It shouldn’t be terribly surprising that Jose Altuve is at it again. The man is running a wRC+ of 160 or better for the third time in his career; in one of those seasons, 2017, he was voted AL MVP. The other was just last year. Rumors of his demise, which circulated throughout a disastrous 2020 season, have long since subsided.

And not a moment too soon, I might add. The Astros, held in check by the Rangers most of the season, are back on their heels after a three-game sweep at the hands of division rival Seattle over the weekend. The pitching staff has taken a step back from its unhittable late-2022 apotheosis. Primary offseason acquisition José Abreu was hitting like a utility infielder before a back injury put him on the shelf. Jeremy Peña’s power stroke has deserted him, as has Cristian Javier’s unique brand of fastball-heavy trickeration.

Houston looks a little wobbly, for the first time since at least 2020; setting aside that season’s unique circumstances (and the Astros made it to Game 7 of the ALCS anyway), the team has not wobbled this much since 2016. But Altuve, hitting .327/.420/.529 since his return from a broken thumb suffered during the World Baseball Classic, has held things together.

If that really is Jose Altuve. Read the rest of this entry »

Look at the top of the leaguewide standings and you’ll find both types of elite teams: First, the Braves, an all-conquering, all-chewing-up-and-spitting-out combine harvester that sits atop the standings. After them: an Orioles club that’s outplaying its Pythagorean record by eight games.

That’s not to take anything away from the Orioles, who are dogwalking the hardest division in baseball thanks to a dizzying collection of talented young hitters and the best bullpen in the sport. Besides, they don’t ask how — they ask how many. But this is yet another reboot of a classic from the generation prior; in 2012, the O’s romped to the playoffs with a 93–69 record and the run differential of an 82–80 team. Now they’re doing the same thing, with Félix Bautista as Jim Johnson, Gunnar Henderson as Manny Machado, and Kyle Bradish as… Wei-Yin Chen, I guess?

It’s not just the Orioles: the Marlins (minus-37 run differential) are beating the Cubs (plus-62) to the last Wild Card spot. The Brewers are 10 games over .500 with the run differential of a .500 team. Every year, it seems like a low-payroll team with a good bullpen smashes its expected record to smithereens and barges into the playoffs. Is there an actual pattern here, or is this just trivia? Read the rest of this entry »

If I have one criticism of Shohei Ohtani, it’s that he has singlehandedly ruined baseball’s great parlor discussions. Admittedly, this is the only valid criticism of Ohtani that I can think of. But questions like “Which player would you want to start a franchise with?” or “Who’s the most talented ballplayer you’ve ever seen?” are so much less fun now than they were a decade ago. First person to answer just says, “Ohtani,” and there’s a brief but grave silence until someone pipes up and asks if anyone is watching the new season of Billions.

Setting Ohtani aside, Fernando Tatis Jr. would be on my short list of most talented or dynamic baseball players I’ve had the good fortune to witness. In the past, I’d compared his physicality to that of a 3–4 outside linebacker, but watching him scramble around the diamond is like watching an alien who’s holding something in reserve so he doesn’t get outed by the humans. If that is his goal, Tatis is not doing a great job of blending in.

Read the rest of this entry »

Lenin might not have actually said: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” But that doesn’t mean not-Lenin was wrong. College football just lived through such a week, as the Big Ten’s addition of UCLA and USC for the coming football season snowballed into an all-out raid on the Pac-12. Oregon and Washington are following the two Los Angeles schools to richer pastures. The Big 12, already in the process of adding four mid-major schools to replace the outgoing Texas and Oklahoma, is swooping in to pick Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah from off the curb. Left with the proposition of propping up a rump four-team conference, Cal and Stanford are being courted by the ACC. Those schools, with their sterling academic reputations, are considered a good cultural fit for a conference that already includes Duke and Virginia; the same could be said about UCLA and the Big Ten.

If those institutions want to keep up the pretense of looking smart, they’re going to have to rename these conferences. An Atlantic Coast Conference with two teams in California? An 18-team Big Ten? A 16-team Big 12? People are going to start to think these jokers can’t count or read a map. But that’s of secondary importance. What this audience wants to know, surely, is what this means for college baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

The Toronto Blue Jays have devoted huge resources to their rotation, spending a first-round pick on Alek Manoah, doling out huge free agent contracts to Chris Bassitt and Kevin Gausman, and trading the farm for José Berríos. (And then giving Berríos a huge contract extension as well.)

