Some MVP ballots might have already been submitted, which is a real shame because there’s still a few games to be played and perhaps a few persuasive blog posts to be authored.

On Tuesday, this author examined some other factors that BBWAA members ought to consider when voting, particularly in a close race where voters might need to go beyond the convenience of one catch-all metric like wins above replacement.

The face of this argument is Aaron Judge, who’s had a remarkable rookie season and who leads Jose Altuve in WAR by a thin margin entering play Wednesday: 7.7 to 7.4. Judge also has 50 home runs — a nice, round, loud number that figures to sway some voters on the fence.

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Compelling articles frequently begin with an anecdote. Let me therefore begin with one of my own. Aaron Judge annoyed me on Monday. See, Judge hit a home run, and after the ball left the yard, I started working on this post about the details of his full rookie season. Heck of a rookie season! Just as I was really getting into it, though, I had to stop and re-work a few things, because then Judge hit another home run. New data. New tables. New images. Here’s one of them.

At first, on Monday, Judge hit his 49th home run, tying Mark McGwire’s record for a rookie. You can tell it’s a remarkable record, too, because of the gap between McGwire and the next guy on the list. Well, the record is split no longer. Judge and McGwire shared the spotlight for a handful of innings, but the record now belongs to Judge and Judge only. Judge is the first rookie to ever reach the 50-homer plateau. Although, perhaps plateau is an incorrect word, because Judge could continue to climb ever higher in this season’s final week.

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Quick: who’s the best left-handed hitter likely to appear in the American League playoffs this October? If you took more than three seconds to come up with an answer, don’t worry, that’s perfectly normal. The National League contenders have plenty of high-profile left-handed hitters: Charlie Blackmon, Cody Bellinger, Bryce Harper, Daniel Murphy, and Anthony Rizzo immediately stand out. Not so in the American League.

Postseason roster construction can have a lot of consequences. Once rosters are set, there are only so many machinations that can or will surprise us, but in a lot of cases, series can be won or lost by the selection of the the last five guys on the roster. I focused on some interesting roster-construction decisions last week. In the meantime, the possible configurations of the Astros bullpen have remained with me. If Houston utilizes a tandem-starter approach, it will lessen their flexibility for their bullpen; as such, they might not have room for LOOGYs. Of course, a LOOGY is only necessary to the extent that there are dangerous left-handed batters to face. The potential absence of a LOOGY from the Houston bullpen led me to a larger question about the batters whom that pitcher might face — specifically, whether any of the AL teams need a LOOGY to navigate October?

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For a while, it seemed like Chris Sale was going to be an American League Cy Young Award shoo-in. Now, while Sale hasn’t exactly gotten much worse, the favorite might be Corey Kluber, who basically hasn’t allowed a run since coming off the disabled list three and a half months ago. If the winner isn’t Kluber, it’ll be Sale. If the winner isn’t Sale, it’ll be Kluber. I don’t know what it would take for neither to win, short of some weird form of voter collusion. The race is pretty obviously down to two horses.

In here, I’d like to highlight the performance of Luis Severino. Severino has not been as good as Sale, and he has not been as good as Kluber. Yet, in part because of those two pitchers, Severino might not have fully gotten his due, because he’s been the next-best pitcher in his own league. Last season, at 22, Severino was demoted from the Yankees’ starting rotation. Now he’s one of the biggest reasons why the 2017 Yankees have overachieved and nearly locked up a spot in the playoffs. The Yankees dreamed that Severino would one day turn into an ace. As young as Severino still is, it seems those dreams might’ve already come true.

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You’re probably aware that the torrid Cleveland Indians have taken over the top run-differential spot in baseball and the No. 1 playoff seed in the AL.

You’re probably also aware that the Dodgers still hold the best record in baseball despite looking beyond terrible in September.

But did you know the Dodgers no longer hold the No. 2 run-differential spot in the sport? It’s true. That distinction now belongs to the Yankees, who entered play Monday having outscored the opposition by 62 runs (191 runs scored, 129 runs allowed) since August 14. And following last night’s victory over Minnesota, New York has now won 20 of their last 31 games.

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The Shohei Ohtani show has unofficially begun. After missing over a month with a thigh issue, Ohtani returned to the mound two weeks ago, with scouts from half of the Major League teams reportedly in attendance. For his start on Tuesday night, both Andrew Friedman and Jerry Dipoto were known to be in the stands to watch in person, a start in which Ohtani was clocked at 101 mph and allowed just one hit over 5.2 innings. And after that start, reports from Japan have begun to suggest that there’s an agreement in place for Nippon to post Ohtani this winter, clearing him to come to the Majors for the 2018 season.

Yahoo’s Jeff Passan has a good breakdown of the situation.

It isn’t about the money. Athletes reflexively say this, and sports fans roll their eyes, because of course it’s about the money. It’s always about the money. Then along comes Shohei Ohtani, 23 years old, the finest baseball player Japan has produced in years, maybe decades, a once-in-a-generation sort who can throw 102 mph and hit tape-measure home runs, a player whose free-market value would start at $200 million if Major League Baseball didn’t restrict the signings of international players under 25 to barely $10 million.

