For the first time in living MLB memory, the National League Central might be the strongest division in baseball. That was the second of the eleven big takeaways flagged in a YouTube breakdown of the 2026 season's first three weeks, and the early numbers back it up: Chicago is winning at Wrigley with a streak Joe Maddon couldn't believe in 2016, the Pirates are blowing out the Cardinals 7-0 on a Wednesday night, and the Reds have spent most of May trying to figure out how to score against Cubs starter Shota Imanaga.
The division's depth is partly a product of how badly the rest of the National League has started. The Giants and Mariners - two teams the YouTube analyst flagged as having "look like they might not be very good baseball teams in 2026" - have created early-season space for the NL Central's traditional middle tier to do damage. But the bigger driver is the quality at the top of the NL Central itself.
The Cubs have been the headliner. Chicago's most recent Wrigley homestand delivered a streak the YouTube analyst pegged at 15 wins in a row at Wrigley - a stretch the franchise has not put together since 1935. The walk-off offence has been the headline, with Pete Crow-Armstrong stacking three consecutive walk-off finishes that manager Craig Counsell himself admitted he could not explain.
The Pirates, often the early-season punching bag of the division, are not playing along this year. Their 7-0 shutout of the St. Louis Cardinals on May 20 was one of the most decisive blowouts of the NL season so far, delivered with the kind of pitching depth Pittsburgh's young rotation has been trying to assemble for two years. The Cardinals - still a generational franchise but with their share of early-season questions about offence and bullpen reliability - find themselves staring up at a Pittsburgh team that has finally broken the cycle of finishing the season as a development league for the rest of the division.
The Brewers and Reds have not run away with anything either, but both teams have produced enough top-end starts that they are in striking distance every week. The Reds in particular have started to look like a 2025 Pirates analogue - a young, fast, defensively excellent club that is one offence breakthrough away from being a clear contender.
What makes the division's depth feel different in 2026 is that no team has cratered. The standard recent NL Central pattern is one or two teams dominating and one or two teams writing off the season by Memorial Day. None of that has happened this year. Even on bad nights, the division's losers are losing by 2 runs and going to the bullpen for the ninth.
The early YouTube analysis was careful to note that the small-sample caveat applies. "Now, we are less than 3 weeks into the season. So, that means that a lot of these takeaways are realistically overreactions," the analyst said. "Are the Rockies going to be a 500 team this year because they're 6 and 6 through their first 12 games? No, but it is fun to look at some of the things that we might have been wrong about heading into the season."
But on the NL Central, the takeaway is more durable. The division's bottom is fine, the middle is competitive, and the top is producing the kind of streaks that don't happen by accident. If the early form continues, the 2026 NL Central playoff race might be the deepest in the league - and the trade deadline might end up being its main story.
