With their 7-2 loss to the Cubs in 11 innings at Miller Park on Monday night, the Brewers fell out of first place in the NL Central for the first time since May 12, while Chicago — which has gone an NL-best 21-10 since May 6 — claimed its first share of the lead since May 1. While it’s not quite as extreme as what’s going on atop the AL West, this battle for first place is another one where differing success in one-run games has helped one team keep pace despite a significantly inferior run differential:

The Brewers have the majors’ fourth-best winning percentage in one-run games, and the second-highest win total behind only the Mariners’ 21. The Cubs, meanwhile, have the majors’ ninth-lowest winning percentage in one-run games, and are tied with the Astros and White Sox for the fifth-lowest win total in that category. (Remarkably, there were no one-run games in the majors on Monday night, so this table is a rerun save for my virtual highlighter.)

So how have the Brewers managed to stay so close to the Cubs? As noted in Monday’s Mariners piece, success in one-run games has a lot to do with sequencing, random variance, and luck. Extreme records in one-run games are prone to regression, though in recent years the 2016 Rangers (36-11, .766) and 2012 Orioles (29-9, .763) have posted the two highest winning percentages in such games since 1901. Bullpen performance has an outsized effect on a team’s record in such games, because managers have more control on when to deploy their best relievers in high-leverage spots than they do with regards to their best hitters because of the way that batting order works. Via FiveThirtyEight’s Rob Arthur, there’s a significant correlation (r = .28) between bullpen WAR and winning percentage in one-run games, and it just so happens that the Brewers own the NL lead in that category (3.5 WAR), though the Cubs rank third (2.6) — and, now that you mention it, the teams ranked second through sixth in bullpen WAR through Sunday (the Padres, Nationals, Giants and Diamondbacks being the others) were a combined 41-45 in one-run games.

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Sunday’s Mariners-Rays game in Tampa Bay ended in memorable fashion, with Seattle right fielder Mitch Haniger failing to make a sliding catch on Carlos Gomez’s bloop, mishandling the ball while attempting to pick it up, but recovering in time to throw home, where Johnny Field, who had been running on contact from first base, was out by a country mile. Catcher Mike Zunino could have paused to make an omelette between receiving the ball and applying the tag:

The play preserved the Mariners’ 5-4 lead and gave them not just their 41st victory of the season but their 21st in games decided by one run. With the Astros also winning, 8-7 over the Rangers, Seattle and Houston remained tied atop the AL West. If you haven’t been paying attention lately, the Mariners — while missing the suspended Robinson Cano and overcoming a 5.70 ERA/4.77 FIP from Felix Hernandez — have spent every day since June 2 with at least a share of the division lead. They’ve done this despite the fact that the Astros have by far the better run differential — the majors’ best, actually:

Now there’s something you just don’t see every day: two teams whose run differentials differ by more than 100 but are basically even in the standings. Those one-run games are the reason. The Astros, who would be on a 109-win pace if they had merely gone .500 in such games to this point, actually won a pair of ’em on Saturday and Sunday, but when it comes to such those contests, they’re still tied for the majors’ fourth-lowest winning percentage and fourth-lowest win total in one-run games. The Mariners, on the other hand, have five more one-run wins than any other team and eight more than any other AL team, though they’re merely third in winning percentage:

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Pop quiz, hot shots: what does this video…

https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/SociableMistyDragon

… have to do with this one?

https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/HappyBossyBullmastiff

Obviously, they’re both Paul Goldschmidt, and they’re both base hits. They’re actually the first two hits he’s collected all season long against four-seam fastballs thrown at 95 mph or above. By comparison, the Diamondbacks’ five-time All-Star slugger had 21 such hits last year, and an average of 19 from 2015 to -17.

Two hits against high velocity. Two measly, stinkin’ hits. That grim tally — a May 28 single off the Reds’ Tanner Rainey and Wednesday’s double off the Giants’ Reyes Moronta — appears to be be the primary reason why the 30-year-old first baseman has struggled so mightily this year.

I’ve checked in on Goldschmidt twice already this year, first in a dedicated look a couple weeks into the season and then more in passing shortly after A.J. Pollock went down. Almost immediately after the first piece, he went on a brief tear that raised his wRC+ to 145 (.273/.395/.505 line) by the end of April, seemingly providing an object lesson in the dangers of dwelling too long on a single bad month. But then he was utterly dreadful in May (.144/.252/.278, 48 wRC+), his worst calendar month since… well, since last September (.171/.250/.305, 35 wRC+).

New information has come to light in the wake of each piece — or new to me at least. A few days after the Pollock injury, ESPN’s Buster Olney wrote about Goldschmidt in the context of over-30 players struggling with high-velocity fastballs, though he drew the line at 96 mph and considered only batting average. More recently, both Goldschmidt and Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo have fielded questions about any connection between the slugger’s current slump and a bout of inflammation in his right elbow that sidelined him for five games at the beginning of September 2017, the presumed cause of the aforementioned late-season struggle.

