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On Wednesday night, the Cubs fell to Reds by a score of 5-3 (box score), while the Giants prevailed over the Rockies by a score of 5-1 (box score). Two lonesome July games with no further significance, you say? Well, feast thine eyes upon the National League standings as of Thursday morning ...

NL EAST W L PCT. GB
Washington 51 35 .593 -
N.Y. Mets 46 38 .548 4
Miami 44 41 .518 6.5
Philadelphia 40 46 .465 11
Atlanta 28 57 .329 22.5
NL CENTRAL W L PCT. GB
Chi. Cubs 52 32 .619 -
Pittsburgh 44 41 .518 8.5
St. Louis 43 41 .512 9
Milwaukee37 47 .44015
Cincinnati 32 54 .372 21
NL WEST W L PCT. GB
San Fransico 54 33 .621 -
L.A. Dodgers 48 39 .552 6
Colorado 38 46 .45214.5
Arizona 38 49 .437 16
San Diego 37 48 .435 16

Hills be shaken: No longer do the Cubs have the best record in baseball. Yes, Wednesday's baseball events mean that the Giants now have the highest winning percentage in MLB.

Joe Maddon: Clearly upset at the standings. USATSI

You can be forgiven if you've become accustomed to the Cubs' lording over all they have surveyed in 2016. After all, they started the season 8-1, and they were a whopping 25-6 at the close of play on May 10. After their win over the Pirates on June 19, they moved to a season-best 27 games over .500. Getting that far over the hump by mid-ish June is a remarkable feat, to say the least.

Since that high point, though, a bit of the shine has come off. The Cubs are .500 since the start of June, and they've six of their last seven and 12 of their last 17. Meantime, the Giants have gone 42-20 since posting a 12-13 mark in April. That yields what you see above.

In the Cubs' defense (not that a team on pace for 100 wins requires much in the way of a vigorous defense), they still easily top the loop in terms of run differential, and the Giants are one of the few teams who've to date played a weaker schedule (the Cubs rank 28th in opponents' average winning percentage, while the Giants rank 29th). Also, the margin in thin: If the Cubs beat the Braves on Thursday night while the Giants are idle, then Chicago will retake the top spot. That said, the Rangers may also be heard from soon, as they've played .616 baseball to date, and as you can see, the Nationals are also in the discussion. Ditto for the Indians.

And what of the road ahead? The SportsLine Projection Model each morning spits out each team's projected winning percentage over the remainder of the regular season. So using those outputs, let's take a look at the current contenders for best record in baseball and see what SportsLine forecasts for them the rest of the way (we'll use a current WPCT of .550 as our cutoff for inclusion) ...

Team Current WPCT
 Projected rest-of-season WPCT
 Projected final regular season record*
Giants .621 .559 96-66
Cubs .619 .599 99-63
Rangers .616 .570 96-66
Indians .607 .613 99-63
Nationals .593 .607 97-65
Orioles .583 .524 90-72
Blue Jays
 .552 .584 92-70
Dodgers
 .552 .601 93-69

(*Rounded off based on average of thousands of simulations)

As you can see, the Cubs and Indians are projected to wind up at 99 wins, which would give them top honors heading into the playoffs in their respective leagues. Moving forward, though, SportsLine sees the Cubs as "just" the fourth-best team in baseball, as the Indians, Nationals, and Dodgers all have higher projected winning percentages over the balance of the season.

The surprising thing is that we're even having this discussion considering the heights the Cubs had scaled as of roughly three weeks ago. Or maybe it's not so surprising that a team winning at such a clip would eventually find its way back from outright supremacy to "mere" greatness. It's a long season, you know.