I’ve heard plenty of people express surprise at it being May already over the past couple of days. April has seemed to have come and gone quite quickly and that’s especially the case for baseball fans.

You spend what feels like ages waiting for the new season to arrive and then all of a sudden realise you’re already one-sixth of the way through it.

Most MLB teams had played in the region of 22 games as the calendar turned to May and whilst that’s nowhere near enough to draw any meaningful conclusions, it’s a large enough number to produce plenty of performances worth noting.

In the National League, after the 30 April games had been concluded it was the St. Louis Cardinals who led the way with a 15-6 win-loss record.

Mark George described the Cardinals as “baseball’s equivalent of Germany’s football team” in our 2015 prediction feature and that’s a perfect way to describe the Red Birds. They have an excellent track record of bringing players through – not necessarily stars but good, solid everyday contributors – and there’s a culture around the team that more often than not means they are competitive, even if they don’t have the best team on paper.

It’s no surprise to see the Cardinals out in front early on and even though losing Adam Wainwright to an achilles injury – all but certain to rule him out for the rest of the season – is a big blow, they’ll find a way to stay in the hunt. That’s just what the Cardinals do.

The Los Angeles Dodgers are also an unsurprising division leader as they finished April with a 13-8 record, including 10-2 from 12 home games. Like the Cards, the Dodgers have had some bad luck with injuries as Yasiel Puig and Carl Crawford have landed on the Disabled List in recent days. Their large pockets create an expectation that they will be able to ride out any disruptions by filling any holes that emerge and we’ll see over the coming months how true that is.

Coming into the season, there was good reason to question their pitching staff behind Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke and those questions have already proved to be pertinent as free-agent signing Brandon McCarthy lasted only four games before suffering another injury, this time the dreaded elbow injury that requires Tommy John surgery and at least a year on the sidelines. Hyun-Jin Ryu is still to make his season debut as he recovers from a shoulder injury and the rumour mill is already swirling around potential pitching targets, most notably the Cincinnati Reds’ Johnny Cueto.

If the NL Central and West division are starting out as expected, it’s the NL East that provided the main story in April. The New York Mets flew out of the starting gates and rode an eleven-game winning streak to earn a 15-8 record and an early 4.5 game lead in the standings.

In contrast, the Washington Nationals stumbled through the month after being all-but crowned National League champions by many before a single pitch had been made. They’ve had a few injuries, not least Anthony Rendon who is making haltering progress in his rehabilitation from a knee injury, but nothing so disastrous as to give the team an excuse for their poor start. The positive thing for the Nationals is that there is still five months in which they can turn things around and they surely will do, yet so long as Matt Harvey continues pitching in his otherworldly way they shouldn’t expect the Mets to let them through without a fight.

As for the American League, the big surprise has come in the West where the Houston Astros clearly have had enough of being the butt of everyone’s jokes for the past few years. They finished April at 15-7 and have since added two more wins to their tally as part of a nine-game winning streak heading into Sunday.

None of the more-fancied teams in the division have hit their stride as yet and Houston’s start has the appearance of a good patch of form that’s just happened to come in April where it gets noticed more than usual (you could say the same of the Nationals’ poor form too). Still, Dallas Keuchel and Collin McHugh are showing signs that their potential shown in 2014 was real and there’s no doubt that this is a team on the up.

The Kansas City Royals are also showing that the promise of last season was no mere flash in the pan. I was one of the many doubters who thought that they would slip back a bit after last year’s heroics, yet they haven’t missed a step following the winter break.

The main story around the team has been their involvement in a number of heated exchanges with rival teams – notably the Oakland A’s and Chicago White Sox – and Yordano Ventura in particular has lost his head on several occasions. The Royals have a target on their back this year and teams are going to try to put them off their game. So far they have been able to keep on winning despite reacting to the situation, but it would be a risk to think they can continue to do that by puffing out their chests. They’ve got to be smarter than that because however macho they might want to be, it will cost them in the end through suspensions and losing players through injuries over the course of a season.

It’s fine to stand up for yourself, but if they believe in their ability then the best approach is to take the high road and rise above it. So long as they keep rising to the bait, other teams will keep on fishing and the Royals cannot afford to give ground with the Detroit Tigers looking strong again.

Finally the AL East has lived up to its billing in the sense of no one really knowing who will come out on top. The New York Yankees led the division as April came to a close with a 13-9 record, but the last-placed Toronto Blue Jays were only 2.5 games behind on 11-12. My guess is that it will come down to the Baltimore Orioles and Boston Red Sox, but the other three teams have enough about them to ensure they can’t be ruled out.