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Madison Bumgarner made his 2018 season debut on Tuesday night, and while the Giants lost to the D-backs, the return of the 28-year-old staff ace couldn’t have come at a much better time. The team’s rotation has been a mess due to injuries and underperformance, but a surprisingly resilient offense has kept them in the thick of what’s become a four-team NL West race.

Bumgarner, who was limited to 17 starts last year due to his infamous dirt-bike accident, suffered a fractured pinkie on his left (pitching) hand via a line drive off the bat of the Royals’ Whit Merrifield back on March 23. The injury required the insertion of three small pins that were removed four weeks later. He made just two rehab starts before returning to the Giants, so despite his strong performance, it wasn’t much of a surprise that he was pulled after six innings and 82 pitches with the Giants trailing, 2-1. Of the eight hits he allowed, six came in his first three innings, with back-to-back doubles by Ketel Marte and Chris Owings and a single by Kris Negron accounting for both Arizona runs in the second inning. Bumgarner needed a bit of help from his defense to escape a two-on, no-out mess in the third, with Brandon Crawford throwing out David Peralta at the plate and then Evan Longoria and Pablo Sandoval immediately following that with a 5-3 double play. Bumgarner didn’t walk anybody, generated 10 swing-and-misses (seven via his cutter), and all three of his strikeouts came in his final two innings of work.

Alas, Bumgarner pitched on a night when D-backs starter Patrick Corbin and company were just a bit better. The Giants’ 3-2 loss ended a five-game winning streak, but they rebounded on Wednesday for a come-from-behind, walk-off win. At 31-31, they’re just 1.5 games behind the D-backs and Rockies, who are tied for the division lead at 32-29. With the Dodgers struggling out of the gate, Arizona took a commanding lead in April, but its May slide and L.A.’s recent hot streak have helped to turn the NL West back into a race:

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It’s been a rough year for AL second basemen on the wrong side of 30. Robinson Cano, 35, was recently hit with an 80-game PED suspension. Dustin Pedroia, 34, played just three games last week before going back on the disabled list with inflammation in the same knee that had sidelined him for the season’s first two months. Jason Kipnis has played more like 41 years old than 31, and fellow 31-year-old Brian Dozier has been merely average. The oldest of them all, the soon-to-be 36-year-old Ian Kinsler, has been one of the majors’ worst. It’s increasingly possible that his days as a productive regular are over.

After homering just twice in the Angels’ first 54 games, Kinsler went yard three times in a five-game span from May 29 to June 2, going 11-for-20 in those games against the Tigers and Rangers — Kinsler’s two previous teams, incidentally, both in the bottom half of the league in terms of run prevention. Even with the aforementioned hot streak, however, the returns on Kinsler have been underwhelming. He entered Tuesday hitting just .212/.279/.348. Out of 85 AL batting-title qualifiers, his on-base percentage ranked 80th, his slugging percentage 78th, his 74 wRC+ 77th, with Pedroia fill-in Eduardo Nuñez, Kipnis, and the Tigers’ Dixon Machado the only AL second basemen below him in the last of those categories. Kinsler’s glove has been strong enough (5.3 UZR) to just push his value into the black.

When the Angels traded a pair of low-level prospects for Kinsler last December, it appeared to be a worthwhile gamble. The six players who had toiled at the keystone for their 2017 squad (Kaleb Cowart, Danny Espinosa, Nolan Fontana, Nick Franklin, Cliff Pennington, and Brandon Phillips) had combined for a league-worst 63 wRC+ at the position and just 0.2 WAR. Tellingly, that sextet has combined for all of 39 big league plate appearances this year. While Kinsler was coming off a career-worst season with the bat (.236/.313/.412, 91 WRC+), his typically solid baserunning (1.5 BsR) and fielding (7.8 UZR) boosted his value to 2.5 WAR, 12th in the majors at the position. With an $11 million salary in his final year before free agency, he seemed like both a solid stopgap and an upgrade at the same time.

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Although the Nationals just lost three out of four to the Braves and are still running in second place behind Atlanta, things have generally been going Washington’s way lately. Since starting the year 11-16, they’ve gone an NL-best 22-9 (.710) with the majors’ third-best Pythagorean winning percentage (.685) in that span. They’ve dealt with a slew of injuries, but Anthony Rendon is back, 19-year-old Juan Soto has made an impressive splash, the Matt Adams/Mark Reynolds tandem has significantly outproduced the absent Ryan Zimmerman, and both Daniel Murphy and Adam Eaton could rejoin the lineup soon.

Yet Bryce Harper remains an enigma — a productive enigma, to be fair. The 25-year-old right fielder leads the NL with 18 homers. Despite a torrid start to his 2018 season, however — he hit eight homers in his first 17 games — he’s just 11th in the league in wRC+ (134, on .232/.371/.527 hitting), sixth in slugging percentage, 16th in on-base percentage, and tied for 27th in WAR (1.4). Not thrilling, but nice — after all, Harper is a career .281/.385/.516 (141 wRC+) hitter who last year batted .319/.413/.595 (156 WRC+). We all know that he’s capable of more than what he’s shown this year. Hundreds of millions of dollars, in the form of his next contract, are riding on it.

