For example, two of eight American League clubs in 1927 posted winning percentages below .400, leading to a league-wide standard deviation of .123 percentage points above and below the average .500 record.

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Other measures also suggest sentiment is running hot, including the spread between bullish and bearish sentiment (37.6 percentage points) and the standard deviation (bullish sentiment is more than one standard deviation above the historical mean).

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The standard deviation in the National League that year was .063, meaning that a "typical" team had a winning percentage between 0.436 and 0.564 (we also weighted the deviation averages by division, since schedules had teams playing more games within their own division than outside of it).

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