The Ringer - MLB Midseason 20182018-07-20T07:55:40-04:00http://www.theringer.com/rss/stream/173541352018-07-20T07:55:40-04:002018-07-20T07:55:40-04:00The 2018 MLB Playoff Race Doesn’t Have to Be Boring
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<p>For the first time in the four-wild-card era, more than half of MLB teams at the All-Star break were clearly playoff or non-playoff clubs. Here’s why that doesn’t have to spell a boring finish.</p> <p id="qEBwd7">On the eve of Opening Day, one <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2018/01/29/scott-boras-non-competitive-cancer-ruining-baseball/1074755001/">frequent</a> <a href="http://www.latimes.com/sports/mlb/la-sp-baseball-tanking-20180201-story.html">refrain</a> about Major League Baseball lamented that the league’s regular season seemed all but decided before it began. The sport was awash with <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/3/14/17117152/superteam-roster-retention-astros">superteams</a> and <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/3/21/17145986/tanking-hope-and-faith-cubs-astros-white-sox">tanking teams</a>, and the small class of could-be competitors teetering between the two camps didn’t appear up to the task of keeping fans invested for 162 games. Not enough clubs were poised to contend. </p>
<p id="avMq20">Then a funny thing happened: The season <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/4/17/17246374/yankees-indians-astros-dodgers-cubs-nationals-playoff-picture-changes">didn’t start</a> the way it was supposed to. As late as <a href="http://mlb.com/mlb/standings/index.jsp#20180419">April 19</a>, not one of the sport’s six preseason-projected division favorites occupied first place. Since then, though, some order has been restored: As the second half starts, the Nationals and Yankees are the only preseason favorites that aren’t leading their respective divisions, and the Yankees—who were only slight favorites over Boston to begin with—look like locks for the top AL wild-card slot if they can’t catch up to the Red Sox.</p>
<p id="yFDSUe">Even so, there are plenty of spots still up in the air. The Yankees and Red Sox, Cubs and Brewers, Phillies, Braves, and Nationals, and Dodgers and Diamondbacks are all embroiled in battles for first. The only division with a margin of more than five games between the teams in first and second is the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/6/27/17510380/al-central-historically-bad-baseball-divisions">historically horrible</a> AL Central, where the Indians—powered by a pair of <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/18/17585450/cleveland-indians-war-pace-jose-ramirez-francisco-lindor-babe-ruth-lou-gehrig">slick-fielding, heavy-hitting infielders</a> and bolstered by a <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/19/17591480/brad-hand-cleveland-indians-san-diego-padres-francisco-mejia-adam-cimber">Thursday trade</a> for late-inning relief help—are up 7.5 and will soon see double digits. And thanks to Oakland’s <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/19/17590118/oakland-athletics-seattle-mariners-american-league-playoff-race">recent surge</a>, the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/6/13/17458024/seattle-mariners-al-west-playoff-odds-team-luck">run-differential-defying</a> Mariners are only three games up in the fight for the AL’s second wild-card slot, while the NL wild-card chase is a complete cluster. That’s a formula for more intrigue than the preseason doomsayers foresaw. </p>
<p id="rsJoNz">There’s a stat we can use to quantify the closeness of the standings: the Hope and Faith Index (HFI), which was <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/how-much-hope-and-faith-is-in-major-league-baseball/">created</a> by <em>Hardball Times</em> author Gerald Schifman after the 2016 season. The HFI measures the distance of every team that’s not currently in playoff position from the closest playoff spot then sums those differences and divides by the number of teams in the league. The higher the resulting number, the further from the playoffs the trailers tend to be. Thus far, the HFI actually aligns with worries about a non-competitive playoff race, showing a sharp spike this season compared to previous All-Star breaks in the four-wild-card era.</p>
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<p id="ZUKWLj">As Schifman observes via email, though, that increase is attributable “in no small part to the Orioles and Royals, who have the two biggest deficits at the break in the two-WC era.” As dismaying as the Orioles’ and Royals’ 30-game deficits in the wild-card race must be to Baltimore and Kansas City fans, respectively—although on the bright side, the Royals are a mere 25 back in the Central—those two scale-breaking sinkholes skew the state of the standings as expressed by the HFI. The O’s and the Royals would be equally out of it even if they were half as far from contention, so the fact that they’re as deep in the hole as a prisoner serving <em>consecutive </em>life sentences doesn’t have much bearing on the excitement that the stretch run has in store. </p>
<p id="t9ukG6">The other issue with the HFI is that a team’s distance from the closest playoff spot at midseason doesn’t always accurately reflect its odds of ending up in that spot come October. The Nationals and Pirates may both be roughly five games out of a playoff spot, but based on what we thought about the quality of those two teams coming into the season—Washington was a <a href="https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/odds/?maxdate=2018-03-29">projected first-place finisher</a>, while Pittsburgh was slated for fourth—they <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/how-best-to-predict-the-seasons-second-half/">aren’t quite comparable threats</a>. Similarly, the Dodgers are only half a game up on the Diamondbacks in the NL West, but in light of their superior roster—augmented this week by the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/18/17584734/what-does-mannywood-2-0-mean-for-the-dodgers">acquisition of Manny Machado</a>—that race seems less like a toss-up than the standings alone would suggest. </p>
<p id="6ISuS6">Forward-looking projections, unlike the backward-looking HFI, can account for team talent as well as what the standings say. So a better way to assess how suspenseful the second half is likely to be, compared to previous seasons that featured the current playoff format, is by consulting the <em>Baseball Prospectus</em> <a href="https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/odds/">playoff odds</a>, which are available back to 2012, when the playoff field expanded from eight to 10 teams.</p>
<p id="YKvQyY">There’s more than one way to evaluate a playoff race, but by most projection-based measures, this year’s race looks tighter than last year’s and not terribly out of line with those of some pre-2017 seasons. Let’s start with a snapshot of each race at the same point in each season. The chart below displays the 10 midseason playoff favorites’ odds of winning divisions or wild cards at each All-Star break since 2012. Blue diamonds represent division favorites, while red squares represent likely wild-card teams.</p>
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<p id="Vr6c8X">In some years, the plotted points are more compressed, reflecting competitive parity in the division races, wild-card races, or both. Other years feature a lot of locks, with plots pointed close to the top of the scale. At last year’s All-Star break, for instance, there were already four teams that had at least 90 percent odds of winning their divisions: the Astros, Nationals, Dodgers, and Indians, all of which wound up with titles. This year, there are only two: the Astros and Indians again. </p>
<p id="iabHxd">The blue and red lines on the graph show the average odds of victory for all of each season’s division leaders and wild-card leaders, respectively, while the teal line lumps all 10 together. The takeaway: This year’s division races are less decided than last year’s and roughly on par with 2016’s, although there does seem to be a trend toward less intensely contested divisions in the past few years, maybe because teams have realized the risks of building up to confront a <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/baseballs-best-teams-are-too-damn-good/">stacked division favorite</a> when the loser faces the prospect of a play-in game at best. The 2018 wild-card races are less decided than last year’s and 2013’s, while the overall security of the 10 current playoff favorites is lower than last year’s and approximately in line with 2015’s and 2013’s. </p>
<p id="mQSy5m">The critique one could make about the 2018 playoff field is that while there’s plenty of intrigue at the top, the breadth of the battlefield is a little lacking. The graph below shows the annual number of divisions whose favorites are at least 85 percent likely to prevail, as well as the number of wild-card contenders with at least a 15 percent shot to emerge with a win. This year’s wild cards are closely contested, but the scrum of plausible victors isn’t quite as crowded as it was in most years prior to 2017.</p>
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<p id="OkQRoi">In part, that’s because there are more teams than usual essentially sitting this season out. The graph below shows the number of teams at the All-Star break in each season that have looked like shoo-ins for <em>some </em>playoff position—without specifying whether it’s a division championship or a wild card—or eliminated from contention for all practical purposes.</p>
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<p id="hr0efj">According to <em>BP</em>, 18 of this season’s teams have either a higher than 95 percent chance or a lower than 5 percent chance of making the playoffs one way or another. That makes this the first time in the four-wild-card era that more than half the teams at the All-Star break were already designated with near certainty as playoff or non-playoff clubs.</p>
<p id="8zghBw">In other words, whether this year’s playoff races are shaping up to be bad or good depends on what one wants out of a stretch run. If the goal is to squeeze as many teams into the playoff picture as possible, this season’s second half probably won’t deliver; the teams that are out of it have made damn sure that they won’t be back in. But if the mission is to promote races that come down to the wire, 2018 is shaping up to finish a lot like multiple years in baseball’s recent past. And just <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/10/6/16433238/year-of-no-flukes">like last year</a>, we’re in for an especially strong playoff field, particularly in the top-heavy AL.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="Z4AuQx">In the long run, it’s probably better for baseball from a spectator perspective to have more teams in the hunt and more fan bases engaged. (Attendance is down <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2018-misc.shtml#attendance::none">5.8 percent</a> relative to the same point last season, and the unusual number of non-competitive clubs could be one reason why.) But the current arrangement of rebuilders and superteams isn’t likely to last, if only because a teardown takes a team only so far when there’s a long line for last place. In the coming seasons, some of the superteams will slip, some of the rebuilders will blossom, and the sport will start looking less stratified. In the meantime, the quality of the races will compensate for the quantity of contenders. Yes, this season’s stretch run stands out. But that doesn’t mean that it has to be boring.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/20/17594326/mlb-playoff-race-small-fieldBen Lindbergh2018-07-20T06:20:01-04:002018-07-20T06:20:01-04:00The 2018 MLB Midseason Awards
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<p>Mike Trout is good (shocker), Jacob deGrom deserves two awards, and the NL has an MVP mess that may be even more difficult to predict than which of the league’s teams will make the playoffs </p> <p id="Y491Tk"><em>It’s not technically the halfway point of the MLB season, but as someone who tends to eat lunch late to shorten the second half of the workday, I find the All-Star break to be a perfect time to sit back and reflect. The season doesn’t end today, but if it did, here’s who I’d choose for each of the eight major awards, and why:</em></p>
<h3 id="sCPm5U">AL MVP: Mike Trout, Los Angeles Angels</h3>
<p id="aVkXmn">Of course it’s Trout. He’s leading the AL in OBP, with great power (.606 slugging percentage, 25 HR), speed (15 steals in 16 attempts), and solid defense in center field. What more do you want? Boston’s <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/19/17587474/the-ringer-staffs-2018-mlb-second-half-predictions">Mookie Betts</a> and Cleveland’s José Ramírez are a very close second and third, and both are in the midst of uncommon statistical achievements: Betts’s OPS+ at the break is an even 200—nobody’s had a 200 OPS+ over a full season <a href="http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/4TSIr">since Barry Bonds in 2004</a>. And Ramírez is tied for the AL lead in home runs (29) and is third in stolen bases (20). Nobody’s gone 20-20 at the break <a href="http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/DQJq3">since Matt Kemp in 2011</a>, and Ramírez is in position to become MLB’s first 30-30 man <a href="http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/mqCcf">since Trout and Ryan Braun in 2012</a>. Trout is a little behind the pace on the race to both a 200 OPS+ and 30-30, but he could reach either (or both) with a strong second half.</p>
<p id="g3uIAb">I’m actually starting to feel bad for Betts, who’s been no. 2 to Trout for so long and will probably wind up finishing behind Trout in MVP voting again. At almost any other point in history, Betts would have a case for being the best player in baseball. But since Trout’s in the picture, that’s become a fringe position held only by contrarians and people who sound like background players in <em>Good Will Hunting</em>. In 2016, Betts finished second in AL MVP voting with a 9.7 bWAR season. Setting Trout aside, the last time an American League position player had a season that good was <a href="http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/3x2BB">Alex Rodriguez’s last year in Seattle.</a> </p>
