The Windup Newsletter ⚾ | This is The Athletic’s MLB newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Windup directly in your inbox.Is the 2026 season going to be the Season of Super Teams? Yes. And no. We’ll take a closer look at the sweepest story of them all, plus some tips for baseball fans who are sick of doomscrolling. They just might save your brain.I’m Grant Brisbee, pinch-hitting for Levi Weaver — welcome to The Windup!High Ceilings: Sixty percent of the time, these teams win every timeThe Padres (29-20) lost to the Dodgers (31-19) last night, missing out on a chance to claim first place in the National League West. The loss dropped their winning percentage under .600, but San Diego is still on pace to win 96 games.Check that: only 96 games. That wouldn’t have been the best record in baseball last season, but it would have been close. There are currently five teams with a winning percentage of .600 or better. There were exactly zero that finished the regular season with such a percentage last year.Compare what’s going on now to the final standings from 2006, when 96 wins were almost enough to lead all of Major League Baseball (the Yankees and Mets each had 97). This season’s Cardinals could have had home-field advantage throughout the 2006 NLCS with the winning percentage they’re sporting right now (.583), yet they’re merely in a bitter fight for the final wild card two decades later.Now, if you’re reading a baseball newsletter, you probably know how this will end: Some of these teams will slump, others will get hot, there will be regression toward the mean and the final standings for the 2026 season will look roughly like every other season. With about 30 percent of the games played, though, it’s not entirely absurd to project out a little bit, which leads us to the obvious question: Has there been a full season that ended with top-heavy teams all over both leagues?There has, and it helps even more if you adjust for era. The 1977 season had six teams with a winning percentage of .600 or better — the Royals, Orioles, Red Sox, Yankees, Dodgers and Phillies — which was even more impressive, considering there were just 26 teams in the league. Here’s a (very fancy) graph showing the percentage of .600 or better teams each season, over the years:One interesting note is that the trend has been toward equilibrium, not away from it. My concocted-five-seconds-ago hypothesis is that whenever there’s a sea change in baseball — integration, expansion, Statcast in every ballpark — it messes with parity. This season’s changes are a combination of ABS and the lingering effects of the new pickoff rules, and some teams are riding the wave.Other teams are not. There is one team over .500 in the American League West right now (the Athletics), which means it’s possible to have a division winner that loses more games than it wins. That’s the natural corollary to a league with a lot of high-win teams, and it sounds like something that would a) tick people off and b) be incredibly funny. Fingers crossed.