Excellent news: We can stop playing the season now.
Washington is 11-1.
Kansas City is 12-3.
Baltimore is 2-11.
Pedro Martinez has 42 strikeouts.
Jeff D. Robinson has a 0.57 ERA.
Clearly, we have seen enough.
The remaining 150-odd games are just administrative paperwork.
There is no reason to continue. Somebody call the commissioner. Tell him to start engraving the trophies.
This is particularly important because, as everyone knows, the most scientifically reliable information in baseball comes from 12 or 14 games played in April.
If a team is 11-1, it will obviously finish 132-12.
If a team is 2-11, it will obviously finish 24-132.
If a pitcher has a 0.57 ERA, he will obviously finish the season with a 0.57 ERA.
If a hitter is batting .419, he will obviously bat .419.
This is how statistics work.
I learned it from the Internet.
Washington is the big story, because apparently winning 11 of your first 12 games wasn’t sufficiently dramatic, so the Senators decided to make their pitching staff look like a typo.
Javier Vazquez: 0.60 ERA.
Kevin Millwood: 0.67.
Livan Hernandez: 1.10.
This is not a rotation. This is a hostage situation.
Washington’s opponents are presumably entering the clubhouse before games and asking whether they can just have the loss now and avoid the nine innings.
The Senators are also 6-0 at home.
Naturally.
Because if you’re going to spend the first two weeks of the season destroying everyone, you might as well do it in front of your own fans.
The league’s power rankings have Washington at 186.0.
Kansas City is second at 155.4.
That gap is enormous.
The computer is essentially saying Washington is the best team in the league and Kansas City is the best team after Washington gets bored.
Kansas City, meanwhile, is 12-3.
The Royals are 10-1 at home.
Justin Thompson is 3-0 with a 0.72 ERA.
Kevin Brown is 3-0 with a 1.93.
Last year’s champions have apparently decided that the best way to defend their title is to make the first month look like a formality.
Very considerate of them.
Charlotte is 10-4.
The Knights are third in the power rankings.
Jeff D. Robinson has a 0.57 ERA.
Again, 0.57.
At this point I would like to remind everyone that an ERA is supposed to have a number in front of the decimal.
Charlotte has also played exactly one road game.
They lost it.
Obviously this means Charlotte cannot play on the road.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that they have played one road game.
That’s not how April works.
Tonight they go to Minnesota, where the Twins are 4-0 at home.
Robinson starts for Charlotte.
Steve Parris starts for Minnesota.
Parris has a 29.08 ERA.
This should be a fascinating scientific experiment.
Either Charlotte wins comfortably or baseball finds a new way to embarrass us all.
I am hoping for the latter.
Florida leads the Federal East at 8-4.
Boston is 9-5.
Yes, Boston is 9-5 and somehow behind Florida.
This is because standings have rules, which is probably why the league hasn’t asked me to design them.
Baltimore, meanwhile, is 2-11.
Two wins.
Eleven losses.
Nine and a half games out.
On April 14.
The Orioles are currently ranked 24th.
There are 24 teams.
Their power score is 11.7.
The next team is at 36.4.
That’s not a ranking.
That’s the league office quietly putting a black bag over Baltimore’s head and carrying it out of the building.
Chicago is 3-10 and somehow looks positively healthy by comparison.
Over in the United League, things are much more competitive, primarily because nobody has figured out how to run away yet.
Arizona and Las Vegas are both 8-6.
Oakland is 7-6.
San Diego is 5-9.
Los Angeles is 5-10.
Colorado is 4-10.
The division leader is 8-6.
So congratulations to everybody for being aggressively average.
Oakland at least has Benito Santiago, who hit .467 last week with four home runs and eight RBI.
He was named Player of the Week.
He is 33.
This is wonderful news for all the 33-year-olds in the league who were about to assume their careers were over.
Do not give up, gentlemen.
The simulation has apparently forgotten your birth certificates.
Then there is Pedro Martinez.
Pedro has 42 strikeouts.
Not 24.
Not 32.
Forty-two.
John Smoltz has 31.
Orlando Hernandez has 28.
Randy Johnson has 27.
Pedro is pitching as if somebody promised him a prize for every strikeout.
Montreal is 8-6.
Pedro is 2-0.
He is also the defending United League MVP and Cy Young winner.
So, yes, there is a chance he is actually pretty good.
Tom Glavine, meanwhile, has a 7.31 ERA.
The Mets are 9-4.
Yesterday Montreal beat them 11-1.
This presents Mets fans with a difficult intellectual exercise:
Was the 11-1 loss meaningful?
The correct answer is no.
Unless they lose tonight.
Then it was extremely meaningful.
This is how sports analysis works.
There was also a brawl.
Robin Ventura gets three games.
Clint Zavaras gets seven.
Seven games!
I don’t know what Zavaras did, but I assume he punched somebody, then punched the concept of sportsmanship, then stole the league office’s parking space.
Seven games is not a suspension.
Seven games is a vacation with a bad reputation.
We also have some milestones.
Todd Hundley hit his 300th career home run.
Edgar Martinez hit his 300th.
Sammy Sosa hit his 400th.
Howard Johnson hit his 800th.
Eight hundred.
At this point, Howard Johnson should be allowed to hit one every time he comes to the plate.
He has earned it.
The early leaderboards are also providing plenty of opportunities for completely irresponsible conclusions.
Garret Anderson is hitting .419.
Therefore he is Ted Williams.
Frank Thomas has 15 RBI.
Therefore he is the MVP.
Pedro has 42 strikeouts.
Therefore he is going to strike out 500.
Jeff Robinson has a 0.57 ERA.
Therefore he will never allow another earned run.
Baltimore has two wins.
Therefore Baltimore is terrible.
See how easy this is?
I could do this all day.
And apparently several people in the league already are.
This is the part of the season when front offices start making decisions based on information that has the shelf life of a banana.
A player starts slowly?
Trade him.
A pitcher has a 5.00 ERA?
Bench him.
A team wins eight of nine?
They’re contenders.
A team loses eight of nine?
Blow it up.
Somebody hits .400?
Hall of Fame.
Somebody hits .180?
Designated for assignment.
Somebody’s bullpen blows a three-run lead?
Fire the manager.
Somebody wins a game?
Great managerial decision.
We are fourteen days into the season and already everyone has become an expert.
It’s magnificent.
And the best part is that the experts will eventually be right.
That’s the trick.
If you make enough predictions, one of them will come true.
Then you get to spend October explaining that you “called it.”
Nobody will mention the other 37 things you called that turned out to be complete nonsense.
So let’s enjoy the nonsense while it lasts.
Washington is unbeatable.
Kansas City is unbeatable.
Charlotte can’t win on the road.
Baltimore has been declared legally dead.
Pedro Martinez is going to strike out every batter in the league.
The Mets are either a powerhouse or a fraud, depending on which game you watched.
The United League West is apparently being decided by whoever remembers to show up.
And somebody, somewhere, is already panicking.
This is exactly what we wanted.
Because eventually the numbers will stabilize.
The hot starts will cool.
The bad teams will improve.
The good teams will lose games.
The players hitting .400 will hit .300.
The pitchers with ERAs under 1.00 will discover that regression is not a theory invented by baseball writers to ruin everyone’s fun.
Eventually, we’ll have enough games to know something.
But not today.
Today, Washington is 11-1.
Kansas City is 12-3.
Baltimore is 2-11.
Pedro has 42 strikeouts.
Jeff Robinson has a 0.57 ERA.
And I, for one, see absolutely no reason to wait for more evidence.
The season is decided.
Please send all complaints to the people who thought it was a good idea to let us have statistics this early.