<p id="wxYkHz">Betts’s best path to the MVP award is the one Josh Donaldson took in 2015: get close enough to Trout statistically that award voters have an excuse to shake things up. Having the same MVP every year is boring—even if the same player is obviously the most valuable player every season—as dominant athletes ranging from Mickey Mantle to LeBron James learned firsthand. But Betts will have to keep putting up historic numbers in order to keep that door open, because Trout’s going to put up historic numbers no matter what.</p>
<h3 id="U0hcfL">NL MVP: Jacob deGrom, New York Mets</h3>
<p id="501OlY">There are as many as 10 teams with a chance at making the playoffs in the National League, which is going to make this stretch run chaotic as all get out—and somehow the NL MVP race might be even weirder. By Baseball-Reference WAR, the four most valuable players in the NL are all pitchers, and the eight most valuable position players in baseball are all in the American League. <em>Baseball Prospectus</em>’s six most valuable position players are in the AL, and its three most valuable NL players are all pitchers, though the margin between deGrom, Aaron Nola, and the top NL position player, Freddie Freeman, is so thin as to be irrelevant. </p>
<aside id="Gk9pV1"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The Ringer Staff’s 2018 MLB Second-Half Predictions","url":"https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/19/17587474/the-ringer-staffs-2018-mlb-second-half-predictions"}]}'></div></aside><p id="iNitET">The serious MVP candidates from recent NL seasons just haven’t shown up this year. Bryce Harper and Anthony Rizzo are having down seasons. Corey Seager, Kris Bryant, and Daniel Murphy got hurt. Giancarlo Stanton plays in the American League. Paul Goldschmidt’s been on fire for the past month and a half, but dug himself into a huge hole by hitting .144/.252/.278 in May. Joey Votto and Buster Posey have been good, but not, like, <em>awesome</em>. A league MVP is usually worth eight WAR or more, but we might just not get that kind of season from an NL position player this year. The top performers so far are Lorenzo Cain, Nolan Arenado, and Freeman, all guys who usually show up on MVP ballots somewhere, just generally not toward the top.</p>
<p id="mHvLtM">Given the choice of those three, I’d take Arenado, who’s having the best offensive season of his career and after back-to-back top-five MVP finishes might win on the “he’s been close before, and now he’s due” argument.</p>
<p id="5z70Ma">But I’d feel much better about voting for a pitcher, specifically one of either deGrom or Max Scherzer. Scherzer’s thrown 11 1/3 more innings and has slightly better peripheral numbers, though deGrom’s ERA is more than half a run lower (1.68 to 2.41). Even though Scherzer’s allowing fewer baserunners and striking out more batters, I’ll admit to being a little dazzled by deGrom’s ERA. A 1.68 just looks special, and it is. If deGrom keeps up his current pace, he’ll finish the season with <a href="http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/Xa1AI">the 13th-best ERA+ by a qualified starter in baseball history, and the seventh-best in the past 100 years</a>. There’s time for one of the position players to catch deGrom and Scherzer, but right now, I’d go with a pitcher.</p>
<h3 id="a2xve2">AL Cy Young: Chris Sale, Boston Red Sox</h3>
<p id="idBcbS">It is hilarious that two current Red Sox pitchers have won Cy Young awards and Sale isn’t one of them. His strikeout numbers have been outrageous—in 2017, Sale struck out 12.9 batters per nine innings, the third-highest mark ever for a qualified starter, and this season his K/9 is up to 13.1, which is a rounding error away from Pedro Martínez in 1999 for the second-highest mark ever. (The all-time record is 13.41 K/9, set by Randy Johnson in 2001.) Sale’s career K/9 ratio is 10.8, the highest ever for a starting pitcher with at least 1,000 innings pitched, and even if you lower the innings threshold to 500, <a href="http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/xmNuh">Sale only trails Yu Darvish by a quarter of a strikeout per nine innings</a>.</p>
<p id="sOnds1">Sale leads the AL in ERA and DRA, and he’s second in WHIP. He leads all AL pitchers in bWAR by three-quarters of a win, and while Justin Verlander has him beat in WARP, Verlander’s made an extra start. If Sale falters through the season’s second half, you could make a case for Verlander or Trevor Bauer—and Sale might falter. (Remember how in mid-May it looked like three-fifths of the Astros’ rotation would finish with an ERA below 2.00? Great pitching seasons are fragile things.) After Verlander and Bauer, Corey Kluber’s close behind based on run prevention and innings pitched, but a step behind in strikeouts, as is Luis Severino. </p>
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<h3 id="fI4JY7">NL Cy Young: deGrom</h3>
<p id="VAJmbO">The phrase “in the conversation” gets tossed around a lot in awards analysis. Usually, it’s sports-talk radio code for “we know which player is best, but we’ve got three hours and 55 minutes more of this show to fill, so who else can we strain to make an argument for?” If you think a player deserves the MVP or Cy Young, you say so. If you don’t actually believe that and are just talking for the sake of talking, you say he’s “in the conversation.” </p>
<p id="FyXCF0">In the case of NL Cy Young, if we’re talking about who should <em>actually</em> win, there are really only three pitchers “in the conversation”: deGrom, Scherzer, and Aaron Nola. Among qualified NL starters, these three pitchers rank first, second, and third (in various combinations) in ERA, WARP, and bWAR. They rank first, second, and fourth in innings pitched, with San Diego’s Clayton Richard third, and first, third, and fourth in opponent batting average, with Atlanta’s Mike Foltynewicz second. And even among those three, I’d narrow the real choices down to deGrom and Scherzer, because while Nola is among the leaders in all of those key categories, he doesn’t lead in any of them. He doesn’t have one spectacular stat to point to, like Scherzer’s strikeouts or deGrom’s ERA. I would, as I said in the NL MVP section, vote for deGrom, but Scherzer’s case is just as reasonable.</p>
<p id="7gInTk">Despite the existence of a clear top tier of three NL pitchers, the actual ballot goes five deep, which means that Arizona’s Zack Greinke and Patrick Corbin will also get into The Conversation, as will Foltynewicz and possibly even Colorado’s Kyle Freeland, who’s pitched well in tough circumstances, despite not striking anyone out.</p>
<h3 id="qeq5DT">AL Rookie of the Year: Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles Angels</h3>
<p id="V59oVu">As of right now, Ohtani’s been the most valuable rookie in baseball, but I expect that to change by the end of the year because even if he continues to hit at his current pace (.283/.365/.522), it’s uncertain what impact, if any, he’s going to make as a pitcher down the stretch. If Ohtani, who on Thursday was cleared to start a throwing program after suffering a UCL injury, ends up making 15 starts (he has nine already), he’ll probably be named Rookie of the Year. But if he doesn’t contribute as a pitcher, that opens the door for Gleyber Torres, who’s putting up about the same offensive numbers (.294/.350/.555) but at second base, not DH, which makes his offensive contributions more valuable. And by virtue of playing in New York, Torres might be the only other rookie of note with a fan and media following that approaches Ohtani’s.</p>
<p id="UgK1LI">Rays first baseman Jake Bauers and Astros catcher Max Stassi (who is somehow still rookie-eligible despite having appeared in at least one Astros game every year since 2013—talk about unbelievable achievements) have played very well in relatively limited action, but at this point, anyone but Ohtani or Torres winning AL Rookie of the Year would be a surprise.</p>
<h3 id="e9lzcV">NL Rookie of the Year: Seranthony Dominguez, Philadelphia Phillies</h3>
<p id="gkZqPN">The current leader in WAR among NL rookies on both FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference is Brian Anderson, whom I bet you’ve never heard of. There are three reasons for that: First, he plays in Miami, which means nobody’s ever seen him play. Second, he doesn’t have one exceptional skill or attribute to point to, like Juan Soto’s power or age. Anderson is hitting .288/.363/.429, which is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTKgyZZP5KQ">the Sheldon Willis of batting lines</a>: He’s got to like you, and then forget you the moment you’ve left his sight. Third, his name is Brian Anderson.</p>
<p id="uWIVrf">In the past 25 years, there have been three MLB players named Brian Anderson. There have also been three minor leaguers named Brian Anderson, a big leaguer named Bryan Anderson, and three more minor leaguers named Ryan Anderson. One of the previous Brian Andersons, the ex-Diamondbacks pitcher who once missed a start <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1998/jul/28/sports/sp-7819">because his arm got stiff during a 20-minute cab ride to the ballpark</a>, is now doing color commentary on Tampa Bay Rays broadcasts. But he’s not to be confused with the Brian Anderson who does play-by-play for the Milwaukee Brewers and certain national games on TBS. <em>That </em>Brian Anderson never played in the big leagues.</p>
<p id="AwP6b8">The point is, Brian Anderson the Younger has a good statistical case for Rookie of the Year, but he’s not going to win unless he changes his name to something more memorable. Among position players, Cardinals outfielder Harrison Bader (.272/.340/.413, nine stolen bases) has been solid, and Reds outfielder Jesse Winker is walking more than he’s striking out, which is extremely cool.</p>
<p id="0fOkoX">But for me, this is a two-horse race between Soto and Phillies reliever Seranthony Dominguez. (You know who has a memorable name? Seranthony Dominguez.) Soto isn’t in the headlines every night anymore, but he’s still hitting .301/.411/.517. And the reason he isn’t up near the top of the rookie WAR leaderboards is because he’s only played in 51 games (compared to 97 for Anderson) and because he’s getting killed by the advanced defensive metrics, which are notoriously unreliable, particularly in small samples and particularly for corner outfielders. </p>
<p id="MkpCc7">Right now, Baseball-Reference has Soto at seven runs below average in 51 games, which prorates to about minus-20 through a full season. Soto is not Mookie Betts, but Carlos Lee on crutches wouldn’t put up a minus-20 in left field. I expect that Soto will win this award, and everyone will walk away happy.</p>
<p id="nHdhjZ">Even so, I’d vote for Dominguez instead. Every so often we have a conversation about what it’d take for a reliever to win the Cy Young, since relievers pitch so few innings they’ll never lead the league in WAR. Dominguez, a reliever who’s thrown just 33 2/3 innings, is leading all rookie pitchers, AL and NL, in fWAR, and he trails only Oakland’s Lou Trivino in bWAR. Dominguez has a 1.60 ERA and nine saves against six walks, and he’s pitching in incredibly high-leverage innings. Dominguez is third among rookie pitchers in WPA, trailing Arizona’s Yoshihisa Hirano and Trivino, both of whom pitch in much lower-leverage roles and have thrown more innings. Dominguez’s gmLI (the average leverage index when he enters the game) is not only highest among rookies, it’s fourth-highest among all relievers. </p>
<p id="C8N6Y8">Dominguez, a multi-inning stopper, <em>is</em> Philadelphia’s bullpen. Closer Héctor Neris got himself demoted after his ERA neared 7.00, lefty killer Adam Morgan and veteran setup man Tommy Hunter have both blown up in big moments, and free-agent signing Pat Neshek missed the first three months of the season due to injury. The Phillies, having just missed out on Manny Machado, are rumored to be interested in veteran relievers like Zach Britton because Dominguez has been forced to hold the roof up pretty much all on his own. </p>
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<cite>Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images</cite>
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<h3 id="2qebvr">AL Manager of the Year: Alex Cora, Boston Red Sox</h3>
<p id="zfDkKZ">The only constant of Manager of the Year voting is that we don’t know enough about the inner workings of the clubhouse to make informed choices. That’s why Manager of the Year is usually a proxy for “team we didn’t think was good at the start of the year but turned out to be good anyway.” By that logic, Seattle’s Scott Servais feels like the frontrunner.</p>
<p id="BQws6f">But I’d go in a different direction. Each of the past two years, the Red Sox won 93 games, but capitulated in the first round of the playoffs. So Boston fired manager John Farrell last offseason and replaced him with Cora, a first-time manager. And lo and behold, the Sox are on pace to win 112 games, and as far as I know, there’s been no clubhouse-destroying drama. I have no idea how much of that is Cora’s doing, but from a results perspective, it feels like you can’t ask for much more from a manager.</p>
<h3 id="cLkOro">NL Manager of the Year: Dave Roberts, Los Angeles Dodgers</h3>
<p id="OqUwK0">All but six of the teams in the American League are bad. Of those six exceptions, the Astros, Red Sox, Indians, and Yankees were all expected to be really good, which makes it tough to find a compelling Manager of the Year narrative. Not so in the National League, which is wide open on all fronts. </p>
