To follow your favorite team, you can look in the newspaper at the sports pages or on a website like Baseball Reference to get plenty of information including the standings—this means a list of the teams in first place through last place.

The major leagues today are each broken into three divisions:

American League

East	Central	West
Baltimore Orioles	Chicago White Sox	Los Angeles Angels
Boston Red Sox	Cleveland Indians	Oakland Athletics
New York Yankees	Detroit Tigers	Seattle Mariners
Tampa Bay Rays	Kansas City Royals	Texas Rangers
Toronto Blue Jays	Minnesota Twins	

National League

East	Central	West
Atlanta Braves	Chicago Cubs	Arizona Diamondbacks
Miami Marlins	Cincinnati Reds	Colorado Rockies
Washington Nationals	Houston Astros	Los Angeles Dodgers
New York Mets	Milwaukee Brewers	San Diego Padres
Philadelphia Phillies	Pittsburgh Pirates	San Francisco Giants
	St. Louis Cardinals

Other Columns You May See in the Standings Chart

• Division: the team's record against teams in their own division

• Home/Road: the team's record when playing at their home park, and the team's record when playing away from home

• Interleague: the team's record in games against the other league

• Streak: how many games the team has won or lost in a row

• Last 10: the team's record in their last 10 games

When you look at the standings in the papers, you'll see how many wins and losses the team has and their winning percentage, meaning what percentage of all the games they've played that they've won.

Games Behind

When you look at the standings, you will also see the abbreviation “GB” (games behind), which is a way of judging how close your team is to first place in their division. Games behind means how many times your team would have to beat the first place team in order to catch up with them. You might see:

Team	W–L	GB
New York Yankees	60–40	——
Boston Red Sox	58–42	2
Baltimore Orioles	54–48	7
Toronto Blue Jays	49–50	?
Tampa Bay Rays	40–60	?

How do you figure this out?

You subtract how many games the teams are apart in wins and then do the same for losses. In the first example, you can figure out the difference between the Yankees and Red Sox.

In wins you have 60 − 58 = 2.

In losses you have 42 − 40 = 2.

Then add the two numbers you came up with together: 2 + 2 = 4.

Then divide by 2: 4 ÷ 2 = 2.

The Red Sox are therefore 2 games behind the Yankees.

That one was easy because they were 2 games apart in wins and in losses. Sometimes teams will have played different numbers of games at a certain time in the season because of their schedules and because sometimes games are rained out.

To see how many games back the Orioles are behind the Yankees, you would use the same formula.

Wins, 60 − 54 = 6.

Losses, 48 − 40 = 8.

Then add them together: 6 + 8 = 14.

Then divide by 2: 14 ÷ 2 = 7.

The Orioles are 7 games behind the Yankees.

Now, without looking below, try to figure out how far the Blue Jays are behind the Yankees.

Wins, 60 − 49 = 11.

Losses, 50 − 40 = 10.

11 + 10 = 21.

21 ÷ 2 = 10.5

Now you try Tampa Bay! (In case you're wondering, Tampa Bay is 20 games out.)