It’s time for America’s favorite game show, “Contender or Pretender.”
OK, maybe it’s not America’s favorite game show, but we’re still going to play, and you’re invited to play along.
It works like this: We take a look at the teams with the best records in baseball and determine whether they’re legitimate threats to make the playoffs (contenders) or if their early-season success is unsustainable (pretenders), which could be for a variety of reasons.
While our primary focus will be on the teams with the best records, we’ll also touch on the five clubs that round out MLB‘s top 20. A quick glance at the standings tells us which teams made the cut, but how many of them are pretenders trespassing in the land of contenders?