<p id="X9EuHJ">There are three managers with a shot to take young teams to the playoffs for the first time after their franchises’ extended absences: Milwaukee’s Craig Counsell, Atlanta’s Brian Snitker, and Philadelphia’s Gabe Kapler. Kapler is the flashiest and manages in the biggest market, and just like in state and local elections, name recognition matters in the Manager of the Year race. But even though the Phillies are successful now, Kapler is still polarizing, and he’s still shaking off <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/4/12/17230754/gabe-kapler-wildest-decisions-phillies">the bad first impression he made as a manager.</a> Jim Riggleman also deserves a lot of credit for taking over a Reds team that started the season 3-15 under Bryan Price and going 40-38 in his first three months on the job, but Manager of the Year winners tend to come from playoff teams, and a 40-38 pace down the stretch isn’t getting Cincinnati to the postseason this year.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="D3LjNW">So I’d go with Dave Roberts. After last season’s 1-16 stretch and a heartbreaking World Series loss, the Dodgers’ 16-26 start to the season should’ve broken them, particularly considering that during that time, many of the team’s cornerstone players—Kenley Jansen, Clayton Kershaw, Justin Turner—were hurt, ineffective, or both. In spite of all that, the team has turned it around and is in first place in the NL West at the All-Star break. Roberts, who’s been in the Manager of the Year conversation every year since taking over the Dodgers (and won in 2016), seems like a very calm, reassuring figure. He’s level-headed without being aloof, which feels like exactly the kind of leader you’d want to bring a club out of a tailspin. You could argue that, unlike Riggleman, Roberts was at the helm when his club dug its hole, and therefore shouldn’t get as much credit for digging them out. But it would have been very easy to let the first six weeks of the season turn into a death spiral, and Roberts didn’t let that happen.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/20/17594246/2018-mlb-midseason-awards-jacob-degrom-mike-trout-shohei-ohtaniMichael Baumann2018-07-19T11:44:58-04:002018-07-19T11:44:58-04:00The Oakland A’s Are Giving Us an AL Playoff Race
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<p>The newest AL contender is winning with an underappreciated lineup, dominant bullpen, and close-game luck—in other words, they’re chasing the Mariners using Seattle’s own formula</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="dQjedp">The newest, scariest competitor for the American League’s second wild-card spot should look familiar to Seattle fans anxious about the encroachers. They hit like the Mariners, after all, and they pitch kind of like the Mariners, and they win close games a lot like the Mariners, but—surprise!—they’re not actually the Mariners. The Oakland A’s are making a run at Seattle’s playoff spot, and they’re building momentum with a formula that looks a lot like the one Seattle used to stake a first-half lead.</p>
<p id="dQiPDM">The reality of an AL race at all is somewhat of a surprise, given how far ahead the five currently positioned playoff teams were just a couple of weeks ago. As recently as July 5, Seattle reached a season-high <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds?date=2018-07-05&dateDelta=">88.3 percent chance</a> of making the playoffs, according to FanGraphs projections, at a time when the other four AL contenders (Boston, New York, Cleveland, and Houston) were all nestled north of 99 percent. No other AL team was even in double digits.</p>
<p id="sxxHeS">Just two weeks later, though, the Mariners’ hold on the second wild-card spot has loosened, their lead falling from 7.5 games to just three, as Oakland is now just one favorable weekend from catching Seattle. By popular consensus, the A’s were an afterthought before the season—<a href="http://www.espn.com/chalk/story/_/id/22586812/chalk-complete-list-2018-mlb-win-totals-odds-playoffs-division-world-series">Vegas gave</a> them the lowest over/under total and worst playoff odds of any team in the division—but by building on some budding 2017 strengths and capitalizing on a Mariners-style run of good fortune, they’ve been the best team in baseball over the last month and made the AL race fascinating.</p>
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<p id="m8Qfsh">First, on defense, Oakland is a working embodiment of the notion that it’s easier to improve from terrible to decent than from decent to terrific. In 2016, the A’s were likely the worst defensive team in the majors as measured by advanced stats defensive runs saved (30th in the majors) and ultimate zone rating (29th). In 2017, they were again maybe the worst (27th in DRS, 30th in UZR). In 2018, though, the defense has been at least competent, if not an outright strength; at the break, the team ranks 18th in DRS and seventh in UZR.</p>
<p id="keNp81">The most notable reason for this rise is that third baseman Matt Chapman, who made his MLB debut midway through last season, has already ascended to the top of the majors’ defensive hierarchy. Chapman leads all fielders at all positions in both DRS and UZR—made all the more impressive because those are both counting stats and Chapman missed 16 games with a right hand injury—and he looks every bit like peak Manny Machado or Nolan Arenado at the hot corner. Thanks to Chapman’s presence and improvement elsewhere in the infield, the A’s are tied with the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/6/30/17519718/chicago-cubs-defensive-babip-luck">slick-fielding Cubs</a> as the <a href="https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/sortable/index.php?cid=1905970">most effective ground-ball defenses</a> in the majors.</p>
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<p id="u0gTyp">Chapman also has hit better than expected, and he slots into a lineup deep on solid production, if short on star power. Oakland’s only non-pitcher All-Star this year was second baseman Jed Lowrie, who paces the team with a 135 wRC+ but was perhaps the least heralded participant in Tuesday’s exhibition. And the team’s leading home run hitter is Khris Davis, who has been a <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx?playerid=9112&position=DH/OF&statArr=50&legend=1,2&split=base&time=season&ymin=&ymax=&dStatArray=">consistently dependable hitter</a> throughout his career but still carries less name recognition than the other MLB slugger whose name sounds like “Khris Davis.”</p>
<p id="jXc0Vz">Oakland doesn’t have a flawless lineup—Marcus Semien leads the team in plate appearances despite running an 87 wRC+, and Jonathan Lucroy (69 wRC+) has continued his steep, multiyear decline at the plate—but all its pieces put together form an irrepressible group. The top six teams in wRC+ are five division leaders and the Yankees; seventh is the Mariners, and eighth is the A’s. </p>
<p id="i4F9wR">Seattle has a slightly better upper crust than the A’s, with Nelson Cruz besting Davis at DH and All-Stars Mitch Haniger and Jean Segura providing pop ahead of Cruz, but Oakland makes up ground with its depth. Seven Athletics with at least 200 plate appearances have a wRC+ at least 10 percent better than league average; only the Dodgers (eight) have more such players, and the Cubs (also seven), Astros (six), and Yankees (six) round out the top five.</p>
<p id="HdYCln">Like the lineup’s leader, Oakland’s supporting bats are lesser known but no less productive. Matt Olson’s not knocking a home run every other game like he did in the second half last year, but as a decent hitter and <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=1b&stats=fld&lg=all&qual=y&type=1&season=2018&month=0&season1=2018&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=10,d">Gold Glove favorite</a> at first base, he’s still on roughly a three-WAR pace. Stephen Piscotty is hitting .309/.374/.590 since June 1 and has been a <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/pi/shareit/9x7sj">phenomenally clutch batter</a>. And Chad Canha and Mark Pinder are perfectly, archetypally anonymous A’s hitters, so much so that their names are actually Mark Canha and Chad Pinder and it’s unlikely many readers batted an eye at the switch—but the difference doesn’t much matter because they’re both right-handed utility men with identical 120 wRC+ marks. (That means they’re hitting one point better than both Bryce Harper and Cody Bellinger.)</p>
<p id="fEM5DU">The pitchers weave a different story, as Oakland’s staff has been less reliable than reliably haphazard. No-hitter maestro Sean Manaea is the only one of 12 A’s pitchers with a start who has spent the entire season with the big league team. Every other starter has been hurt, in the minors, or both, as have promising young hurlers Jharel Cotton and A.J. Puk, who both underwent Tommy John surgery early in the spring.</p>
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<p id="KjWdnQ">The rotation has been so inconsistent that reliever Yusmeiro Petit has thrown the third-most innings on the team, and closer Blake Treinen is one frame away from moving into the top five. The current rotation includes Brett Anderson, back in Oakland after a half-decade wandering injury-ravaged lands, and Edwin Jackson, now pitching for his 13th team and, thus far, doing quite well with a 2.59 ERA in four starts. The Mariners parallels are evident here as well, with Seattle veteran Wade LeBlanc, one of the craftiest lefties in the stereotyped history of crafty lefties, pitching effectively enough to earn a contract extension earlier this month.</p>
<p id="UzkkiE">Those similarities extend to and really stand out in the bullpen, as each team has capitalized on a stellar back end to excel in close games. In one-run contests, the A’s are 15-8 for the third-best winning percentage in the majors while Seattle, at 26-12, is second. While the Mariners have rather publicly outperformed their Pythagorean record—which is based on run differential—by an MLB-leading 10 games thus far, Oakland is tied for second with a four-game gap.</p>
<p id="t4gP8J">Seattle closer Edwin Díaz has received plenty of attention as the MLB’s saves leader, and it’s warranted: He also leads all relievers in fWAR and ranks third in win probability added. But his counterpart in Oakland has been just as dominant, as Treinen—who, incidentally, has the exact same innings total as Díaz in 2018—places second in fWAR and first in WPA.</p>
<p id="D6YSFA">The closer-setup combination of Treinen and rookie Lou Trivino has received predictably little hype, despite its overwhelming statistical achievements this season. Treinen came to Oakland last season in the trade that sent established relievers Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson to Washington, and he immediately rebounded from a rough 2017 stint in D.C. that left him with a 5.73 ERA through 37 games. Trivino, meanwhile, is a converted starter who was never touted as one of <a href="http://www.thebaseballcube.com/prospects/byTeam.asp?T=21">Oakland’s top 10 prospects</a>, but even that descriptor undersells his anonymity. Earlier this season, <em>SB Nation</em> prospect writer John Sickels <a href="https://www.minorleagueball.com/2018/4/26/17286878/mlb-rookie-profile-lou-trivino-rhp-oakland-athletics">responded to a question</a> from a reader asking, “Pardon the language, but who the **** is Lou Trivino?” with the answer, “Don’t feel bad, I do this stuff for a living and I didn’t know much (anything) about Lou Trivino until about nine months ago when he reached Triple-A.”</p>
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<p id="pG65KW">Yet among 164 qualifying relievers, <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=rel&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2018&month=0&season1=2018&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=16,a">Treinen ranks first</a> in ERA (0.94) and Trivino third (1.22). Those figures will likely regress in the second half—particularly Trivino’s, as he’s benefited from an unsustainable <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=rel&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2018&month=0&season1=2018&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=13,d">strand rate</a> and <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=rel&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2018&month=0&season1=2018&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=12,a">batted-ball luck</a>—but the two right-handers aren’t valuable just because of their run prevention. They also shine with their ability to retain their effectiveness over more than one inning; in 14 appearances each in which they’ve recorded four or more outs, Treinen and Trivino have been just as stifling as a typical elite reliever over a three-out stint.</p>
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<p id="AxH5bN">Overall, Treinen has made 13 appearances of more than one inning when he didn’t allow a run. That’s tied for the third most among all relievers, behind fellow Oakland reliever Petit (15) and Milwaukee’s Josh Hader (14). Trivino, with 12, is tied for fifth. This multi-inning tendency generally separates Oakland from other top bullpens. Nobody from the Yankees has more than nine such appearances, nobody from the Red Sox has more than seven, and Collin McHugh is the only Astro with more than six. As a team, Oakland has 69 this season, tied with the Brewers for the most of any team. Conversely, Seattle, with just 26, has the fewest, with no individual reliever tallying more than five and Díaz managing just one all year.</p>
<p id="5VYxp8">In this area, then, the ability of the A’s and Mariners to get wins is more important than how they get them. And for Seattle fans worried that their team won’t maintain its lead and reach its first postseason since 2001, the fact both contenders are built upon a similar foundation—a solid offense, one reliable lefty starter surrounded by question marks, and lots and lots of close wins—should be heartening; if Seattle is <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/6/13/17458024/seattle-mariners-al-west-playoff-odds-team-luck">doomed to regress</a>, so too should Oakland.</p>
