"Congratulations to the Los Angeles Dodgers for clinching the first playoff spot of the 2009 season.

"Things could go wrong. The whole team might get the swine flu. Short of that, however, this division race is over."

Over at FanGraphs, Cameron is going ahead and closing the book on one of the pennant races. He has good points, of course. The Dodgers are 20-8, 8.5 up already, unbeatable at home (so far litterally), have the best run differential in baseball (+48) and the rest of their division doesn't look too good.

But, through the first 28 games last year, the Diamondbacks were 20-8. Their run differential was almost a full win better at +56, and they were in first place of a division that was surprising people (by being worse than expected) while young players were seemingly coming in to their zones. They were only up 5 1/2 games to the Dodgers' 8 1/2 this year, but the point still remains: it's early.

The situations aren't exactly the same, and the Dodgers are absolutely in the drivers' seat of the division and it will probably be a small surprise if they don't win. But recent history makes it pretty clear teams can absolutely fall down after seeming to be dominant in May. Unexpected young players can crash, other teams can get big boosts with players being added to the roster, the ups and downs of a long baseball season can happen, and a division can surprise you by being better or worse than you assumed it would be. And while a month isn't a completely dismissable sample-size, it's also not completely acceptable; if people thought the Diamondbacks would be able to compete this year, it's not necessarily time to jump completely off the bandwagon. I'm not saying the Dodgers aren't the favorites by a pretty sizable margin so far, I'm just saying a team in their own division is proof it's a little early to be declaring things over, and it doesn't take something as drastic as swine flu to see to that.