This may not be a shock to most of you, but after casually looking at the standing tonight, I discovered that out of the NL's 16 teams only 8 have winning records - Philadelphia, Atlanta, Florida, St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles, Colorado, and San Francisco. Philly leads the East by 8.5 games, St. Louis leads by 10.5 games, and LA by 5 games. The Wild card is a toss up between Atlanta, Florida, Chicago, Colorado, and SF. What's shocking is that after those eight, no one is doing well unless you consider Milwaukee at 3 over .500 or Houston at 6 over doing well.

The Reds have three teams with worse records than they do - San Diego (with 58 wins and only 1 below us), Pittsburgh with 53 wins and Washington with 46 wins. The Mets and the Diamondbacks with 59 and 60 wins are either tied or close.

I didn't do any research, but is this normal? It seems like baseball has gone the route of the haves and have-nots to the extreme. What is the solution? Only Florida and Colarado on that list appears to be from a small market (Florida because no one attends games and the Rockies because...I don't know why). And yet big market teams like the Mets are doing no better than the Reds are. Looks like there will be a big competition for good players in the off season this year. All the more reason to believe we are seeing the 2010 Reds on the field right now. And that gives me pause...