It's Memorial Day, which means one extra little thing for MLB fans: You're now officially free to look at the MLB standings.
The old adage among baseball fans is that you should avoid checking the standings until Memorial Day. Allowing two months of the season to play out first gives time for small sample-size blips for enough games to add meaning to what we see in every division. And while where your team sits in the standings today may not serve as a guarantee to where it will finish the season, there is some truth to the concept: According to Elias Sports Bureau, 59% of teams (84 of 143) that were in sole possession of first place on the morning of June 1 have gone on to win their division in the wild-card era (since 1995 and excluding 2020).