I said this in ST and well im sure you know the responses i got...
The division got better and a couple teams that weren't great last year like the Phillies got much better ..
Well I'm sure I commented disagreeing with you. You're not wrong that the division is strong but I think you are drawing the wrong conclusions here. Today not withstanding the cubs are +62 despite playing in a tough division. That's +1.24 runs per game. 2018 they were +0.71. 2017 they were +0.78. 2016 they were +1.57. So thus far they have shown themselves to be clearly better than 2017-18. That was a 92 and 95 win season. 2016 They were about a third of a run better but outside of St. Louis that year the rest of the division was pretty garbage. Pitt was -29, MIL was -62 and Cincy was a horrific -138. That made cincy tied for 3rd worst, mil 8th worst and pit 11th worst.
You're thinking obviously was the competition around the cubs got better so they are going to lose more games. I thought then and I think the data now proves that the cubs also got better mainly because guys who had down years started performing. I think there's an argument to be made that were this team put in the 2016 season it would be as good as the 2016 team or vice versa were the 2016 team put in 2019 it would more or less have similar results. What I think we're going to see is that they wont win 103 games like 2016 but I also think they will win more than the 95 in 2018.
So, I think the take away here is that it's pretty impressive despite the schedule the cubs have played thus far that they are playing this well. The only teams they've played with a sub-500 record are LAA(2 games), Miami(7), Seattle(2), Cincy(6), Washington(3). At that time Seattle was playing well. Washington they faced stras and scherzer. Cincy as mentioned is better than their record indicates. Miami is terrible. LA is just a bit bad but not terrible.
