the games against division rivals down the stretch there was no way the division champ could under up with a losing record. Well, I though it was worth a further look.

I took the standings as of this morning and the number of games remaining for each team. I then projected how each team would finish the season given the games remaining against each division and their record to date against each division.

Here are the results:

Wow, that is cutting it pretty close even with all the divisional games left (118 of their remaining 150 games are within the division). A couple of losses extra by the Padres and we have our sub-.500 champ. Even if they do clear the .500 mark as the projection suggests, it would be the worst record for a division/league champ in a non-strike year.

The NL West also has chance to register the worst overall winning percentage for a division in a non-strike year since baseball went to divisional play in 1969. Currently, the NL West's overall percentage is .448 and it projects to .454.The remaining interdivisional games, which have to raise the overall percentage closer to .500, may buoy them above the 2002 AL Central's record (.453). Here are the all-time worst overall division records since 1969:

And, oddly, the NL East this year has a .534 winning percentage, which is among the best ever though it'll probably approach .500 as the interdivisional games get played down the stretch:

As my friend Chris pointed out, most of the top divisions featured at least one runaway team. But the 1983 AL East was actually a collection of decent to very good teams. It was a division that stood as truly great. It's hard to believe that this collection of mediocrities in the NL East is at their level.

Actually, the East as a region (i.e., across both leagues) this year has he ninth best record overall per region since the advent of divisional play:

You might notice that the vast majority of the entries in this list are from the East. The 2005 West divisions are the sixth worst. And you'll notice the East in any year does not make the ten-worst list: