Hey, here's a question ...

Rob, if the season ended today, the Royals would win their division ... but with a seemingly odd statistic. They have allowed more runs (457) than they've scored (448). Has there ever been a division-winning team that was outscored? And if so, by what margins?

Curiously yours,
Jake B.

Excluding 1981 -- when, because of the players' strike, there really weren't any regular-season division winners -- this has happened four times.

Most recently, in 1997 the Giants put together what might rank as the most improbable record for any division winner, ever. The Giants scored 784 runs but allowed 793, for a run differential that would typically result in an 80-82 record. Instead, the Giants were 10 games better than that, at 90-72. Unfortunately, they played like an 80-82 team in October, getting swept by the Marlins (though, in fairness, two of three games were one-run affairs).

In 1994 the Texas Rangers "won" the American League West with a crummy run differential: 613 for, 697 against. That would typically translate to a 50-64 record over 114 games -- which is how many the Rangers played that season, thanks to yet another strike -- and that's really how "good" the Rangers played. Yes, they "finished" the season in first place with a 52-62 record. As a historical curiosity, I offer here the final standings for that impressive group of clubs ...

W-L   	Scored-Allowed
Rangers    52-62     613-697
Athletics  51-63     549-589
Mariners   49-63     569-616
Angels     47-68     543-660

With the third-place Mariners only two games out of first place when the strike hit, there's no telling who'd have won the division if the season had continued. But it's a decent bet that the division winners still would have allowed more runs than they scored.

So that leaves two more division-winning teams with negative run differentials and, for the purposes of our current discussion, they're the most interesting. Why? Because both cases involve the same division -- and mostly the same teams -- we're talking about today.

	Kirby Puckett led the Twins to the 1987 Series title.

In 1987, the Twins won the American League West, and eventually the World Series, despite a negative run differential and the fact that three of their division rivals finished with positive run differentials. Here are the top five teams in the standings:

W-L   	Scored-Allowed
Twins      85-77     786-806
Royals     83-79     715-691
Athletics  81-81     806-789
Mariners   78-84     760-801
White Sox  77-85     748-746

There will be people, I suppose, who will argue that the Twins just knew how to win. Well, maybe. But the 1987 Twins were largely the same players who'd gone 71-91 in 1986. The Twins did win 91 games in 1989, but considering their 759-672 (+87) run differential, 91 games is about how many games they should have won.

Bottom line: they got more than a little lucky in 1987, and rode that luck all the way to a pretty improbable world championship.

Three years earlier, two of the same teams were involved in a similar "Clash of the Titans."

W-L   	Scored-Allowed
Royals    84-78     673-686
Twins     81-81     673-675
Angels    81-81     696-697

And these were the best teams in the American League West. There were seven teams in the division; just one of them topped .500 and none of them managed to score runs than they allowed (meanwhile, the East featured five teams with winning records and positive run differentials). Like the '97 Giants, the '84 Royals got swept in their postseason series, but like the Giants, the Royals were close in two of their three losses.

That was 19 years ago, and brings us full circle to 2003, when once again the Royals and the Twins aren't playing particularly well, but are fighting for a division title. And with the Angels now playing in a different, since-created division, the White Sox are playing the role of "third team in the hunt despite an unimpressive run differential."

W-L   	Scored-Allowed
Royals     47-39     447-458
Twins      44-43     415-426
White Sox  43-44     369-376

The Royals are minus-11, the Twins are minus-9 and the White Sox are minus-7. In terms of run differential, you're not going to find three teams closer than that on July 7. But even the run differentials are misleading. Based on the statistics that contribute to runs scored and allowed -- the "fragments," if you will -- the Royals should actually be six or eight games behind the Twins rather than 3.5 ahead of them.

But of course, the standings don't always pay attention to the fragments and the run differentials. And nobody should know that better than the Royals and the Twins.

I believe that at least one team in the Central, and probably two, will wind up with positive run differentials. But it won't necessarily work out that way. And remember, of the three teams that have entered the postseason with a negative differential, one of them went all the way ...

(Wednesday, I'll back with a "What's wrong with the Twins?" column. Because something is obviously wrong.)

Senior writer Rob Neyer writes four columns per week during the baseball season. His new book, "Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Lineups," has just been published by Fireside. For more information about the book and Rob's upcoming book signing in Denver (July 9), visit Rob's Web site.