At the Quarter Mark... Well, Almost

I had been planning on writing a season-to-date review at some point. My first thought was 20 games, but I figured that was too small a sample. Then I thought maybe it would be better after 1/5th of the season, but it seemed odd to try to split the season into quintiles, and I was swamped with work anyway. Conclusion? The quarter mark...until I realized that I'll be traveling on the day after our 40th game. So, here's a quick quarter review after the first 39 games. 40 isn't even a perfect quarter anyway.The team currently sits atop the NL West with a record of 23-16. Better than that, though, is that we seem to deserve the distinction. According to Baseball Prospectus' Adjusted Standings, our record ought to be either 23-16 or 24-15, and they measure it three different ways - actual runs scored versus runs against, equivalent runs scored versus runs against, and adjusted equivalent runs and runs against. All of that dovetails with our actual +41 run differe...