<p id="lOaQNG">In high-leverage situations this season, Mariners hitters have combined for a 130 wRC+—meaning the whole team, in the most important at-bats, has hit like Kris Bryant or Kyle Schwarber. Except Seattle is only tied for first place in this split: Oakland has also delivered a 130 high-leverage wRC+. Meanwhile, the <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=0&type=0&season=2018&month=26&season1=2018&ind=0&team=0,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=16,a">most effective pitching staff</a> in high-leverage situations belongs to Oakland outright; here, Seattle is tied for third place. There’s no reason to expect Seattle’s outrageous performance in clutch situations to last, but there’s no more reason to expect Oakland’s to sustain, either. The A’s are hot now, but no hotter than Seattle was earlier in the season. The Mariners’ three-game cushion, moreover, gives them an edge this far into the season, and the playoff odds reflect that disparity in showing a two-to-one Mariner advantage for the AL’s final playoff spot. </p>
<p id="XXP7wK">But it won’t be easy, with the two teams facing each other in 10 games the rest of the way and, crucially, Oakland seeing the Astros just six more times compared with Seattle’s 13. Oakland’s playoff odds reached a nadir on June 15, when the final loss of a four-game losing streak dropped the team to a 34-36 record and 11-game deficit against the Mariners. In the following month, though, the A’s went an MLB-best 21-6 while Seattle stumbled to a 13-14 mark, and, slowly, Oakland’s odds rose: 5.0 percent on June 19, 15.2 percent on July 9, and, finally, 30.9 percent <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds?date=2018-07-15&dateDelta=">after the last game</a> of the first half. Even with Seattle’s existing advantage in mind, it’s hard not to view that creeping, rising line like a monster about to devour the Mariners’ 17-year dreams.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">help, a monster! <a href="https://t.co/Ee9duvEN4D">pic.twitter.com/Ee9duvEN4D</a></p>— Meg Rowley (@megrowler) <a href="https://twitter.com/megrowler/status/1018660592804958208?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 16, 2018</a>
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<p class="c-end-para" id="an54Ih">Oakland could well stumble down the stretch and leave Seattle unruffled and en route to its first playoff game since Ichiro Suzuki’s rookie year. But it seems more likely that the two teams’ fortunes will rise and fall together, just as their journeys to this point have traversed similar, if not synchronized, paths. Man has <a href="https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/petrarch_159709">no greater enemy</a> than himself, as the Mariners are learning in real time as a team that embodies their greatest strengths chases them down.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/19/17590118/oakland-athletics-seattle-mariners-american-league-playoff-raceZach Kram2018-07-19T06:00:02-04:002018-07-19T06:00:02-04:00The Ringer Staff’s 2018 MLB Second-Half Predictions
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<p>Did someone say Matt Harvey in the World Series???</p> <p id="EMsRQl"><em>The All-Star Game has come and gone, </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/18/17584654/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-2018-mlb-trade-deadline"><em>Manny Machado is off the trading block</em></a><em>, and the second half of the MLB season is officially upon us. Though it looks like the Red Sox, Yankees, and Astros are likely to continue their reign atop baseball’s </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/18/17584866/the-2018-mlb-midseason-power-rankings"><em>power rankings</em></a><em>, we can still make some guesses as to how the rest of the season will finish up. Will we get a Game 163? Who’ll take the MVP crown? And … could it be, is that Matt Harvey’s music?! Here are the </em>Ringer<em> staff’s bold predictions for MLB’s second half.</em></p>
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<h3 id="4thFWH">Neither the Orioles Nor the Royals Will Have MLB’s Worst Second-Half Record</h3>
<p id="Rlz4Ja"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/ben-lindbergh"><strong>Ben Lindbergh</strong></a><strong>:</strong> As baseball gathers its breath before the stretch run, the 27-68 Royals and the 28-69 Orioles sport sub-.290 winning percentages, joining the 2003 Tigers as the <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/tiny/m2SNA">only teams</a> in the past two decades to do that at the All-Star break. Only <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/tiny/9fsPi">three previous teams</a> in the post-war era—the Tigers, the 1962 Mets, and the 1952 Pirates—have finished a full season sub-.300. In short, the Royals and Orioles have been historically terrible, and they’re both nearly locks to downgrade before the trade deadline.</p>
<p id="ypo2fF">Even so, neither one will post the worst record between now and early October. It was just a few months ago that both clubs looked bad, but not abominable. Before the season started, FanGraphs <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds?date=2018-03-28&dateDelta=">projected</a> three teams to post worse records than both the Royals and Orioles: the Marlins, the White Sox, and the Tigers, with the Reds, the Padres, and even the Braves projected to be worse than the Orioles alone. Even now, with the Royals’ and Orioles’ horrible first halves behind them, the projections <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds?date=2018-07-17&dateDelta=">still say</a> that the White Sox and Marlins will be worse in the second half, tabbing the Tigers to tie Baltimore (and narrowly edge out Kansas City) for the third-worst second-half record. And while the Orioles and Royals are set to shed talent over the next two weeks, the other worst-team contenders are also expected to be sellers.</p>
<p id="JopELY">As unlikely as it may seem that any team could be worse than the Royals and Orioles for the rest of this season, we know that second-half projected winning percentage is a <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/how-best-to-predict-the-seasons-second-half/">significantly more accurate predictor</a> of team performance than first-half record. On the other hand, we also know that of <em>The Ringer</em>’s <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/7/13/16078100/2017-second-half-mlb-predictions-shootaround-9e1444a22a71">19</a> <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2016/7/14/16038956/our-surefire-predictions-for-the-mlb-second-half-ec4e172da4d8">previous</a> second-half predictions, only three clearly came true, which means that betting on baseball to defy our expectations may be the safest forecast of all.</p>
<h3 id="jN6927">There Will Be a Play-in or Tiebreaker Game, and It Will Be Exciting</h3>
<p id="cFNrfa"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/zach-kram"><strong>Zach Kram</strong></a><strong>:</strong> Not since 2013, when the Rays beat the Rangers for the American League’s second wild-card spot, has baseball enjoyed a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qQOLHsPYgo">“Game 163”</a>—but it’s come close. In each of the past four seasons, one team has finished just a game out of the second wild-card spot; in 2016, the Cardinals were one win away from forcing a three-way tie with the Mets and Giants. Also since 2013, one division race has been decided by a single game, and four more have been decided by just two. All it takes is a little nudge to push those margins to zero—and the excitement that only single-elimination baseball can provide.</p>
<p id="ZkorJm">Maybe the Yankees will catch the Red Sox to force a tie atop the AL East, or maybe the A’s will chase down the Mariners for a wild-card play-in game. Maybe the chaos that’s taken over the NL won’t abate at all, and the 10 teams within five games of a playoff spot at the All-Star break will all continue to lump together through the stretch run. Will the Braves, Phillies, and Nationals finish in a three-way NL East tie while the Dodgers and Diamondbacks share the Western crown and the Rockies, Giants, Brewers, and Cardinals all tie for wild-card consideration? No, it won’t be that messy (probably, and unfortunately). But a three-way tie isn’t impossible, and at this point, we’re downright due for a two-way split. The wild-card games are dramatic every year; nobody would mind the addition of another high-stakes game to the October calendar.</p>
<h3 id="DWJUZA">Edwin Díaz Will Break the Single-Season Saves Record</h3>
<p id="vNqBSc"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/michael-baumann"><strong>Michael Baumann</strong></a><strong>:</strong> OK! Here’s the math: The Mariners play in a lot of close games; 38 of their 97 contests so far this year have been decided by a single run, and Díaz is a big reason the Mariners have won 26 of those 38. Seattle’s bullpen has had 54 save opportunities this year, the most in baseball. And while manager Scott Servais has worked Díaz hard, throwing him in almost exactly half of Seattle’s games this year, he’s resisted the temptation to extend Díaz into a multi-inning reliever; 45 of those 48 appearances have lasted just one inning. </p>
<p id="yVQ9aR">So we’ve got one of the best closers in the game, pitching a lot, in as traditional a closer’s role as you’ll find, for a club that generates more save opportunities than any other team in baseball. Díaz has 36 saves in 39 chances over 97 games. That’s a shade over a 60-save pace, just shy of Francisco Rodriguez’s single-season record of 62. But he can make up that ground. As the pennant race heats up, Díaz is only going to pitch more. Maybe he won’t blow any saves down the stretch. Maybe the Mariners will take part in the Game 163 Zach Kram predicted, and he’ll pick up the save there. It’s been a while since we’ve had a good, old-fashioned counting-stat chase. This year, Díaz is our best opportunity.</p>
<h3 id="kUyR3a">The Yankees Will Break the Single-Season Home Run Record</h3>
<p id="oFTuMB"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/sean-yoo"><strong>Sean Yoo</strong></a><strong>:</strong> More than two decades ago, the Seattle Mariners hit 264 home runs in a single season. Since then, only the 2005 Texas Rangers, who were four homers shy of tying the record, have come close to that mark. This decade, the two best attempts have come from the 2010 Blue Jays, who knocked 257 dingers, and the 2016 Baltimore Orioles, with 253. The number set by the ’97 Mariners still holds as one of the great unbreakable records in the major leagues, though that may change in the second half of this season.</p>
<p id="3vFXXz">As of the start of the All-Star break, the New York Yankees are sitting at 161 home runs, 27 more than the next-highest team (the Red Sox). Should the Yankees keep up their current pace of about 1.7 home runs per game, they would finish the season with 275 home runs, which would surpass the Mariners record by 11 dingers. </p>
<p id="2u1pmK">The Yankees’ furious pace could slow in the second half if the team encounters a cold streak. But as an optimistic Yankee fan, I’m looking at Giancarlo Stanton’s slow start and Greg Bird’s early-season injuries as signs that production could even increase, and that we will see the Yankees break the single-season home run record. </p>
<h3 id="31eLN0">Matt Harvey Will Pitch in the World Series</h3>
<p id="OupKdW"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/ben-glicksman"><strong>Ben Glicksman</strong></a><strong>:</strong> The Mets traded Matt Harvey to the Reds on May 8, marking the end of an era of Mets fandom that was initially defined by a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20F6GhaAhUU">dominant debut</a>, a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYdwvpoCvac">bloody nose</a>, <a href="https://www.sicovers.com/content/images/thumbs/0004151_the-dark-knight-of-gotham-matt-harvey_500.jpeg">Dark Knight headlines</a>, and <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/5/4/17321336/matt-harvey-new-york-mets-pitcher-designated-for-assignment"><em>no way!</em></a>, and that came to be defined by <a href="https://pagesix.com/2017/05/08/what-matt-harvey-was-doing-the-night-before-his-suspension/">Cinco de Mayo</a>, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2016/7/21/16046080/matt-harvey-mets-post-surgery-photo-ddd3ab3ed897">thoracic outlet syndrome</a>,<em> </em>and a <a href="https://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/03/matt-harvey-bladder-problem-new-york-post-funny-headlines">problem with not knowing how often to pee</a>. Harvey’s rise and fall in New York seems ripped from a Greek tragedy, the tale of a top-10 pick who captured a city’s imagination before being demoted to the bullpen and shipped out of town. You knew the Mets-Harvey relationship was in a bad place when he started offering up <a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/23278540/matt-harvey-loses-spot-new-york-mets-starting-rotation">quotes like this</a>: “On a scale of 1 to 10, obviously I’m at a 10 with being pissed off.”</p>
<p id="cCdcS8">But—but!—while you may have been watching Max Muncy or Mookie Betts or the more exciting MLB team in Ohio, Harvey has been, well, good. Since arriving in Cincinnati, he’s gone 5-3 with a 3.64 ERA and 49 strikeouts to 15 walks. He’s been even better over his past five outings, during which he went 4-0 with a 1.86 ERA and 23 punchouts against five free passes. His velocity has <a href="https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2018/6/22/17491990/cincinnati-reds-matt-harvey-mechanical-adjustments-fastball-velocity-slider-movement">ticked up to 97</a>, and given that he’s set to become an unrestricted free agent at season’s end, he’s emerged as a popular focal point of trade rumors. Will the Reds deal him to the <a href="https://twitter.com/JonHeyman/status/1014132460060323842">Nationals</a>? The <a href="https://theathletic.com/434237/2018/07/17/giants-analytics-trade-deadline-needs-and-realistic-targets-matt-harvey-zach-britton/">Giants</a>? The … <a href="https://www.nj.com/sports/index.ssf/2018/07/mlb_trade_rumors_reds_matt_harvey_as_yankees_pitch.html"><em>Yankees</em></a>?</p>