Only Ohtani, it seems, does not mind the prospect of giving up literally hundreds of millions of dollars to play in the greatest league in the world. Multiple reports out of Japan on Wednesday morning there said the same thing: Ohtani, who has been called the Japanese Babe Ruth, will enter the posting system this winter and play for a major league team in 2018. This came as no surprise to the general managers and scouts who have flocked in recent weeks to watch him pitch for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters. It also didn’t lessen their excitement any.

“It’s really happening,” one GM said, half-mocking, half-giddy at the prospect of the 23-year-old spicing up the free agent market this winter. And fascinating as his courtship would be in normal circumstances, the prospect of the best player available signing one of the most piddling contracts makes it unlike any free agency sports has seen: One where it literally isn’t about the money.

Because last year’s CBA raised the age of international prospects covered by the bonus-pool system to 25, Ohtani isn’t eligible for true unrestricted free agency for two more years. Rather than wait that long — and as a pitcher, two more years of good health is no guarantee — Ohtani will reportedly be posted this winter and then sign under the same rules by which 16-year-olds are bound. He’ll receive a signing bonus of some size (up to about $10 million) depending on which club he ultimately joins and then sign a standard uniform player contract that binds him to the arbitration system until he accrues six years of service time.

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No other sport loves its records in the way that baseball does. Baseball, from the beginning, has lent itself to being tracked by statistics, and it’s almost impossible to talk about baseball without discussing its numbers. Certain numbers are held in particularly high esteem, which is why so many people remain unwilling to accept Barry Bonds as the legitimate all-time leader in single-season home runs. The record is considered too sacred to be held by someone who bent or broke the rules. The all-time hits record is also something sacred, and an international conversation developed as Ichiro Suzuki plugged away. He surpassed Pete Rose in career professional hits, counting his hits in Japan, but Rose was defensive about it, arguing that combining the numbers isn’t fair. Rose has built much of his identity around being the Hit King, and most of us would act defensive when we perceive we’re under threat.

Rose cares about his records. He cares about his legacy. Yet, he lost a record Monday night. I have yet to see a statement or an interview. Maybe he doesn’t care, or maybe he doesn’t know. But as of yesterday, Pete Rose no longer ranks in first place on a major-league leaderboard.

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The Yankees bullpen is short on neither talent nor name value. Most baseball fans are aware of Aroldis Chapman, even if they’re not aware that he’s been in a funk. Likewise, many baseball fans are aware of Dellin Betances, and they’ve generally heard of David Robertson, who this year has re-emerged as terrific. To make the unit all the more deep, the Yankees acquired Tommy Kahnle, one of the year’s big bullpen breakout stories. Kahnle has struck out 38% of his opponents, ranking him seventh in baseball among regular or semi-regular relievers.

Kahnle, in the breakout sense, is a surprise. He finally has the results to go with the powerful stuff. And yet Kahnle may play second fiddle in here, because of another development. The highest strikeout rate for any reliever belongs to Craig Kimbrel. Well, sure. In second place, we find Kenley Jansen. Yes, of course. The name in third place reads “Chad Green.” And he’s up around 60 innings, so this isn’t just a hot week or month. Green has piled up the strikeouts, and as a consequence, he ranks seventh among all relievers in WAR. Chad Green made his season debut on May 9.

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Maybe you’ve noticed that Masahiro Tanaka is a little different these days. His recent good stretch has coincided with a trend we noticed a while back: he’s not really throwing the fastball any more. He’s not alone on the Yankees — it looks like it’s a team-wide phenomenon. But is it working for every Yankee?

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Chad Green’s 2-0 win-loss record and 2.05 ERA suggest he’s had a successful season. Those numbers only begin to tell the story. Pitching out of the New York Yankees bullpen, the 26-year-old right-hander has allowed just 27 hits in 57 innings while also recording 86 strikeouts. Doing the math, that’s 4.3 hits per nine and 13.6 strikeouts per nine. Augmenting those stellar stats is a 0.74 WHIP, which ranks as third best in baseball, behind only Craig Kimbrel (0.67) and Kenley Jansen (0.69).

Yesterday — in his 31st appearance on the season — the former Tigers prospect became the first pitcher in MLB history to record seven strikeouts while facing eight or fewer batters in a game. In December 2015, the Yankees acquired Green, along with Luis Cessa, in exchange for Justin Wilson.

Spin and velocity are among his closest friends. Green’s arsenal includes a solid slider, but his signature pitch is a four-seam fastball that zooms through the zone at an average speed of 95.5 mph. Thanks to a well above-average 2,478 spin rate, the University of Louisville product gets plenty of punch outs above the belt.

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Green on the reasons behind his breakout: “Last year, I figured out what I needed to work on, and this year it’s been about consistency. Last year, I wasn’t consistent. Some days I would have a good breaking ball, and some days I wouldn’t. Some days I would have good fastball command, and some days I wouldn’t.

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