Everyone is talking about Ozzie Guillen and the White Sox as the surprise team so far this season. The ChiSox's success sure seems startling—OK, enough sibilance. However, the more precedent bending surprise has to be the reborn Arizona Diamondbacks—get it? Reborn…Phoenix?

The Diamondbacks were atrocious last year. They tied the second-year Mets (1962) for the 31st worst record in the "Modern" era (51-111 for a .315 winning percentage). In the expansion era (1961 to today), there have been just four teams with a worse record:

Now the Diamondbacks are in first place in the NL West, a half game ahead of the Padres. No one gave them a chance to finish much higher than fourth at the start of the season (I had them third). I still think that the Padres will win the division (they were my preseason pick). But the D-backs rush back to respectability could be unprecedented at least in the last 115 years.

Arizona's current record is 27-18 or exactly a .600 winning percentage. That translates into about 97 wins over the course of a 162-game schedule. Only three teams have improved to at least .600 after registering a season with a winning percentage no better than .315, and the last one was in 1890. Actually, the biggest one-season improvement in the last hundred years for a team with a .600 or better winning percentage was by—you guessed it—the D-Backs in their second season, 1999:

Arizona has almost doubled its winning percentage in one season (90.4% improvement). If they can keep that up for an entire season, they would have the tenth best single-season improvement of all time and the best since 1898:

All this may be enough to say that the D-Backs continuing to play at such a high level is a long shot at best. But I feel vindicated for saying in the offseason that they may have one of the fastest bounces back to respectability ever. Now, if could just justify picking the Indians second the White Sox fourth…