<p id="W9qPDQ">Look, I don’t want to get ahead of myself. I don’t want to scream “HARVEY BACK!!!” and ignore how his recent resurgence is linked to a small sample size. I don’t want to make grand proclamations about October, about how whichever team trades for Harvey will have destiny on its side, about how come the Fall Classic, Harvey will rise once again.</p>
<p id="BikIbT">Except I’ve seen this movie before. And there’s only one way this can end.</p>
<div id="PeQkRK"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KXxw-zXRqOs?rel=0" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<h3 id="nA6bQz">Mookie Betts Will Win MVP</h3>
<p id="jm1OeR"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/jack-mccluskey"><strong>Jack McCluskey</strong></a>: It’s hard to overstate how great Mookie Betts has been in 2018.</p>
<p id="PgOvr5">The 25-year-old outfielder is in a three-way tie for the lead in <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2018&month=0&season1=2018&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=21,d">FanGraphs WAR</a> with José Ramírez and Mike Trout, despite having played 16 fewer games than Ramírez and 19 fewer games than Trout. He leads the majors in wRC+ (202), batting average (.356), slugging (.691), and OPS (1.139).</p>
<p id="HhuEdv">With 23 homers and 18 steals, he’s easily on pace for his third straight 20-20 season (he just missed a 20-20 season in 2015, with 18 homers and 21 steals). He has more walks (46) than he does strikeouts (42), and he’s one of the most entertaining players to watch live, making <a href="https://twitter.com/statcast/status/995742146249613317">great catches</a> and ending 13-pitch battles with a grand slam … and then <a href="https://twitter.com/MLB/status/1017574636702191616">nearly falling down</a> on his way to first because he’s so pumped up.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="HohQlf">He’s finished second and sixth respectively in MVP voting the past two seasons, and, if he keeps up his offensive barrage the rest of the year and the Red Sox maintain a <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/17/17580100/boston-red-sox-best-team-ever-2018-1912">record-setting pace</a>, Betts should finish first in 2018. Sorry, Mike, I know you’re having <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/6/4/17423738/mike-trout-defensive-improvement-best-season-ever">another historic season</a> yourself, but this year the M in MVP stands for Mookie.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/19/17587474/the-ringer-staffs-2018-mlb-second-half-predictionsThe Ringer Staff2018-07-18T10:45:52-04:002018-07-18T10:45:52-04:00The Modern-Day Duo That’s Chasing Ruth and Gehrig
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/f3a1fnod8qZtjMkfzQ3j7ZWY7Z4=/17x0:2684x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/60407397/MLB_Mid_LindorRamirez_NOBUG_Getty_AP_Ringer.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Getty Images/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>Individually, infielders José Ramírez and Francisco Lindor are chasing Mike Trout. Together, they’re on a historic WAR pace for position-player teammates, hot on the heels of the GOAT Yankees duo of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="N5yE9Y">It wasn’t much more than a month ago that every baseball writer worth their words above replacement was <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/6/4/17423738/mike-trout-defensive-improvement-best-season-ever">playing the pace game</a> with Mike Trout, who was then on track to break Babe Ruth’s record for the highest single-season WAR. But soon after the Trout WAR watch became one of baseball’s most-discussed stories, a nagging injury nudged the Angels center fielder’s season slightly off course. In <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffFletcherOCR/status/1009924559552708608">mid-June</a>, Trout suffered a strained right index finger that prevented him from playing center field for nine games and seems to have hampered his hitting even after his late-June return to the field. Over the 30 days before the All-Star break—which roughly coincides with the period since his finger started to bother him—Trout, who <a href="https://www.baseballmusings.com/cgi-bin/CompareInfo.py?StartDate=03%2F28%2F2018&EndDate=06%2F15%2F2018&GameType=all&PlayedFor=0&PlayedVs=0&Park=0&SortField=HomeRuns&SortDir=desc&MinPA=0&MinG=0&MinGS=0&MinAB=0&MinR=0&MinH=0&MinDB=0&MinTP=0&MinHR=0&MinRBI=0&MinBB=0&MinIBB=0&MinHP=0&MinK=0&MinSB=0&MinCS=0&MinSH=0&MinSF=0&MinGDP=0&MinCI=0">led the majors</a> with 23 home runs through June 15, has slugged just .368 with two dingers (not counting his blast in the All-Star Game). Because Trout’s slumps are better than most hitters’ hot streaks, the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/4/25/17280738/los-angeles-angels-mike-trout-improvement">increasingly selective</a> superstar has still recorded a .466 on-base percentage over that span. Even so, he’s been worth only <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2018&month=3&season1=2018&ind=0&team=&rost=&age=0&filter=&players=&page=1_50">1.0 WAR</a>—a great month for most players, but a devastating one for a player in pursuit of Ruth.</p>
<p id="lWurs7">Now that Trout’s previous 14-plus-WAR pace has ebbed to “only” 11-ish—which would still be the best mark of his incredible career—he may have a hard time fending off the field in the AL MVP race. As Trout has discovered in multiple previous seasons, a WAR lead alone is no guarantee of a first-place finish in the awards race for a player whose team<em> </em>doesn’t fare well in the pennant race. And as Trout’s Angels once again languish on the distant periphery of the playoff picture, his once-wide lead in the WAR race, like the Halos’ playoff odds, has dwindled to almost nothing.</p>
<p id="Iqw5GK">At Baseball-Reference, Trout’s WAR edge has shrunk to two-tenths of a win. At FanGraphs, he’s locked in a three-way tie at the top. In both cases, the same three hitters are crowding him: Boston’s Mookie Betts and Cleveland’s José Ramírez and Francisco Lindor. Betts, who has the strongest claim to the title of baseball’s <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/5/24/17387168/mookie-betts-boston-red-sox-mike-trout-war">best non-Trout player</a>, has been the highest-horsepower engine under the hood of what might be the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/17/17580100/boston-red-sox-best-team-ever-2018-1912">best-ever Red Sox squad</a>. But Ramírez and Lindor make for a remarkable combination, because the two sub-6-footers on the left side of the Indians infield are also doing something that the sport hasn’t seen since Ruth.</p>
<p id="aIIfAV">Ramirez, who’s hitting .302/.401/.628 with a tied-for-major-league-leading 29 homers, MLB-best <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2018&month=0&season1=2018&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=18,d">baserunning value</a>, and perhaps the <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=3b&stats=fld&lg=all&qual=0&type=1&season=2018&month=0&season1=2018&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=10,d">best defense</a> by a third baseman not named Matt Chapman, has accumulated 6.6 WAR at Baseball-Reference (6.5 at FanGraphs). Lindor, who’s slashed .291/.367/.562 while amassing the majors’ <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2018&month=0&season1=2018&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=20,d">fourth-most</a> defensive value, has recorded 5.6 WAR at Baseball-Reference (5.4 at FanGraphs). Put the two together, and the pair has produced a combined 12.2 bWAR through Cleveland’s first 95 games, which would extrapolate to 20.8 over a 162-game season. </p>
<p id="l8EBKp">Trout’s recent tail-off is the latest of many reminders that players on pace to achieve the extraordinary usually cool off (or heat up, depending on the record that they’re threatening to break). FanGraphs’ rest-of-season <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/projections.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&type=rfangraphsdc">projections</a> expect Ramírez and Lindor to add only 5.3 WAR to their current combined count. But even if those projections have the two players pegged perfectly, their resulting total of 17.5 WAR would top the tallies of some storied duos, including Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris’s sum in their own Ruth-chasing 1961 season (17.3). And if they can beat the projections by a modest amount, they’ll cement their status as among the most productive teammates ever.</p>
<p id="cEpGX6">Nineteen of the top 20 two-teammate WAR totals in baseball history date from the 19th century, which makes sense considering both the era’s uneven competition and the eye-popping workloads that contemporary pitchers shouldered. (The full list is <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sEGT4wKvCRSWquvypblconoKX96TByOFvx-_fmEtNvU/edit?usp=sharing">here</a>.) The list-topping twosome of pitcher-outfielders Old Hoss Radbourn and Charlie Sweeney, who combined to accrue 26.4 WAR for the 1884 Providence Grays, accounted for 87 percent of that team’s innings—and Sweeney threw another 271 innings the same season for a different team. If we filter out the majors’ formative years and limit the sample to the sport’s modern era (1901-present), we get the table below.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wiwoQACz8_5z9CClmHUs1Hle1IE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/11708373/Table_1__1_.png">
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<p id="OcPHo4">If Ramírez and Lindor stick to their extrapolated pace, they’ll surpass Jack Coombs and Eddie Collins for the fifth-best modern-era combo. But “modern” is a relative term: In 1910, Coombs pitched 353 innings, whereas last year’s innings leader, Chris Sale, finished short of 215. The upper reaches of the “modern era” leaderboard are still littered with pitchers whose workloads were extremely inflated by 2018 standards, so let’s filter further to tandems composed of position players alone.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Kzd76MoRM0YXRy898ei5tIX-524=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/11708379/Table2.png">
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<p id="5wFRl4">Now the Cleveland duo’s potential total stands out even more. Their extrapolated total of 20.8 would put them second all-time behind the Babe and Lou Gehrig in their 1927 Murderer’s Row season. And if Ramírez and Lindor fall off their first-half pace but still outplay their projected WAR total by two wins, they’ll pull even with the best non-Ruth-Gehrig position-player combo—one formed, fittingly, by two other Cleveland infielders, Nap Lajoie and Terry Turner.</p>
<p id="wwgA5C">Although both Ramírez and Lindor have already nearly eclipsed their respective single-season WAR bests less than 60 percent of the way through the Indians’ season, neither All-Star is a one-season wonder. Depending on the source, Ramírez and Lindor rank either <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2018&month=0&season1=2016&ind=0&team=&rost=&age=&filter=&players=">fourth and fifth</a> or <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/tiny/jcAdj">tied for fourth and sixth</a>, respectively, among all position players in WAR since the start of 2016. </p>
<p id="onqbM8">The 24-year-old Lindor, who appeared on prominent top-100-prospect lists for four springs running before making the majors in June 2015, has long been bound for stardom, and the <a href="http://grantland.com/the-triangle/2015-mlb-cleveland-indians-historic-defensive-turnaround/">elite defense</a> that made up much of his value early on is now accompanied by one of the biggest bats at shortstop. Last season, he <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/5/24/16045476/mlb-cleveland-indians-francisco-lindor-home-runs-shortstops-7d88206acc39">raised his fly-ball rate</a> by 14 percentage points—easily the largest year-to-year increase among hitters who qualified for the batting title in both 2016 and 2017—which helped him add nearly 100 points to his isolated power and more than double his dinger total, from 15 to 33. This year, he’s retained most of those fly-ball gains and also become one of baseball’s best <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/francisco-lindor-wants-to-be-baseballs-best-player/">opposite-field hitters</a>, posting a <a href="https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search?hfPT=&hfAB=&hfBBT=fly%5C.%5C.ball%7Cpopup%7Cline%5C.%5C.drive%7C&hfPR=&hfZ=&stadium=&hfBBL=&hfNewZones=&hfGT=R%7C&hfC=&hfSea=2018%7C&hfSit=&player_type=batter&hfOuts=&opponent=&pitcher_throws=&batter_stands=&hfSA=&game_date_gt=&game_date_lt=&hfInfield=&team=&position=&hfOutfield=&hfRO=&home_road=&hfFlag=&hfPull=Opposite%7C&metric_1=&hfInn=&min_pitches=0&min_results=25&group_by=name&sort_col=iso&player_event_sort=h_launch_speed&sort_order=desc&min_pas=0&chk_bb_type=on&chk_batted_ball_direction=on#results">.400 isolated power</a> on balls he’s hit in the air to the opposite field. That puts him in the 90th percentile among hitters with at least 25 oppo air balls in 2018, up from 25th and 27th in the past two seasons, respectively. Lindor, who hit three opposite-field homers from 2015 to 2017, has already doubled that total in the first half of 2018. His offensive explosion has helped propel what might be the <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=ss&stats=bat&lg=al&qual=0&type=8&season=2018&month=0&season1=1901&ind=0&team=0,ss&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=16,d">best</a>-<a href="https://www.mlb.com/news/al-shortstops-are-having-historic-hitting-year/c-284990820">ever</a> offensive season by American League shortstops.</p>
