At current paces, the final standard deviation in wins among AL teams would be 14.4. This is actually not unusual. In fact, things were a lot more bunched from top to bottom in the AL just a year ago (9.7 standard deviation), but it's still very early in the season and we're digging into big-picture scenarios from a small sample of results.

The current paces of the Yankees and, especially, the Rays aren't likely to hold up. That means that 14.4 figure is likely to shrink. How much? We'll get to that, but -- spoiler alert -- the clustering is likely to get even more extreme.

There are two reasons why it feels so strange and we'll address the first one here. It seems weird because while the separation isn't a historical outlier at present, it does represent a reversal of the American League's dynamic from the end of the last decade.

Let's flash back to 2019. The narratives flying out of the standings page were about competitive disparity, which seemed especially egregious in the AL. Three teams won more than 100 games, two more won at least 96 and, because the playoff field had not yet reached six teams per league, Cleveland missed the postseason with 93 wins.

Meanwhile, three teams in the AL lost 100 or more, including the 108-loss Baltimore Orioles and the 114-loss Tigers. The standard deviation in wins for the AL was a whopping 19.0, easily the highest of the 30-team era.