Five Second-Half Storylines

This week’s All Star break is a rare gap in the baseball calendar, a chance for everyone to catch their breath before the thrill of the trade deadline — and, if you’re a FanGraphs reader, maybe the thrill of the trade value series, too. It’s also a week with very little baseball, which means the normal format for Five Things will have to take a break. Instead, here are five things that I’m looking forward to in the second half of the season, from trade deadline trendsetters to silly leaderboards to my favorite young star.

A quick programming note before we continue: No Five Things for the next two weeks, and instead of my regularly scheduled chat appearance on Monday, we’ll have a jumbo-length trade value chat next Friday at the conclusion of the series. Five Things will be back on Friday, August 8, the first week after trade season winds down.

1. Who Will Sell First?
There are six teams hanging onto the fringes of the playoff chase, three-plus games back of the final wild card spot. Most of those teams are in win-now mode, which means they all have interesting players to trade if they pivot to selling. Only one of them can move first, though.

In the AL Central, the entire middle of the division is below .500 and on the ropes. But if all three teams are intent on competing next year – and they all appear to be – they might not have much to offer. Seth Lugo is the best player on an expiring deal, but despite their 11.7% playoff odds as of Thursday afternoon, the Royals might decide to stand pat. They’re right in the middle of the peak Bobby Witt Jr. contention years and wouldn’t get an earth-shaking return back for dealing Lugo. So why not take a slim shot at the playoffs with their current roster? It’s a close call, though I’d probably trade him.

Neither the Guardians nor the Twins have many attractive pending free agents, but in recent days, Joe Ryan has been the subject of trade rumors. Minnesota certainly doesn’t have to deal him; he has two more arbitration years after this season.

That leaves two teams as the likely movers and shakers with multiple good players to trade: Arizona and Baltimore. The Diamondbacks are three below, and with Corbin Burnes out for the year, they’re not at full strength anyway. They also have a treasure trove of players on expiring contracts; Eugenio Suárez is the best hitter even possibly available at the deadline, plenty of pitching labs would love to work with Zac Gallen, and Merrill Kelly and Josh Naylor are proven veteran contributors.

The Orioles don’t have anyone I’d take over Suárez, but they make up for it in volume. Zach Eflin, Ryan O’Hearn, and Cedric Mullins are all easily starter-caliber players on postseason teams. Seranthony Domínguez and Ramón Laureano are interesting. Gregory Soto and Andrew Kittredge can go. The Orioles have so many players they’re likely to deal that they’re going to have a lot to say about the tempo of the deadline: The longer they wait to make their first deal, the more the market will wait along with them.

Two other teams could upset this equilibrium: the Cardinals and Red Sox. Both clubs have interesting players whom they’ve previously signaled a willingness to deal and rosters that could use some massaging. The only problem – “problem” – is that they’re each playing too well. If either of them enters the fray, the entire tenor of the trade deadline will change. I don’t expect that to happen, though, which means we might be in for a deadline defined by two sellers.

2. The Indefatigable Brewers
What if I told you that everyone on our preseason Brewers starting pitching depth chart, with the exception of staff ace Freddy Peralta, had combined for 0.7 WAR? All of them. Not the other four projected members of the initial rotation – the whole dang depth chart? What if I told you that Jackson Chourio would have a disappointing first half, that William Contreras would post his worst offensive year, that Joey Ortiz would flirt with the Mendoza line? You’d expect them to be lagging toward the bottom of the Central, particularly if I also told you that the Cubs, Cardinals, and Reds would all be above .500.

Right, yeah, the Brewers are a game out of first, tied for the fourth-best record in baseball. That starting rotation? Sure, the guys we expected to pitch well have been hurt or ineffective, but the Brewers haven’t missed a beat. They traded for Quinn Priester, who seems perfectly capable of supplying the volume of cromulent innings that Milwaukee adeptly converts into wins thanks to its excellent defense and bullpen. Chad Patrick has the same skill set – fungible enough that the Brewers were happy to option him to Triple-A, but only after he’d racked up 2.0 WAR keeping the rotation afloat.

Now, things are starting to pick up. Brandon Woodruff is back after a year and a half on the shelf. Jose Quintana is the veteran version of Priester and Patrick. Jacob Misiorowski might be the best of the whole bunch – a flamethrowing monster who answers the hypothetical question of what it would look like if a closer could go for five innings at a time. All of the sudden, Milwaukee’s rotation is an asset instead of a liability.

