The 2022 MLB season seems to be the year of the 100-win juggernaut.
Six teams -- the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, Brewers, Astros and Padres -- were on pace for triple-digit wins heading into Tuesday's action, according to Buster Olney of ESPN. Most of them had played around 48-50 games, roughly 30% of the 162-game schedule.
The previous single-season high for 100 wins came in 2019 -- the year of the home run -- when four teams reached the mark.
The 100-win pace continues a trend over the past half-decade or so, which has seen at least three such teams in each full season beginning in 2017.
In the four full seasons from 2017-21, a whopping 13 teams won at least 100 games. Among them were the 2017-19 Astros, the Yankees in 2018 and '19, and the Dodgers in '17, '19 and '21.
The barrage of 100 wins has been a marked change from the preceding dozen seasons, when only six teams won 100 games or more from 2005-16.
The century mark has always been a relatively exclusive club, with only 112 teams getting there in MLB history -- an average of fewer than one per season.
While recent history may favor at least several of these hot-starting clubs reaching 100 wins, the odds are obviously against all six of them making it. The Angels were on a 100-win pace as recently as early May before tailing off a bit recently.
Conversely, as Olney notes, four teams are on pace for 100 losses -- the Royals, Tigers, Nationals and Reds.
And just as 100-game winners seem to have surged in recent years, so too have 100-game losers. Eleven teams have lost at least 100 games in each of the past three full seasons combined, from 2018-21.
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