But Toronto’s best starting pitcher over the past month — and in a three-way tie for the best pitcher in all of baseball, by WAR — has been Yusei Kikuchi, the guy who couldn’t stay in the rotation a year ago. Read the rest of this entry »

The Chicago Cubs are white hot. Shortly after the All-Star break, the Cubbies were as many as 8 1/2 games out of first place in the NL Central and six games under .500. About three weeks later, they’re a little better than an even-money bet to grab a playoff spot.

So let’s talk about Ian Happ, who has been a key offensive player for the Cubs over that span, and the odd season he’s having. If you make a habit of checking the major league walk rate leaderboards regularly, as I’m sure we all do, you will no doubt have noticed that Happ is in the top five with a 16.1% walk rate. (All stats current through Tuesday’s action.)

Now, Happ has always been capable of drawing a walk; his career walk rate heading into this season was 11.2%, which is pretty high. But you wouldn’t think of him as one of the most discerning hitters in baseball — Juan Soto, Kyle Schwarber, Max Muncy, and so on. Until this season. Read the rest of this entry »

“Dr. Neal ElAttrache” is up there on the list of three-word phrases you don’t want to see near a pitcher’s name. Not quite as bad as “Federal grand jury,” “Devoured by wolverines,” or “Drafted by Colorado,” but up there. Tampa Bay Rays ace Shane McClanahan visited the estimable orthopedic surgeon on Monday to get a tight left forearm checked out, and the results were not to his liking. ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported Tuesday afternoon that McClanahan is “highly unlikely” to return this season, in the words of Rays manager Kevin Cash.

Over Tampa Bay’s most recent run of success, the Rays have set great store by their pitching, and more recently by their rotation, which ranks third in the majors in WAR. But that success has come amidst a sweeps-week Grey’s Anatomy special in the medical department. McClanahan will be the biggest loss yet, as he leads Rays starters in innings and was one of the team’s All-Star representatives last month. The question, as always, is whether Tampa Bay can hang on, and what “hanging on” looks like for a club that’s already headed backwards. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday afternoon, the Astros had an off day before the start of a series in Baltimore, so they did what most defending World Series champions have done under those circumstances, and swung by the White House. There, Dusty Baker and his merry men were fêted by President Joe Biden, who commiserated with the beloved Astros manager over having to wait decades to reach the pinnacle of their respective professions.

What a lovely event, one that raises two questions. First: What the hell, Mr. President, I thought you were a Phillies fan? Between this and the similar ceremony for the Braves a year ago, Biden has used two of his three championship soirees to celebrate a hated division rival and the team that beat the Phillies in the World Series. The Bidens are already on thin ice after the First Lady showed up to watch a white-hot Phillies team in Game 4 of the World Series, only for them to get no-hit and lose three straight to end the season.

That leads into the second question: Encountering a sitting president has to be a provocative experience, even for a professional athlete. What effect does going to the White House have on a defending World Series champion? Read the rest of this entry »

Cole Hamels retired from baseball on Friday, causing significant consternation to people who read that headline and thought they’d been transported back in time to the winter of 2019. (Buy a house now, while you still can, and be sure to stock up on hand sanitizer.)

It’s been four years since Hamels pitched effectively in the major leagues; before the 2020 season, he signed a one-year deal with the Atlanta Braves, and was limited to just 3 1/3 innings by injuries to his triceps and shoulder. Two further comeback attempts, with the Dodgers and his hometown Padres, came to nothing. Hamels never quite recovered from a 2021 surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff, and was still unable to throw without pain when he decided, at age 39, that he’d finally had enough.

Hamels, the 2008 NLCS and World Series MVP, will probably appear on just one Hall of Fame ballot. But few players’ reputations suffered more by comparison to their immediate surroundings than Hamels’ did; he was one or two breaks from giving a speech in Cooperstown someday, even if nobody realized it at the time. Read the rest of this entry »

The Reds are on the verge of their first playoff appearance since 2020 and their first real playoff appearance since 2013, when they lost the loudest baseball game in the history of Pittsburgh. (I go back and forth on whether 2020 counts as a real postseason, depending on what’s expedient for my argument. In this case, I think you have to score at least one run for it to count as a playoff appearance.) And in pursuit of that end, the Reds’ ownership and front office have elected… not to send reinforcements. They traded for Sam Moll at the deadline, but that’s it. The Reds are more relevant than they’ve been in a decade, and this poor team is getting Siege of Jadotville’d. Water is running low, and help is not coming.

So it’s all up to you, Andrew Abbott. Read the rest of this entry »