<p id="mzAXFg">Ramírez, who has a shot at notching the <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jose-ramirez-and-the-greatest-third-base-seasons-ever/">most valuable season ever</a> by a third baseman, is a little more than a year older than the ever-smiling Lindor, and although the stats say he’s been better, he still seems <a href="https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=Francisco%20Lindor,Jos%C3%A9%20Ram%C3%ADrez">less well-known</a> on a national level. There are several reasons that might be so: Unlike Lindor, he was never a rated prospect, and he didn’t become a good hitter until his fourth major league season, or a great one until his fifth. He didn’t settle in at a single position until this year, and because the Dominican native began learning English <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/tribe/index.ssf/2015/03/cleveland_indians_jose_ramirez_1.html">later than Lindor</a>, he faces a <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/3/16090568/marly-rivera-on-the-lives-of-latino-players">language barrier</a> when talking to non-Spanish-speaking media members. He also has a less distinctive name; excepting his September call-up in 2013, he’s had to share ownership with José Ramírez the middling major league pitcher.</p>
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<img alt="A map of the U.S. showing much higher name recognition nationwide for Lindor than for Ramírez" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HFPESZBISmkrvqCYmN9nHX_-1jY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/11708249/Lindor_Ramirez.png">
<figcaption>Google Trends data shows Lindor’s dominance in domestic searches relative to Rámirez. </figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="cvKqzG">Like Lindor, Ramírez has dramatically improved his extra-base output. His 29 homers last season topped his combined total from 2013 to 2016 by 10, and he’s already matched that career high this season, pairing the power with his highest fly-ball rate and, for the first time in his big league career, more walks than strikeouts. If he can hold off J.D. Martinez, Trout, Aaron Judge, and Lindor, among other home-run-crown contenders, the 5-foot-9 Ramírez would be the shortest player to lead his league in home runs since Mel Ott in 1942—and the typical player has gotten a lot <a href="https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2011/4/19/2114631/the-changing-size-of-mlb-players-1870-2010">taller</a> since then. Although many fans aren’t fully aware of his abilities, pitchers have learned to be, throwing him fastballs less frequently with each passing season.</p>
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<img alt="A line graph showing Ramírez’s FA% decreasing by season as MLB average slowly increases" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sI9x6see7YSwQ52WLKRDIdZjyVE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/11708251/Ramirez_FA.png">
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<p id="YhDSnZ">With Lindor and Ramírez stationed at short and third, the Indians have allowed the league’s lowest <a href="https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search?hfPT=&hfAB=&hfBBT=ground%5C.%5C.ball%7C&hfPR=hit%5C.%5C.into%5C.%5C.play%7Chit%5C.%5C.into%5C.%5C.play%5C.%5C.no%5C.%5C.out%7Chit%5C.%5C.into%5C.%5C.play%5C.%5C.score%7C&hfZ=&stadium=&hfBBL=&hfNewZones=&hfGT=R%7C&hfC=&hfSea=2018%7C&hfSit=&player_type=pitcher&hfOuts=&opponent=&pitcher_throws=&batter_stands=R&hfSA=&game_date_gt=&game_date_lt=&hfInfield=&team=&position=&hfOutfield=&hfRO=&home_road=&hfFlag=&hfPull=Pull%7C&metric_1=&hfInn=&min_pitches=0&min_results=0&group_by=team&sort_col=ba&player_event_sort=h_launch_speed&sort_order=asc&min_pas=0&chk_pitch_result=on&chk_bb_type=on&chk_batted_ball_direction=on#results">batting average</a> and <a href="https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search?hfPT=&hfAB=&hfBBT=ground%5C.%5C.ball%7C&hfPR=hit%5C.%5C.into%5C.%5C.play%7Chit%5C.%5C.into%5C.%5C.play%5C.%5C.no%5C.%5C.out%7Chit%5C.%5C.into%5C.%5C.play%5C.%5C.score%7C&hfZ=&stadium=&hfBBL=&hfNewZones=&hfGT=R%7C&hfC=&hfSea=2018%7C&hfSit=&player_type=pitcher&hfOuts=&opponent=&pitcher_throws=&batter_stands=R&hfSA=&game_date_gt=&game_date_lt=&hfInfield=&team=&position=&hfOutfield=&hfRO=&home_road=&hfFlag=&hfPull=Pull%7C&metric_1=&hfInn=&min_pitches=0&min_results=0&group_by=team&sort_col=woba&player_event_sort=h_launch_speed&sort_order=asc&min_pas=0&chk_pitch_result=on&chk_bb_type=on&chk_batted_ball_direction=on#results">weighted on-base average</a> when right-handed opponents pull ground balls. And with the two 20-somethings ensconced in the first and third slots in the lineup, respectively, the Indians have <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2018&month=0&season1=2018&ind=0&team=0,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=16,d">outhit</a> every team but the Yankees, Red Sox, Astros, and Cubs.</p>
<p id="nTRDZX">The only asterisk one could apply to Ramírez and Lindor’s potentially historic season is that the Indians have faced weak competition (albeit a whole <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/measuring-the-change-in-league-quality-part-three/">heck of a lot stronger</a> than the 1927 Yankees’ opponents). As I wrote <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/6/27/17510380/al-central-historically-bad-baseball-divisions">last month</a>, the 2018 AL Central looks like one of the worst divisions ever; in the time since that article was published, its historical ranking has improved from the worst of all time to merely the second-worst. The Indians’ strength of schedule <a href="http://proxy.espn.com/mlb/stats/rpi?sort=sos&order=false">to date</a> has been weaker than that of any non–AL Central team, and no team has a weaker <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds">projected</a> strength of schedule for the rest of the season. Of the 255 hitters with at least 200 plate appearances this season, Lindor and Ramírez have faced the second-worst and fourth-worst opposing pitchers in terms of 2018 results, as judged by a park-adjusted version of <em>Baseball Prospectus</em>’s advanced pitching metric, <a href="https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/glossary/index.php?search=dra">deserved run average</a>.</p>
<p id="vcdTlZ">Although both Baseball-Reference WAR and FanGraphs<em> </em>WAR include a league-strength adjustment,<em> </em>neither flavor of WAR accounts for a hitter’s quality of competition. “We account for competition on the pitching side, but have not done so on the batting side,” Baseball-Reference founder Sean Forman says via email. “If you watch the talk I gave at SABR last month, I actually list that as something we should strongly consider doing. The reason it hasn’t been a high priority is the assumption that it evens out in the long run, which is obviously not true in all cases.” An adjustment for quality of competition could also be complicated to implement accurately. “To do it right you would probably have to do something with projections,” adds FanGraphs founder David Appelman. “You can’t just take the in-season data and say, ‘That’s the competition.’”</p>
<p id="ZgywZH">Each additional layer of statistical abstraction (and potentially differing calculation across sites) erects another obstacle in the path of WAR’s mainstream acceptance; the more adjustments a metric makes, the more difficult it becomes to win over people who prefer to know what “did” happen rather than what would or should have happened after accounting for context. But philosophically speaking, adjusting for a player’s quality of competition doesn’t seem much different from adjusting for his ballpark, so it’s likely that the WARs will one day factor in players’ opponents; Appelman estimates that the difference might amount to “half a win-ish at the high end,” joking, “Lindor and Ramírez will still be pretty good.”</p>
<p id="DHsJDn"><em>Baseball Prospectus</em> is already taking steps to opponent-adjust its value metric, wins above replacement player. <em>BP</em>’s pitching WARP, which is based on DRA, already does account for competition quality (among many other factors). And early next month, <em>BP </em>will be publishing a new offensive stat called deserved runs created plus, which will look like Baseball-Reference’s OPS+ or FanGraphs’<em> </em>wRC+ but, like DRA, will factor in a multitude of more granular influences that less complex metrics miss, including quality of competition, umpiring, catcher framing, pitch type and location, and even temperature. <em>BP</em>’s soon-to-be-published testing (which tends to be <a href="https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/26196/prospectus-feature-dra-an-in-depth-discussion/">detailed</a> and <a href="https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/26195/prospectus-feature-introducing-deserved-run-average-draand-all-its-friends/">transparent</a>) indicates that DRC+ is more reliable and predictive than existing offensive stats, according to the company.</p>
<p id="A9IWAV">Even though Ramírez and Lindor have benefited from facing weak pitching, they both rate well in <em>BP</em>’s forthcoming metric: Ramírez’s DRC+ (174) is identical to his wRC+, and Lindor’s DRC+ (138) is only slightly lower than his wRC+ (149). Whatever hit the two take because of opponent quality, they make up elsewhere: Both players will have <em>higher </em>values when WARP switches over to the DRC-based framework, likely because of kinder park adjustments or the new stat’s sensitivity to the value of walks. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="UN9v0a">In other words, even stats so cutting-edge that they aren’t yet publicly accessible can’t find fault with the two teammates who are carrying Cleveland to a division title and chasing the greatest position-playing tandems that the sport has ever seen. In Lindor and Ramírez, the Indians have two franchise players, both under team control through 2021 and both playing at the peak of their powers—or, perhaps, at what will <em>look</em> like their peak until they level up again. </p>
<p id="kEqpCc"><em>Thanks to </em><a href="https://twitter.com/danhirsch"><em>Dan Hirsch</em></a><em> of </em><a href="http://thebaseballgauge.com"><em>The Baseball Gauge</em></a><em> and </em><a href="https://twitter.com/robmcquown"><em>Rob McQuown</em></a><em> and </em><a href="https://twitter.com/bachlaw"><em>Jonathan Judge</em></a><em> of </em><a href="http://baseballprospectus.com">Baseball Prospectus</a> <em>for research assistance.</em></p>
https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/18/17585450/cleveland-indians-war-pace-jose-ramirez-francisco-lindor-babe-ruth-lou-gehrigBen Lindbergh2018-07-18T06:20:02-04:002018-07-18T06:20:02-04:00The 2018 MLB Midseason Power Rankings
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<p>The Red Sox, Astros, and Yankees haven’t gone anywhere, but the rest of baseball’s playoff picture is growing ever murkier</p> <p id="NW3pqh">In addition to the holiday atmosphere that surrounds the All-Star Game, this break offers the baseball world an opportunity to sit back and take stock of how the season’s going. By this point, we know enough about all 30 teams to speak confidently about their strengths and weaknesses, and with the trade deadline just two weeks away, every team needs to take a long look at where it stands in the playoff race. For that reason, in addition to an ordinal ranking, it’s useful to look at the teams in tiers—it doesn’t matter that much which of the Yankees, Astros, or Red Sox is on top of the heap, but it matters a great deal that all three have loaded rosters and are locks to make the postseason. </p>
<p id="TbMd8A">So let’s see how those teams—and the 27 others—stack up at the All-Star break.</p>
<h3 id="EHDVI3">Superteams</h3>
<h4 id="vM0eHu">1. Boston Red Sox</h4>
<p id="0JKpRl">FanGraphs projects that each of the teams in this group—which consists of three American League squads—will win at least 103 games, and each team currently has a 100 percent chance to make the playoffs. <em>Baseball Prospectus</em> is a little less bullish—they have all the teams at or above 102 wins (rounding up from Houston’s 101.9-win projection) and 99.8 percent to make the playoffs. What I want to know is <em>how</em> exactly one of these teams would end up missing the playoffs. </p>
<p id="WfsO0J">Boston is out in front by a little in the standings thanks to a strong push heading into the break (going 9-1 in the team’s past 10 games). The Red Sox are still figuring out their second base and catching situations, but Jackie Bradley Jr. (.323/.377/.548 over his past 18 games) looks like he’s finally turning the corner, or at least showing the positive side of being one of baseball’s streakiest hitters. Meanwhile, J.D. Martinez has been hitting like peak Hank Aaron for about a year and a half (.314/.384/.669 since the start of 2017), and going off public perception, he’s still the third-best hitter on the Detroit Tigers. Maybe this season, if he goes on an 80-homer pace down the stretch like he did last year, people will actually notice.</p>
<h4 id="hwY17M">2. Houston Astros</h4>
<p id="ClH3XS">Houston is once again in control in the AL West. With Carlos Correa hurt and Marwin González struggling on and off, Alex Bregman is enjoying a breakout season with a 159 OPS+ and 20 home runs—both are team and career highs. </p>
<p id="STolcj">In other Astros news, Héctor Rondón is looking like a pretty savvy signing right now. Rondón’s production fell off pretty steeply after ceding the Cubs’ closer role to Aroldis Chapman in 2016, and he struggled with a nagging back injury and command issues en route to a pedestrian 4.24 ERA in 2017. This past offseason, Houston snapped him up for two years and just $8.5 million, and in 37 appearances so far in 2018, Rondon’s on track for career highs in K/9 (11.5) and ERA+ (248). And it couldn’t have come at a better time, because speaking of “snapped,” Houston’s incumbent closer Ken Giles now finds himself in Triple-A after an extremely weird season. </p>
<p id="fltAJ1">The Astros called Giles’s demotion “a baseball decision,” which I guess is true, because <a href="https://www.chron.com/sports/astros/article/Astros-demote-reliever-Ken-Giles-to-Fresno-13067209.php">when Giles allegedly said “Fuck you, man” to his manager on TV, he was technically on a baseball diamond</a>. This comes after Giles punched himself in the face after a previous meltdown in May. The 27-year-old righty’s 4.99 ERA is the worst of his career and was the worst on the entire Astros staff at the time of his demotion. Manager A.J. Hinch has never been too tied to one closer—four different Astros have recorded saves this year—and the team’s best reliever might be converted starter Collin McHugh, who has a 403 ERA+ in a multi-inning role, but has no saves of his own. If the Astros do repeat as World Series champions, Rondón is probably the most likely pitcher to record the final out, though with this team, that’s by no means a certainty.</p>
