How all 30 fanbases felt, opening day to the All-Star break. Frozen at the break: data through July 12, 2026.
1
04/25 · LEAGUE MEAN 54 · WATCHFUL
The most believing day
A week after all 30 teams had enough games to grade, the league mean hit 53.8, its high for the half. April is when belief is cheapest: records are small samples, playoff odds are soft, and nobody's rotation has collapsed yet. It never got this good again.
2
06/21 · LEAGUE MEAN 49 · WATCHFUL
The collective bottom
By the longest day of the year the mean had sagged to 48.8, the low of the half. Nothing dramatic happened on the way down. A 30-team average moves slowly because every fanbase's fear is some other fanbase's greed; when the mean itself sinks, the balance has genuinely tipped.
3
07/04 · LEAGUE MEAN 51 · WATCHFUL
The mood snaps upward
The mean rose 1.9 points on the Fourth of July, the biggest single-day move of the half in either direction. A 30-team average is a stubborn thing. It takes a slate where nearly everything breaks the same way to move it, and for one holiday it did.
4
07/12 · LEAGUE MEAN 50 · WATCHFUL
The close
The half ends at 50.3, WATCHFUL, three points below where the line began in April. The average is a lie, of course. The mean moved five points top to bottom while the Guardians alone moved 62. Nobody roots for the league average.
On May 21 the Guardians were 30-22, winners of nine of their last ten, playoff pulse maxed, index at 81.8. Twenty days later they were still above .500 and the index read 19.5. A 7-11 stretch with every trend pointing down: that is how you lose 62.3 points without losing your record.
The mirror image, to the day: Detroit bottomed at 24.2 on May 21, the same morning Cleveland peaked. They were 20-31 and had lost nine of ten. From there, 24-19 into the break and an 83.0 on July 11 for a team still six games under .500. Deviation, not level.
No single collapse required. The Athletics simply spent the half at the bottom: a mean index of 38.8, the lowest of all 30 fanbases. The index grades every team against its own baseline, so even a bad team gets credit for its good weeks. The A's baseline gave them nowhere to hide.
The market pays 5.95 times what the model says Angels World Series odds are worth, the widest average gap in baseball. Somebody out there keeps buying. The model calls this the hope premium. In Anaheim it is closer to a subscription.
How this was computed. The league line is the
daily mean index of all 30 teams, on days when at least 28 had a published
record. Collapse and surge are the largest peak-to-trough and trough-to-peak
index moves; most doomed is the lowest mean index; most delusional is the
highest average Hope Premium, shown as what the crowd paid relative to the
model. Full methodology →
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Team names used descriptively. Data: MLB Stats API, FanGraphs, Polymarket. Anonymous usage analytics.