Should we be worried about the Cleveland Indians only beating bad teams?

In one of the threads on Let's Go Tribe  yesterday, there was a... lively discussion on whether or not the 2016 Cleveland Indians are a good baseball team. There are many pieces of evidence that would seem to support an argument in the affirmative: the overall win record, the run differential, the starting pitching, and so on. But some folks have noted that, when playing better teams, the Indians tend to struggle. Is this a phenomenon exclusive to the team from Northeast Ohio, or do all good teams play better against sub-par competition?

To begin, I will preface these findings by saying that I am using FanGraphs projected final standings in order to determine whether teams fall in the "Over .500" or "Under .500" category.  This may be different than where teams currently sit in the standings, but it will (hopefully) give a complete picture of teams and what their actual talent is. According to Fangraphs, these are the teams that are expected to have a winning record in 2016:

Let's start with the Cleveland Indians, since that's why I assume you're all here. Of the above teams, the Cleveland Indians have so far played against the Red Sox, Mets, Mariners, Tigers, Astros, Orioles, Rangers, Yankees, Blue Jays and Nationals. Here's how they've done against each of those teams:

Overall, the Indians have a pretty poor run differential when it comes to playing teams at or above .500, but their record against those teams is better than what you would expect. Obviously having an 11-1 record against Detroit is helpful, but regardless, it's virtually a coin flip when Cleveland is up against better teams. Again, is that normal? Here are the same tables for the current division leaders as well as the teams who would nab a wild card spot if the season were to end tomorrow:

AL East: Baltimore Orioles

AL West: Texas Rangers

AL Wild Card #1: Toronto Blue Jays

AL Wild Card #2: Boston Red Sox

Of the five "contending" American League teams, only 2 of them have a negative run differential and a losing record against "winning" teams. Oddly enough, those two teams (Cleveland and Baltimore) have the two best win percentage in the AL as of right now. The Rangers are easily beating good teams, but that means that they currently have an 18-24 record against below-.500 teams. When comparing a team like the Indians to the Rangers, it makes sense that the Indians are beating up on lesser teams (they currently have a record of 33-17 against below-.500 teams) but getting beaten by better teams; it doesn't make sense that the Rangers can handle teams like Houston and New York but struggle against the Twins. But hey, baseball is random and weird sometimes. How do the National League counterparts compare?

NL East: Washington Nationals

NL Central: Chicago Cubs

(In the) NL West: San Francisco Giants

NL Wild Card #1: Los Angeles Dodgers

NL Wild Card #2: Miami Marlins

The NL bunch is much more closely bunched around the .500 mark than the AL was; the team that has the best record against over-.500 teams is the Cubs, and they're only 5 games over .500. So, if we look at win percentage, how do these teams shake out?

Against over-.500 teams, Cleveland is almost the worst among the ten contending teams. That being said, aside from the Rangers, there isn't a team that is significantly better against over-.500 teams. The average win percentage of all ten teams, when playing over-.500 teams, is .531; for Cleveland, they would need a record of 26-23 to get to that win percentage. That's a 2 game difference than where they currently are. I can think of a handful of games over the past couple of weeks that could have easily swung for the Indians if a play or two were just slightly altered. Yes, Cleveland hasn't done as well against better teams as some other contending teams. No, it doesn't mean that they're bad at baseball. In fact, they're very good. The only thing that this really shows is the randomness of a 162 game season. So enjoy the fact that all of those games against sub-.500 teams count just the same as the rest of the games; when combined, the Indians are one of the best teams in baseball.