<h4 id="lHGAwM">3. New York Yankees</h4>
<p id="7BF4Zv">If the Yankees win 103 games, as FanGraphs projects, they could end up making history. The Dodgers’ 104-win 2017 (with the 102-win Indians and 101-win Astros close behind) is a huge historical outlier. While it’s not out of the question that three teams would win at least 103 games this year—it’s happened once before, in 1942, though the teams weren’t all in the same league—<a href="http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/6TPQI">only seven teams have won that many games since 2001</a>. Of course, with the Red Sox playing the way they are, the Yankees could win 103 games and not even win the division—the last team to pull that off was the 1993 Giants, and before that you have to go all the way back to 1954, before divisions even existed. That year, the Yankees won 103 games and lost the pennant to the 111-win Indians.</p>
<p id="U4RI6d">Perhaps most impressive, the Yankees are doing all this with an uninspiring rotation. Luis Severino is going to get some Cy Young consideration, but Masahiro Tanaka’s been on and off the DL, Jordan Montgomery’s out for the year, and Sonny Gray’s barely playable at this point. The pitcher keeping it all together is 37-year-old left-hander CC Sabathia, who’s throwing some top-notch old man ball. The 2007 Cy Young winner has a 122 ERA+ in 18 starts, despite ranking 66th out of 80 qualified pitchers in K% and 54th in fastball velocity. And even that’s a little misleading: Sabathia has thrown his four-seamer just 23 times this year, using his cutter (with an average speed of 89.5 mph) as his primary fastball. I can’t get enough of it—I hope Sabathia pitches until he’s 50.</p>
<h3 id="zWBIpy">Playoff Locks</h3>
<h4 id="T6NFZU">4. Chicago Cubs</h4>
<p id="NOKQrA">It doesn’t feel like the Cubs have really hit their stride this season, and yet here they are, with the National League’s best record and run differential. After holding the Yoenis Céspedes Memorial More-Fun-Than-He-Is-Good Trophy for the past two seasons, Javy Báez is finally putting up big offensive numbers to match his defense: a team-high 131 OPS+ with 19 home runs and, most impressively, 18 stolen bases in just 20 attempts. </p>
<p id="PSinue"><em>BP </em>puts Chicago’s playoff odds at 96.2 percent, and no other team in the National League has even hit 80 percent. This speaks to a weird distribution of quality between the two leagues. It’s pretty obvious by this point that the three best teams in baseball are in the AL, and that there’s a huge gulf in quality from no. 3 to no. 4. But the National League has nine of the next 12 teams in these power rankings, and even the Cubs aren’t completely safe in their division with the Brewers just 2.5 games back. At the break, the only thing that’s clear about the National League’s pennant race is that it will be more fun than the AL’s—all three division titles and both wild-card spots are very much up for grabs, with as many as 10 teams still in the hunt.</p>
<h4 id="rnOFoT">5. Cleveland Indians</h4>
<p id="7aGXm2">Despite having just the 11th-best record in baseball, Cleveland is fifth in these power rankings for two reasons: First, their plus-82 run differential is tied for fifth in baseball and suggests that the Indians have been slightly unlucky so far this year; second, <em>BP </em>gives Cleveland a 98.9 percent chance of making the playoffs, which puts them one foot into October with two and a half months to go. Cleveland’s godawful AL Central division will deliver this club to the ALDS, where any team with Corey Kluber has a decent chance at advancing. I’m not to the point yet where I resent Cleveland for having such limp competition, but we’re getting there.</p>
<h3 id="MmEOtS">Good Teams With Work to Do</h3>
<h4 id="N7Jtso">6. Los Angeles Dodgers</h4>
<p id="O6j6v1">After looking like the Kansas City Royals through April and May, Los Angeles has gone 27-13 since the start of June, which put them back in first place at the break. Clayton Kershaw is back, Kenley Jansen went from seriously worrisome in April to an All-Star in July, and those early struggles look very much like a thing of the past. And now it looks like <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/18/17584734/what-does-mannywood-2-0-mean-for-the-dodgers">Manny Machado is coming over from Baltimore</a> to fill the Corey Seager–shaped hole in the lineup. The rest of the NL West will regret not killing the Dodgers off when they had the chance.</p>
<h4 id="fcW6Ko">7. Seattle Mariners </h4>
<p id="wBLAyf">This group of teams is heavy on clubs that had a chance to cap off surprising first halves by solidifying their playoff berths, but instead headed into the break in a tailspin. After July 3’s action, Seattle was just half a game out of the division lead, with an 87.8 percent chance of making the postseason for the first time since 2001. Since then, the Mariners have dropped eight of 11, lost ace James Paxton to a back injury (all the while thanking God it wasn’t an elbow or shoulder injury), and fallen to just about an even-money bet to make the playoffs. The Mariners had been playing better than their run differential would indicate, and while most teams regress to the mean eventually, very few do it all at once like that.</p>
<h4 id="rXmNz0">8. Milwaukee Brewers</h4>
<p id="1AJtjZ">Milwaukee’s situation is like Seattle’s—they’ve shed 18.3 percentage points off their playoff odds in the past week, second only to Seattle—but perhaps even more perilous. The Mariners were realistically never going to bypass Houston in the AL West, and even after their swoon they still have a three-game lead on Oakland, the only club with a realistic chance of catching them for the second wild-card spot. Milwaukee, however, enters the break on a six-game losing streak that cost it the division lead, and will now have to fight the six other NL teams that sit within five games of a playoff spot. The Mariners have to outrun only one team in particular, while the Brewers have to outpace five out of six competitors. It’s going to be a tense next two months in Milwaukee.</p>
<h4 id="VxJs3e">9. Atlanta Braves</h4>
<p id="U1bDqm">It’s close, but I think Atlanta’s pitching depth is more than enough to make up Philadelphia’s half-game lead in the division. And speaking of pitching depth, Aníbal Sánchez, who’s 34 years old and hasn’t pitched effectively in the majors since 2013, has a 2.60 ERA in 65 2/3 innings at the break. And his 3.07 DRA says that if this is fluky, it’s not all <em>that</em> fluky. </p>
<h4 id="Q8fH7i">10. Philadelphia Phillies</h4>
<p id="QbPJB9">The sour taste of missed opportunity might not weigh as heavily on the Phillies’ tongues as the Mariners’ and Brewers’, but it’s still there. In the week before the break, Philadelphia lost four games: two walk-off losses to the Mets; a 2-0 loss in which Aaron Nola pitched well but the Phillies couldn’t manage a single run (against the Marlins, of all teams); and another loss to Miami in which the Phillies led 5-0 but surrendered 10 unanswered runs, eight of them in one inning. This half-game lead in the NL East would look downright insurmountable if it were a 4.5-game lead and Manny Machado were on the way, but that no longer appears to be the case. </p>
<h4 id="RhMGH2">11. Oakland Athletics</h4>
<p id="a6vJgH">Last year, the A’s traded relievers Ryan Madson and Sean Doolittle to Washington for prospects Jesus Luzardo and Sheldon Neuse, as well as a reliever, Blake Treinen, who was supposed to be Washington’s closer but carried a 5.73 ERA at the time of the trade. It wasn’t out of the question—or even particularly unlikely—that Treinen would turn it around eventually, but the Nats didn’t have the luxury of waiting for him to figure it out. </p>
<p id="Sk8Vbg">A year later, <em>Baseball Prospectus </em>ranked Luzardo <a href="https://www.baseballprospectus.com/prospects/article/41327/2018-prospects-the-midseason-top-50/">the no. 13 overall prospect on its midseason top 50</a>, and Treinen looks like the second coming of Rollie Fingers: an 0.94 ERA in 48 innings over 40 appearances, with 24 saves in 27 opportunities. The less said about Oakland’s starting rotation the better, but the A’s have seven different hitters with double-digit home run totals, and as Seattle continues to tumble in the standings, the A’s are lying in wait like the goddamn chupacabra. It’s a pretty nice place to be.</p>
<h4 id="mCWabs">12. Arizona Diamondbacks</h4>
<p id="IntNIi">Arizona’s pitching staff could be really dangerous if they make it to the postseason, but the Dodgers’ reemergence complicates matters. The good news is that Arizona’s weaknesses should be relatively easy to fix. For instance, Chris Owings, a shortstop who’s never been a good hitter, has played 53 games in the outfield for Arizona this year and is hitting .194/.259/.284. They don’t need to trade for J.D. Martinez again to upgrade that position—just stick any old stiff out in right field and it’d be a huge improvement.</p>
<h3 id="lprtCw">Hanging On by a Thread</h3>
<h4 id="c1bN5i">13. Washington Nationals</h4>
<p id="LHLYpM">Maybe <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/17/17580344/bryce-harper-home-run-derby-washington-nationals-all-star-game">Bryce Harper’s dramatic Home Run Derby victory</a> will be the thing to get Washington to finally turn the corner. The Nats have gotten lucky this season with offensive contributions from Matt Adams, Mark Reynolds, and teenage outfielder Juan Soto, but the team as a whole still feels like it hasn’t realized the season started 96 games ago. I keep expecting them to just wake up, switch it on, and chase down the Braves and Phillies, but they’re .500 at the break, and if Harper’s Derby win on home soil doesn’t do the trick, they’re very close to running out of time.</p>
<h4 id="wm8Xam">14. San Francisco Giants</h4>
<p id="4XPmeV">The Giants lost Johnny Cueto, Mark Melancon, Madison Bumgarner, Joe Panik, and Hunter Strickland for big chunks of time this season, watched Jeff Samardzija post a 6.25 ERA in 10 starts, and gave 127 plate appearances to Hunter Pence and his 44 OPS+ before the break. And somehow they’re 50-48, just four games out of first place in the NL West, despite playing in a division that produced three playoff teams last year. Looking at this roster, I’m not convinced they’re that good, but I can’t write off a team that went through what San Francisco did and came out the other side with one foot in the pennant race. </p>
<h4 id="yHu18L">15. St. Louis Cardinals</h4>
<p id="QlCGM0">The Cardinals are 7.5 games behind the Cubs, and <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/15/17573628/mike-matheny-fired-st-louis-cardinals-manager">they just fired their manager for (among other things) mouthing off in a story about how his closer’s bullying his setup man</a>. Alex Reyes is out for the season again, Dexter Fowler hasn’t hit worth a damn all year, and that’s masking the fact Marcell Ozuna has only hit worth a small fraction of a damn. There’s nowhere to go but up.</p>
<h4 id="szakWB">16. Los Angeles Angels</h4>
<p id="ycbygd">I really thought this would be the year the Angels would <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2017/12/19/16793360/mike-trout-shohei-ohtani-los-angeles-angels-roster-competence">surround Mike Trout with a decent supporting cast</a>—they did for a while, but then everyone got hurt. The Angels’ “Current Injuries” section on Baseball-Reference is 14 names long, and that doesn’t count two-way star Shohei Ohtani, who’s still DHing but hasn’t pitched in a game in six weeks thanks to a damaged UCL. Other notable damaged UCLs on the Angels this year: starting pitchers J.C. Ramírez, John Lamb, and Garrett Richards, and closer Keynan Middleton. But it gets worse—pitcher Alex Meyer and third baseman Zack Cozart both have torn labrums, and pitcher Matt Shoemaker is still recovering from surgery to decompress the nerves in his right arm, which sounds like something out of a David Cronenberg movie. Maybe nothing the Angels try will get Trout back to the playoffs. </p>
<h4 id="Z2SObl">17. Tampa Bay Rays</h4>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Dbacks?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Dbacks</a> All-Star P Greinke on <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Rays?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Rays</a> plan of using game openers: “It’s really smart but it’s also really bad for baseball.”</p>— Marc Topkin (@TBTimes_Rays) <a href="https://twitter.com/TBTimes_Rays/status/1018939051519377409?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 16, 2018</a>
</blockquote>
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<p id="mka2Vt">Fair enough. Tampa Bay, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/6/29/17516512/blake-snell-tampa-bay-rays-pitching-evolution">led by All-Star left-hander Blake Snell,</a> is having a surprisingly not-terrible season—though with a 6.9 percent chance of making the playoffs, according to <em>Baseball Prospectus</em>, they’re only still in the race by the most liberal of definitions. </p>
<h4 id="CwyLN8">18. Colorado Rockies</h4>
<p id="PArPgl">Every team has a few fun statistical quirks, but the Rockies’ rotation is a full-on ontological crisis. Left-hander Kyle Freeland has a 3.11 ERA—no mean feat for a pitcher whose home base is Coors Field—and according to bWAR (which includes runs allowed), he’s been worth 4.5 wins, tied for sixth-most in baseball with Trevor Bauer. Right-hander Jon Gray’s 5.44 ERA isn’t good, even in Coors Field, and by bWAR, he’s been worth one win—in fact, the Rockies were forced to send him to the minors late last month. But Freeland’s underlying numbers say he’s pitched closer to league average than his Cy Young–level adjusted ERA would suggest, while <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/2/17524464/colorado-rockies-jon-gray-minor-leagues-sabermetric-cipher">Gray has been historically unlucky</a>. Gray is 12th out of 80 qualified pitchers in strikeout rate, but dead last in opponent BABIP and second-to-last in strand rate. So WAR measures that use ERA estimators—fWAR and WARP, specifically—say he’s been about a win better than Freeland.</p>
