A Streakless Start

Here I have the major league baseball standings from this mornings Albany Times Union. Some people may look at this and say "who cares?".

Normally this early in the season not many do care.

But: notice the absence of zeroes in the W and L columns.  Teams have played between 4 and 7 games, yet no team is undefeated, and no team is winless.  No hot streaks and no cold streaks starting this season.

Just for the record, I searched through last year's records and found that the Texas Rangers were the last team to record a loss, after starting the season with 6 wins.  This year, the Mets made it to 4-0 before losing a game. 

I hear people talk every year about the Yankees with comments such as "with the money they spend" and "of course, they buy the championship."  Maybe over the long haul there is such a trend, but in the short haul it looks like parity rules, and perhaps randomness rules, too.

Before anyone places too much emphasis on early season standings, I strongly recommend that they read Leonard Mlodinow's The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives.

Also, read that book in order to put my last blog entry into perspective, where I show one of my recent Othello game results.