Mike Celizic

It's dangerous and probably dumb to draw conclusions about a baseball season when barely one-third of the games are in the books. But it’s also fun, especially this year, when it's possible to legitimately dream in June of what may be the best World Series matchup in memory.

How does Red Sox-Cubs sound to you? They’re arguably the two best teams in baseball. My colleague, Tony DeMarco, disagrees. He thinks the Angels are the cream of the majors. And he may be right; the team that claims two cities as its hometown is .003 percentage points ahead of Boston in the standings.

But I’ll take the Red Sox and Cubbies because of the way they’re excelling both in pitching and offense. Right now, the Chicago White Sox belong in that argument even ahead of the Angels for the same reason.

Look at the run differentials for those three teams. Boston is outscoring its opponents by 1.19 runs per game and the White Sox are scoring 1.30 runs per game more than they’re giving up. But for sheer dominance, you’ve got to look no further than the Cubs who are scoring nearly two runs more a game — 1.81 to be exact — than their opponents. Second best in the National League are the Philadelphia Phillies, whose runs per game are 1.43 higher than their team earned-run average.

Things can and will change. Last year, the best teams on June 8 were the New York Mets and Red Sox. The Mets, as their fans are trying to forget, just missed the playoffs after collapsing down the stretch. But Boston was at year’s end what they were in June — the best team in the game.

In the American League last year, the three teams in first place on June 8 — Cleveland, Boston and Los Angeles — were in first place at the end of the season. The fourth AL playoff team was the New York Yankees, who were in second place in the AL East but three games under .500 and far behind in the wild-card race in June.

In the NL, nobody who was in first place on June 8 — the Mets, Milwaukee Brewers and San Diego Padres — made the playoffs. NL East winner Philadelphia was six games out behind both the Mets and the Atlanta Braves; NL Central champion Chicago was five games behind the Brewers. In the NL West, Arizona was in second, a game behind the Padres, and the Colorado Rockies were in fourth, 7.5 games behind.

So if you want to argue nothing will change this year, there are numbers to back you up. And if you want to argue that everything will change, there are numbers to back that up, too.

But there are reasons to believe that the magical matchup between the Red Sox and Cubs is realistic. Both teams have offenses that should be pretty much recession-proof and their pitching, while not the best in their leagues, is close to it.

The Cubbies have four guys who have scored 40 or more runs — Ryan Theriot, Aramis Ramirez, Kosuke Fukudome and Derrek Lee — and four guys who have driven in at least 39 — Ramirez, Geovany Soto, Lee and Alfonso Soriano. Their 69 home runs are 24 fewer than Philadelphia’s 93, but still they’ve scored 11 more runs than the Phillies — 349 to 338 — and their league-leading on-base percentage (.361) is 21 points higher — and Philly is the next best team in the league. Their league-leading team batting average (.283) is 20 points higher than Philadelphia.

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