Meanwhile, the offense is clicking even without contributions from some of their stars. They’ve only produced an aggregate 101 wRC+, but these are the Brewers: They’re the best baserunning team in the majors, and that helps their offense play well above what you’d expect from a simple adding up of hits and outs. They’re probably not going to keep up this pace without Chourio and Contreras improving, but then again, I’d bet on those two to rebound.

This isn’t magical. It isn’t some unprecedented fluke. This is what the Brewers do. They stack baserunning and defense. They build their offense around that blazing speed, and stock their rotation with pitchers who give their fielders a chance to shine. It sounds too simple to work; yet every year, they piece it together. Milwaukee is more than just a reminder that there’s more to baseball than pitching and hitting – but I have to tell you, this organization is very good at giving people that reminder.

3. Garrett Crochet’s Pursuit of a Full Year
I loved the Garrett Crochet trade for the Red Sox, and I loved the Crochet extension for both the pitcher and the team. I love that Boston is letting him work deep into games instead of babying him all year. But even with all of that, I never thought he’d make a run at 200 innings.

I can hardly believe that this crazy fact is true: Garrett Crochet leads the majors in innings pitched. This isn’t some trick of an extra start or a well-aligned off day. He’s just throwing 6 1/2 innings per start now. I get it. He’s a big, strong guy. But Crochet came into 2025 with exactly three starts in his whole career of that length or longer. He made a full 32 starts last year and only reached 146 innings, an average of 4 1/2 innings per start.

If he makes every start the rest of the way, he’ll end the year with roughly the same number of major league innings pitched that he tallied from 2020 through 2024. That shouldn’t feel so likely. It shouldn’t seem so obvious. But Crochet is making it look easy, and when you watch the guy pitch, it just makes sense. He’s huge, tall and muscular, the kind of frame that screams “power pitcher.” He’s economical on the mound and his delivery looks simple and repeatable. If you put what you knew about Crochet before this year out of your head and simply watched him, you wouldn’t find any of this particularly strange.

But we do know all that history. We know that the White Sox didn’t let Crochet pitch longer than four innings in a start after the beginning of July last year. We know that he wasn’t willing to commit to starting in the playoffs without signing a contract extension. It feels a little tenuous, even if nothing looks visibly wrong. And that makes watching his pursuit even more enjoyable, at least for me. I’m not worried about his durability any more than I am with any other pitcher. And yet, when he succeeds, I get a little extra enjoyment from knowing how unlikely this felt a year ago.

The Red Sox are in playoff position at the moment, and that’s even more incentive to let Crochet cook. They’d be an intriguing team to watch even without the subplot of Crochet’s workload; they have too many outfielders and not enough infielders, but both of those situations are more complicated than they initially sound because all of those players are fascinating. But when Crochet starts, you get all of that and the chance to see a modern marvel, the pitcher who was only fragile because they told him to be. He has now cast off those chains.

4. The Bunt Hit Race
Oh, you like home run races? Me too. Cal Raleigh against Aaron Judge against Shohei Ohtani for the title of boppingest bopper? It’s gonna be great. But there’s a closer race going on right now, too. And just like the home run race, last year’s leader is in the mix for a repeat. That’s right: The bunt single leaderboard is crowded at the top:

Jacob Young paced baseball with 11 bunt hits last year. He did so as the embodiment of speed and defense: Gold Glove-caliber range in center, 97th percentile sprint speed, and three homers in 521 plate appearances. He slugged only .331 last year, but managed an 85 wRC+ thanks to a knack for getting hit by pitches and those wonderful bunts. And while he isn’t getting hit so frequently in 2025 – only twice, as compared to 12 times last year – the bunts are coming just as freely as always. Opponents play Young to bunt. It just doesn’t matter:

They play great defenders to stop him. That doesn’t always work either:

The biggest threat to Young’s bunt hit totals, coming into the year, seemed to be his own teammates. Dylan Crews looks like a center fielder long term, and if he had hit the ground running this season, the team probably would have put there sooner rather than later. But Crews started slow, and then he got hurt, which means that Young is the everyday starter with no replacement in sight. Now he can bunt to his heart’s content, and he’s doing just that: His 19 in-play bunts lead the majors.

