The best and highest-scoring team in baseball isn’t the defending champs. It isn’t the mega-talented club that won the year before. It isn’t even any of your favorite sleepers. The team with the best record so far is an out-of-nowhere early juggernaut, a ballclub that would be nearing the longest-ever undefeated run to start a season if not for a couple of late-inning blips.



Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your MLB fever dream, the 2019 Seattle Mariners.



If you wanted to break down the reasons for the Mariners’ 10-2 start, you’d start by invoking small sample size. No team, no matter how good, can sustain that kind of winning pace over the long slog of a season; even a single month of .833 baseball is nearly impossible. But dig deeper, and you can trace both the M’s hot start and their best-in-baseball offense to another factor: When the Mariners made the decision to rebuild, they didn’t want to completely stink while...