18 Thoughts on the First Half

The 47-34 Astros have exceeded all realistic expectations so far. They have the best record in the American League, three months after not a single national expert at ESPN, CBS Sports, Grantland, Sporting News, SBNation, Yahoo! Sports, or Sports Illustrated projected them into one of the AL's five playoff spots. For those prognosticators who broke it down by division, nobody placed the Astros higher than fourth place in the AL West, and for those who broke it down further by record, Keith Law's 78 wins was the high number.