It won’t be easy to take the title, though. Kyle Isbel has an everyday center fielder role of his own and as much license to bunt as Young. He’s the big side of a platoon, which would theoretically limit his at-bats, but he’s been healthy all year and thus has accumulated more plate appearances than Young anyway. He’s also a much better hitter than Tyler Tolbert, his current platoon partner, which means the Royals frequently use Isbel as a pinch hitter even when he doesn’t start. And like Young, he goes for bunts even if the defense plays him that way:

These two titans of bunting – first and second in attempts, tied for first in hits – have company at the top. TJ Friedl doesn’t quite fit the archetype, though. He’s a center fielder, sure, but where Young and Isbel bat ninth, Friedl leads off. He’s slashing .276/.368/.406 this year, good for a 117 wRC+ even in hitter-friendly Cincinnati. When Young and Isbel bunt, they’re doing so without a lot of other good options. Friedl has a double-digit walk rate and more homers than Young has extra-base hits.

When Friedl bunts, the defense is generally caught at least slightly off guard. That’s why he does it; it’s less a matter of necessity and more about the element of surprise. The O’s were completely flat-footed on this high-percentage play:

Oh, and Friedl isn’t the only one coming for the title. What bunt race would be complete without Victor Scott II? He’s fallen back to earth hard after a hot start – 113 wRC+ through May 23, 53 wRC+ since. His bunts have dried up, too: He has only one bunt base hit since the start of June. That one, though, shows you why he’s still a threat to take the crown:

That wasn’t a great bunt. Everyone in the stadium knew it was happening. No one fumbled the ball or mixed up an assignment. Scott was comfortably safe anyway. He’s just that fast.

I’m fairly certain that the winner of the bunt base hit title will garner less attention than the winner of the home run race. That’s fair, honestly: Home runs are a lot more important to winning baseball games than bunts. But I love the chaos that comes with a bunt, whether successful or unsuccessful, so I’m going to keep watching this leaderboard. May the best bunter – or at least, the guy who tries most frequently — win.

5. Watching James Wood
I know, I know. Two items about the Nationals? They’re one of the worst teams in baseball. But the heart wants what it wants, and mine wants to watch the D.C. nine. Young’s bunts are nice when he pulls them off, but bunt singles are rare even for the successful practitioner. The real appeal of watching the Nats is that you get to see a generational talent figuring out how to dominate baseball in real time.

James Wood was an interesting but speculative prospect when the Nats acquired him in the 2022 Juan Soto trade, only a year after the Padres had drafted him in the second round. He promptly dominated the minors so thoroughly that Washington promoted him to the majors last season after only 231 Triple-A plate appearances. When you hit .353/.463/.595, there just isn’t that much to prove. And since reaching the big leagues at 21, he’s only continued his torrid play.

If any 22-year-old posted a 152 wRC+ for a half-season, landing him among the top 20 players in the game by WAR, that would be noteworthy. But Wood isn’t some garden variety top prospect. He’s a physical specimen, a 6-foot-7 alien sent from the future to conquer baseball. He looks like he’s figured out a new, different way to play baseball while the rest of his team tries the old methods.

Wood’s power is beyond thunderous. Even the great Pete Crow-Armstrong can’t retreat quickly enough when Wood puts one over his head:

When he hits them with a bit more loft than that, it’s fireworks time:

Something about watching Wood invites magical thinking. Could he be prime Aaron Judge in a few years? He certainly looks the part. Could he walk 20% of the time? He’s 15th in the majors in walk rate already, and no one else in the top 30 is under the age of 25. His sense of the zone is precocious, in other words. Could he be an elite outfield defender while doing it? He’s improved markedly by every defensive system and by the eye test. Could he hit 60 homers while doing all of that? I mean, sure, have you seen the size of this guy?

If you, like me, are always looking for the next sensation, Wood is your guy. Elly De La Cruz? He’s great, but he’s so 2024. Oneil Cruz? That ship has sailed. Fernando Tatis Jr., even? Fun, but not transformative. Wood is the kind of player who doesn’t come around very often, the type of guy who lets you imagine things you’ve never seen before transpiring on the field. He’s already so good, and he’s still improving at such a rapid clip. Watching what’s happened to the Nats is a reminder that rebuilding is hard. Watching Wood is a reminder that anything is possible.