Now take a look at those records. 10-11's and 11-10's. Seems pretty average to me. Losing record vs Great 8, that's not even average. And you can't even blame Contortionists for the uneveness, we have TUG. How can this even be disputed?
2nd through 6th all being 10-11 and 11-10 implies parody, not necessarily that they are all average.
If you throw out games that Jelme and TUG took part in, the Big 8 went 22-27 in IL play. That's a difference of 2.5 games which is small imo. Maybe I'm cherry picking as there are only 49 games, but that seems like a reasonably close margin and implies that the leagues are about the same.