The NL South - What a bunch of tards

I know, I know, we're only about 50 games into the season, it's early.  But what the hell is going on in the NL South?  Everyone is below .500!!  The computer thinks Jackson might get up to around 80 wins by the end of the season, which would make them the Seattle Seahawks of BPF: below .500, but making the playoffs. 

Now this is almost expected from New Orleans.  Other than their 83 win season and division title back in S10, they've been a sub .500 squad since....forever.  And Louisville/El Paso had a couple of great seasons in the early days of BPF (WS win in S1, WS appearance in S4), but they've been a yo-yo since then (100 losses in S9, nearly 100 wins in S11).  Jacksonville and Jackson are supposed to be the rocks of that division, having the same ownership since S1.  Combined, they have 4 sub .500 seasons out of 22 seasons played, but right now they're on pace to make that 6 out of 24. 

Meanwhile, you look at divisions like the NL North and the NL West, where each are on pace to have three of their four teams finish above .500, which isn't a foreign concept since all eight squads finished above .500 in S10.  In the NL East.....well, let's not talk about those guys.  A clear case of haves and have nots, Durham and St Louis are on pace for around 100 wins, while Baltimore and Hartford are in the hunt for a top 5 draft pick next season. 

Looking at the last four seasons in the NL, here is the number of teams below .500 each season:
S8 - 6 (2 below .400) (0 above .600)
S9 - 7 (2 below .400) (0 above .600)
S10 - 5 (0 below .400) (0 above .600)
S11 - 9 (1 below .400) (2 above .600)
Clearly, S10 was our Season of Parity, and then it quickly got turned upside down in S11 when we had a record number of teams playing sub-par baseball and our first .600+ seasons since S7.  Right now we're on pace for 7 teams below .500, and possibly 3 teams above .600 for the first time since S4.  But what does it mean? 

I really hoped I would see some sort of trend.  Maybe the teams with the worst records are only spending $40M on payroll or something.  Maybe the teams with the best records are flush with 80+ rated guys.  But Philly is spending $120M on payroll, and they're expected to get 70 wins.  Cincy is in first place in the NL North, and they don't have a single guy rated above 78 overall.  But the cream of the crop right now are St Louis and Durham, with StL spending $118M on payroll and having 6 guys rated 80+ overall, and Durham is around $95M in payroll with 5 guys rated 80+ overall.  Those two teams have more 80+ guys than the entire NL South combined, and that might be our problem.  Hell, my team alone has nearly the same number of 80+ guys as the NL South.  I know, it's all cyclical, and the teams with all of the talent at the ML level had to give up some prospects in order to get that talent, and those prospects will beat down my team in a few years.  A lot of teams have a lot of talent in their minors right now.  But for now, the NL isn't the league of parity that it was a couple of seasons ago, we are very much a league of haves and have nots.