What If The Season Started a Month Ago?

Remember the halcyon days of April? The season had just kicked off. Aaron Judge was bad. Alec Bohm was one of the hottest hitters in baseball; Colt Keith was the worst. Blake Snell couldn’t buy an out. The Cubs led the NL Central. The White Sox… okay, the White Sox have been bad all year, but my point is that we ascribe outsize importance to the first month of the season as it’s happening.

Bohm was hitting so well that it felt like he was a completely different hitter. Since May 1, he’s been almost exactly the same as his prior career self. Snell figured things out. Judge obviously did too. But there was also signal in that first month. Bobby Witt Jr.’s breakout was center stage. Juan Soto and Gunnar Henderson set the tone for their impressive campaigns. The key to interpreting early-season results is to let a bunch of ideas in, ideas suggested by that first month, but to be willing to discard them quickly if they turn out to be flashes in the pan.

In that spirit, I’m about to get breathlessly excited about some post-All-Star break statistics. Some of what’s gone on in the last month won’t surprise you – Witt, Soto, and Judge are absolutely incandescent. Chris Sale is on his way to a Cy Young. The Brewers are cruising to an NL Central title. All of those things have mostly been true all year, so seeing them in the first month of the second half doesn’t feel strange. But there’s other stuff happening too, and the bits that feel shocking now but would have seemed normal if they’d taken place in April are what I’m focusing on today.

Rookies Are Dominant
Jackson Merrill is a power-hitting monster, with a .330/.355/.649 line that’s leading the best team in baseball, the mighty San Diego Padres. Jackson Chourio isn’t far behind, hitting .340/.375/.575 with speed and defense to boot. Jackson Holliday? The O’s didn’t bring him up on day one, but he’s slashing a respectable .258/.300/.530 after a late entry.

But it’s not just the Jacksons Three burning up the leaderboard. Tyler Fitzgerald has left them all in the dust; his .339/.389/.739 slash line (209 wRC+) and good defense have him third in baseball in wins above replacement. He’s the Rookie of the Year frontrunner, and will be until he slows down. James Wood has a 158 wRC+, and Austin Wells isn’t far behind at 155. Colton Cowser is pursuing a .300/.400/.500 season. Even some of last year’s debuts are getting in on the act; Xavier Edwards, Mark Vientos, and Lawrence Butler are doing great in the early going. We’ve been talking about the extreme gap between the minors and the majors, but prospects are going wild this year. Maybe these kids really can have it all.

Corbin Carroll Is the Truth
Speaking of rookies, last year’s Rookie of the Year winners are picking up right where they left off. Gunnar Henderson and Corbin Carroll are posting nearly identical seasons, with both of them looking like the superstars we thought they’d be. Carroll (148 wRC+, .343 ISO) is one of the best power hitters in the sport, just like we’ve always known. If it weren’t for a fluky .229 BABIP, he might be among the league leaders, but he’s 48% above average despite that. Henderson is a mere 44% above average, but both have been awesome.

Carroll’s ascent is just common sense after his superlative 2023 campaign. We’ve always known he has a shocking ability to generate power despite his small stature, but his speed is doing a lot of work too. He doesn’t have a single double in the second half, but that’s because he keeps stretching them into triples; he’s hit five already. Defensive metrics aren’t in love with his work out in left field, but it’s a small sample, and his speed makes it likely that he’ll turn the corner there.

Not every arrow is pointing straight up, to be fair. Carroll is benefiting from a lift-and-pull approach at the plate, so he’s already maxing out his talent somewhat. He probably won’t keep averaging 3.5 bases per extra-base hit, if only because no one is that good. He’s also getting fairly passive in the strike zone, perhaps hunting pitches to drive, so I want to see a little more. Still, even if this is Carroll’s ceiling, he’s playing at an All-Star clip with some poor batted ball luck.

Injury concerns? None to speak of, really. Carroll’s second on the Diamondbacks in plate appearances, and far from being worn down, it looks like he’s only gaining strength. The only thing that’s holding him back from being talked about as an MVP contender is that his own teammates are playing even better. Ketel Marte, Jake McCarthy, and Joc Pederson all have more WAR than Carroll, and Eugenio Suárez isn’t far behind. This might be one of the best offensive teams in baseball this year.

Blake Snell Can’t Be Stopped
After winning the NL Cy Young last season, Snell found the free agent market surprisingly unkind. No one was interested in signing the two-time award winner to a long deal, so he settled for a pillow contract in San Francisco. He can hit free agency again if he wants to after this year – and he’s definitely going to want to, considering that he’s been the best pitcher in baseball since games started on July 19.