The direction of Harper’s trend this year is unmistakable:

Harper went from hitting .247/.458/.528 (158 wRC+) in April to hitting .223/.289/.563 (125 wRC+) in May, but those monthly splits conceal a more drastic falloff, albeit one that relies upon selective endpoints, which are displayed here for the purposes of rubbernecking only:

Woof. Lately, Harper’s funk is even deeper. Over his past 10 starts (plus one pinch-hitting appearance), he’s hitting .209/.271/.442 with four walks and 21 strikeouts in 48 plate appearances.

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Though he was voted into the starting lineup of the American League All-Star team last year and finished third in MVP voting, as well José Ramírez is still something of an under-the-radar star. Perhaps it’s because he plays in Cleveland rather than a larger, more glamorous market. Maybe it’s because he plays alongside — but also the shadow of — Francisco Lindor, an elite shortstop who’s 14 months younger. It’s conceivable that Ramirez’s early-career struggles and the fact that he shares his name with a Braves pitcher contribute to his lower profile as well.

Regardless, with the strong start to his 2018 season — and particularly a torrid May, during which he recorded a 214 wRC+ and 2.6 WAR, tied with Lindor for the MLB high) — the 25-year-old switch-hitter is now fifth in WAR since the start of 2016, behind only Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, Kris Bryant and Jose Altuve (15.6 WAR, 0.7 ahead of the sixth-place Lindor). By any standard, he deserves to be considered among the game’s top-tier players.

What’s more, Ramírez has put himself in position to do something that no third baseman has ever done: post a season of at least 10 wins (hat-tip to reader GERB who pointed this out in my most recent chat). Through Saturday, he had compiled 4.1 WAR in the Indians’ 57 games (he sat out one), an 11.7 WAR pace, though he’s not the only player on such a breakneck clip. Trout entered Sunday on an astonishing 13.5-win pace (4.9 WAR in 59 Angels games), and Betts on a 10.5 WAR pace (4.1 in 63 games — the number the Red Sox will have played when he’s eligible to come off the disabled list on June 8).

Ten-win seasons at any position are, of course, quite rare, and while there’s nothing magical about that plateau beyond our inherent fascination with the decimal system, getting to double-digits is still pretty cool. Via FanGraphs’ methodology, there have been just 51 different 10 WAR seasons since 1901, one for every 249 batting title-qualified player-seasons. Just over half of those (26), occurred before World War II (one for every 139 qualified seasons) when the wider spread of talent made it easier for individual players to dominate. Babe Ruth (nine) and Rogers Hornsby (six) account for more than half of those prewar seasons, with Ty Cobb (three), Lou Gehrig, Honus Wagner, and Ted Williams (two apiece) the other repeat customers. Eddie Collins, Jimmie Foxx, and Tris Speaker round out the prewar group, and Williams is the only player to have a 10-win season during the war (1942, before he himself missed three seasons in the military).

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Max Scherzer has already won three Cy Young awards, and if he’s keeping them on his mantel, he might need to do some remodeling, as he’s threatening to add a fourth. The 33-year-old righty is having, by some measures, the most dominant season of his career — and one of the most dominant of all time.

After carving apart the admittedly hapless Orioles on Wednesday night (eight innings, two hits, one walk, no runs, 12 strikeouts), Scherzer leads the NL in a host of statistical categories both traditional and advanced: wins (nine), innings (79.2), strikeouts (120), strikeout rate in two flavors (13.6 per nine and 38.7% of all batters faced), K-BB% (32.6), hits per nine (5.5), FIP (1.95), and WAR (3.2). Meanwhile, his 1.92 ERA ranks second behind Jacob deGrom, who right now looks like the only other NL Cy candidate with more than a puncher’s chance, which is to say that it will take somebody else going on an an unforeseen roll — perhaps Clayton Kershaw, whose 2016 and -17 injuries already factored into Scherzer’s hardware tally — to justify a place in the discussion.

In terms of ERA and FIP, our heterochromic hero has enjoyed strong stretches such as this at various points in his career — more or less annually since 2013:

However, Scherzer has never put together a full season this strong, which is to say Kershaw-esque. Where the Dodgers’ lefty ace has banked two seasons with both his ERA and FIP below 2.00 (2014 and ’16), Scherzer’s lowest full-season ERA was last year’s 2.51, while his lowest FIP was his 2.77 in 2015. Even in his award-winning seasons, he’s never led the league in either category, whereas Kershaw has five ERA titles (tied for third all-time with Walter Johnson, Sandy Koufax, Pedro Martinez and Christy Mathewson, trailing only Roger Clemens with seven and Lefty Grove with nine) and two FIP titles.

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