A National League team that won its division last year before losing to the Giants in the playoffs was touted in this year’s preseason as the best team in baseball. Barring injury, this team had no glaring weaknesses, the thinking went, and it could have an all-time great pitching staff. Some analysts predicted that this team would become the first since the 2011 Phillies—themselves no stranger to an all-time great pitching staff—to win 100 games.

But all those prognosticators had their eyes on the wrong team. The consensus favorite Nationals struggled out of the gate and were in second place in the woeful NL East as recently as June 19, while the Cardinals gained possession of first in their division eight games into the season and have held that position ever since.

Even despite scuffling to a losing record thus far in July, the Cardinals still lead all of baseball with a 56-31 record, 4.5 games ahead of second place. That record translates to a 104-58 mark over a full season; no team has won that many games over the last decade.

The record isn’t a fluke, as St. Louis holds the best …

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Just as the New York Yankees had to endure all of last season, the American League team will be forced to play Tuesday’s All-Star game without Alex Rodriguez. Unlike last season, Rodriguez is not sitting out the game because he has been suspended for use of performance-enhancing drugs. He has to miss the game for the simple reason that he wasn’t selected for the A.L. team.

That alleged oversight was big news in New York area newspapers, which have generally excoriated Rodriguez for the past few years for his use of PEDs, his denials of his use of PEDs, his legal and verbal attacks on everyone who opposed him or, in the case of his own union, didn’t defend him as he thought he deserved to be defended and the arbitrator whom he was asking to overturn his suspension.

In short, he became a pariah only to be maligned and scorned. Suddenly, though, he has become …

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Sandy Alderson was named general manager of the New York Mets Oct. 29, 2010, but there’s not a whole lot of evidence that he has shown up for work.

Last Tuesday, in an attempt to find out if Alderson actually had a desk at Citi Field, I called the telephone number listed for him in the Mets’ directory. A woman answered and said Alderson wasn’t in, but she took my name and number.

When he hadn’t called two days later and I still wasn’t convinced that Alderson was employed by the Mets, I called Jay Horwitz, the Mets’ vice president for media relations, and asked him if Alderson really worked for the Mets.

When Horwitz asked why I was asking and I told him, he …

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