Snell’s arsenal has changed somewhat; he’s using his curveball and changeup almost to the exclusion of his slider. He’s also throwing harder than ever, and is on track for the best swinging strike rate of his career. All of his pitches look great, in fact; our models think every single one is at or near a career-best for stuff. He’s also reined in his issues with walks; he still loves to nibble around the strike zone, but he’s done it so adroitly that he’s on pace for a career-low walk rate anyway.

What a wild time we live in that one of the best pitchers in baseball found no market at all. After this dominant performance, though, I’m sure that history won’t repeat itself this offseason. What is Snell going to do, post a five-start stretch with a 10.42 ERA? Unthinkable — just don’t look too hard at his actual start to the season.

The Red Sox Need a New Plan
The Red Sox have asked their starters to throw fewer fastballs than ever, and they’re getting hammered. Kutter Crawford has been the worst pitcher in baseball by a comical margin since the break. His 4.30 HR/9 should give you a good idea of what’s going on – he can’t keep the ball in the park to save his life. He’d be out of the rotation if the team were deeper, but simply put, they don’t have any other options.

Red Sox starters have a gruesome 5.00 ERA since the break. Their FIP? An even worse 5.34. They’re in the middle of the pack in terms of strikeout and walk rate, but their elevated use of soft pitches has translated into 17 homers surrendered against Boston starters’ secondary pitches, the most in the majors.

Nick Pivetta is getting shelled. Tanner Houck has a 14.3% strikeout rate – yikes! James Paxton is hurt already, and Cooper Criswell probably isn’t the answer. We all knew the Red Sox were going to have to come up with something creative to get their rotation working, but whatever they’re trying right now isn’t working. And there’s no help coming from the bullpen, either; Boston’s relievers have an aggregate 6.93 ERA so far. So much for reinforcements.

The NL West Is Where It’s At
Just like we all predicted, there’s one dominant division in baseball this year, but it’s not the one you might think. The NL West has four teams playing at a .567 or better clip, led by the Padres and their outrageous 21-6 record, and Arizona isn’t far behind at 21-8. The Dodgers are 18-11 and surely the class of the division, but they just can’t keep up with the scalding hot up-and-comers.

Even the Rockies might be better this year. They’re 12-16, but some of that is because they have to play their division rivals so often; they’re 5-11 against the division and 7-5 against everyone else. If they got to play less imposing opposition, maybe we’d be talking about them as a surprise Wild Card team, though their underlying metrics still look iffy.

Even without them, though, this division looks like the best in baseball. Despite a few stars missing time, the Dodgers are clicking. The Giants are up to their usual blend of pitching and defense, though Patrick Bailey’s -17 wRC+ suggests that he might not be the long-term answer behind the plate. Plus, the Padres are doing all of this without Fernando Tatis Jr., so their ceiling might be even higher.

The White Sox Are the Worst Team in Baseball
Okay fine, not everything has changed. There’s no need to sugarcoat it; this is one of the worst teams in a long time. The White Sox are an unbelievable 3-25 since the break, and they’ve been outscored by 83 runs in those 28 games, which means they’re losing by three runs a night. It’s hard to wrap your head around how bad that is, but I can give you a few generalizations that might help.

The team is hitting .218/.265/.342, good for the worst OBP and the worst SLG across the majors. Luis Robert Jr., theoretically their best player, is striking out 44.5% of the time and walking 2.7% of the time on his way to a 40 wRC+. The closest thing to a bright spot is Andrew Vaughn and his 106 wRC+. This is just an absolute mess of an offense.

The pitching side of things might even be worse. White Sox starters have a 5.68 ERA, a 5.80 FIP, and a 5.56 xFIP. They have the lowest strikeout rate of any starting rotation and the highest walk rate. And the team’s relievers might somehow be worse – they’ve put up -0.7 WAR and are walking 13% of opponents, a number that’s hard to fathom.

Truthfully, this might be the worst team ever. When you start with a club that is both bad and thin, then trade away many of the most valuable contributors and lose some pitching depth to injury, you get a squad that would look more at home in Triple-A than the majors. And if you’ll forgive my breaking the conceit of the article for a second, it’s not just the last month of the season, either. The White Sox were tracking to be one of the worst teams in history before the break, and as I mentioned, they’ve gone 3-25 since then. Let that sink in for a bit. That’s the most striking one-month datapoint I’ve seen, even in a sea of good ones.