<p id="APuLFB">So who’s having the better season? It depends on whether you value a pitcher’s results or our best estimate of how he performed after putting those results in context. An ERA estimator might be fairer to a pitcher by ironing out luck, but it’s raw results, not context-neutral performance, that impact the standings directly. I don’t know if this argument would get two strangers at a sports bar worked up, but it’s a fascinating window into how we evaluate pitchers.</p>
<h4 id="DZcw1y">19. Pittsburgh Pirates</h4>
<p id="tgVGvo">The Pirates are the least interesting team in baseball at this moment in time. They’re close enough to a playoff spot that they probably won’t be sellers at the deadline, but not close enough that one or two aggressive trades could put them over the top. And while it’s easy to upgrade a team that’s average because it has a few stars and a few sub-replacement-level players to cancel them out, the Pirates are an average team composed mostly of average players. According to Baseball-Reference, every player the Pirates have used this year is within 1.6 wins of league-average one way or the other. A few of those players—Jameson Taillon, Felipe Vázquez, and all of the team’s outfielders—are fun to watch, but there’s very little boom or bust potential.</p>
<h3 id="kvbKhN">Bad, but Possibly Fun</h3>
<h4 id="G4j6LW">20. Cincinnati Reds</h4>
<p id="bl0GUX">The Reds fired manager Bryan Price after a 3-15 start, and since then, the team has gone 40-38 under interim skipper Jim Riggleman, even though Riggleman’s about the most boring, uninspiring retread manager in the league. Cincinnati has an inconsistent but talented rotation, a killer bullpen, and a lineup with real star power in Joey Votto, Eugenio Suárez, and (I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s the world we live in now) Scooter Gennett. With a better start, the Reds could have been the National League’s version of the Oakland A’s, but even as it stands, they’re probably going to seriously screw up some unsuspecting contender’s playoff chances late in the season. I’d tell you to circle a certain series on the calendar, but between now and the end of the year, the Reds play nearly every NL team ahead of them in these power rankings at least once, so just watch every series to be safe.</p>
<h4 id="Z7NJgS">21. Toronto Blue Jays</h4>
<p id="qUUW47">Good news, Canada! Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the no. 1 prospect in baseball, has recovered from his knee injury, which means it’s safe to <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/5/25/17392172/vladimir-guerrero-jr-toronto-blue-jays-minor-leagues">start pounding your fists and demanding for him to be called up to the big leagues again</a>. </p>
<h4 id="gDOW8y">22. Minnesota Twins</h4>
<p id="mexhgB">Eddie Rosario’s got to feel a little hard done by as he’s sitting at home watching the All-Star Game—or even if he’s chosen to go on vacation and he’s sitting on a beach somewhere <em>not </em>watching the All-Star Game. Rosario took a long time to develop into the player he is now, one who’s hitting .311/.353/.537 and playing good defense in left field. And it’s not just that he’s on pace for an almost seven-win season, but the way that he’s gotten there has been tons of fun to watch: He has speed and power, and his aggressive, chaotic, slightly weird style of play would have already made him a folk hero if he played for, say, the Cubs or Red Sox.</p>
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<p id="ybglAE">Maybe he’d already be a folk hero if the Twins hadn’t thrown away their best shot at a division title in years, but there’s always next year.</p>
<h4 id="gcXmUc">23. Texas Rangers</h4>
<p id="T1qg5D">A team like the Rangers—far off the pace and at the end of its competitive cycle—is easy to ignore this late in the season, so Shin-Soo Choo has gone under the radar a little bit. You probably know that Choo made the All-Star team, but it’s unbelievable that, at age 35, this is his first All-Star appearance. Choo has had three 20-homer, 20-steal seasons, and four seasons with a .390 OBP or better, and had never before been so honored. Meanwhile, Yadier Molina, who’s the same age as Choo with similar MLB experience and a similar career bWAR total (37.7 for Molina, 33.8 for Choo) has made nine All-Star teams in the past 10 seasons.</p>
<p id="73XJ53">Choo has also reached base in 51 straight games, <a href="https://twitter.com/ESPNStatsInfo/status/1018290930921635843">the longest such streak since 2007</a>, which feels like something we ought to be paying more attention to in this day and age. The rest of the Rangers have been uninspiring, but Choo deserves his moment in the sun.</p>
<h4 id="nchHsi">24. San Diego Padres</h4>
<p id="KBbUVi">The big league team I could take or leave, but the Padres’ farm system is the best in baseball, as you could probably tell if you watched the Futures Game on Sunday. San Diego landed six prospects in the <em>BP </em>midseason top 50, and five in the top 35, led by no. 2 overall prospect Fernando Tatis Jr. (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syFmUVFNRZE">Yes, Fernando Tatis Sr., is who you think he is</a>.) Tatis is a smooth fielder for someone his size (he’s 6-foot-3, and at age 19 is beginning to fill out) and has big power potential. </p>
<p id="D8ots1">We’re just starting to see the fruits of this farm system percolate to the surface: For instance, back in April, left-hander Eric Lauer became the first player from the first round of the 2016 draft to reach the big leagues. More and better is on its way, and soon.</p>
<h4 id="aVhURd">25. New York Mets</h4>
<p id="dlWIr4">Jacob deGrom looks like he’s on his way to a Cy Young Award and is the only unreservedly fun thing about this team. Or at least he was, <a href="https://nypost.com/2018/07/16/jacob-degroms-agent-goes-off-on-mets-pay-him-or-trade-him/">until his agent issued a “shit or get off the pot” directive</a> to the Mets this week, suggesting that if they’re not going to sign the 30-year-old ace to a contract extension, they should trade him. That 11-1 start feels like it was <em>years</em> ago.</p>
<h3 id="4LinJ6">Bad, and Probably Not Fun</h3>
<h4 id="oKNRgU">26. Detroit Tigers</h4>
<p id="U5rlVa">Ron Gardenhire ended his tenure as manager of the Twins with four straight 90-loss seasons, and he’s picking up right where he left off in Detroit. The Tigers are on pace for a 94-loss season, and they’d be a lot worse off if they hadn’t gone 8-1 against the White Sox so far this year. And here I thought Shin-Soo Choo’s streak was impressive.</p>
<h4 id="zJgT7U">27. Chicago White Sox</h4>
<p id="b4VQqu">The average K/9 ratio in MLB this year is 8.5, an all-time record. Nine pitchers have started at least one game for the White Sox this year, including two former All-Stars and four first-round picks, and none of them has a league-average K/9 ratio. The closest anyone’s gotten is Carson Fulmer, who in addition to striking out 8.1 batters per nine innings is <em>walking</em> 6.7 batters per nine innings and giving up a home run, on average, once every four innings. Fulmer and his 8.07 ERA have returned to Triple-A where the results have not been much better.</p>
<h4 id="rW6M9E">28. Miami Marlins</h4>
<p id="FjCsGm">Thank God for the Mets.</p>
<h3 id="WxoY0l">Beyond Bad</h3>
<h4 id="Cq0Ifz">29. Baltimore Orioles</h4>
<p id="xPClu0">Now that Manny Machado is as good as gone, the Orioles have a real ghost-ship vibe to them. It’s likely that Buck Showalter will leave the club before next season starts, but who knows? 28-69 is such a bad record it doesn’t seem real, and the only way to get that bad is to be so directionless that nobody in charge is paying enough attention to actually bother getting rid of the manager. The Orioles are what you’d get if “I’m not sure I locked the front door before I went on vacation” was running a baseball team.</p>
<h4 id="9vdMap">30. Kansas City Royals</h4>
<p class="c-end-para" id="1SWCsL">I’d be interested in seeing this year’s Oregon State team play the Royals over, say, a seven-game series. Oregon State just won a national championship with a loaded roster that included three first-round draft picks, the front-runner for next year’s no. 1 pick in sophomore catcher Adley Rutschman, and national freshman of the year Kevin Abel. I don’t think Oregon State could beat the Royals—nowhere is the tired “this good college team could beat this bad pro team” trope less realistic than in baseball—but I want to see how close they’d get because MLB teams this bad don’t come around very often.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/18/17584866/the-2018-mlb-midseason-power-rankingsMichael Baumann2018-07-18T00:38:12-04:002018-07-18T00:38:12-04:00Why Manny Machado Makes the Dodgers a World Series Favorite
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<p>The acquisition of the Orioles infielder could mean that the World Series is L.A.-bound</p> <p id="99TeaQ">It took a week for the Los Angeles Dodgers to trade for Orioles shortstop Manny Machado. Details of the trade emerged slowly over the course of several days, and the trade wasn’t completed until after Machado represented Baltimore in Tuesday’s All-Star Game. Machado could’ve driven from Baltimore to Los Angeles in the time it took the details to leak out. It’s the delayed steal of the trade deadline.</p>
<p id="a5923D">But after the slow bleed, Machado’s going to become a Dodger for real, heading to Los Angeles for <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1019722975677992961">a large package of prospects</a>. The headliner is Yusniel Diaz, a 21-year-old outfielder who homered twice in the Futures Game, just days before he was traded. Diaz was the no. 31 prospect on the <em>Baseball Prospectus </em>midseason top 50</p>
<p id="enSJsX">The other prospects headed to the Orioles system in the deal are third baseman Rylan Bannon, right-handers Dean Kremer and Zach Pop, and second baseman Breyvic Valera. </p>
<aside id="hvdCxE"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The Manny Machado Trade Ripple Effect","url":"https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/18/17584660/manny-machado-trade-ripple-effect-orioles-dodgers-yankees-phillies-brewers"},{"title":"It Keeps Getting Harder to Believe in Oriole Magic","url":"https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/19/17589400/baltimore-orioles-fan-manny-machado-trade-los-angeles-dodgers"}]}'></div></aside><p id="DOCGBp">But what have the Dodgers bought for that price? What does Machado do for the Dodgers in their bid to not only return to the World Series, but to win it? </p>
<p id="CTyK6T">On one hand, Machado instantly becomes the best position player on the Dodgers. His .315 batting average and 24 home runs lead his new team, and his .387 OBP and .575 slugging percentage are both second to Max Muncy. (“Second to <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/6/19/17476758/max-muncy-los-angeles-dodgers-nl-west">Max Muncy</a>” still feels like a weird thing to say, but we live in weird times.) Unlike Muncy, a four-corners type who can play second in a pinch, Machado can play a passable shortstop and a spectacular third base. And even though he just turned 26, Machado has a long track record of performance—since 2012, his debut season, Machado is tied for 26th in baseball (among players with at least 3,000 plate appearances) with a 121 OPS+, 12th in bWAR (30.9), and 13th in wins above average (18.3). He’s a superstar, one of the best all-around position players in the game.</p>
<p id="CeWfHC">Any team could use a player like Machado, but the Dodgers happen to have a Corey Seager–shaped hole in their lineup after the 2016 NL Rookie of the Year went down with a sprained UCL earlier this spring. There aren’t many like-for-like replacements for Seager, a shortstop who’s also an elite power hitter. Machado’s one of them. With Machado in the fold, the Dodgers, who have won 37 of their past 54 games and took over first place in the NL West last week, become heavy favorites to win their division. </p>
<p id="elEMxv">On the other hand, given the way the Dodgers have played over the past two months, they were probably division favorites anyway. At the break, FanGraphs gave the Dodgers a 92.3 percent chance to make the playoffs and a 77.8 percent chance to win the NL West. (<em>BP</em> was a little more bearish, putting them at 79 percent to make the playoffs and 59.6 percent to win the division.)</p>
<p id="ZrXf6P">So this trade is not about merely making the playoffs, but what happens after the Dodgers get to the NLDS. The Dodgers have coped with injuries up and down the lineup—not just to Seager but Justin Turner and Yasiel Puig—thanks to certain players’ positional flexibility. Austin Barnes can catch and play second base. Cody Bellinger can play first base and all three outfield positions. Chris Taylor’s played three positions this year, Muncy four, Enrique Hernández seven. Slotting Machado in at shortstop allows Dodger manager Dave Roberts to shuffle the deck to get Logan Forsythe’s .208/.270/.301 slash line out of the lineup. That would give the Dodgers a lineup that truly goes eight deep, a lineup rivaled in the National League by only the Cubs.</p>
<p id="TRM2zb">With two and a half months to go in the season, the Cubs are probably still slight favorites to win the National League, but only because of their position in the standings. While the Dodgers are very likely to make the playoffs, the Cubs are a near-lock, and that’s a small but important distinction. Chicago’s lead in the division is larger (2.5 games compared to half a game) and the Cubs are 3.5 games ahead of the Dodgers in the standings, which means that they have an extra weekend series’s worth of breathing room if they fall back into the cacophonous Xibalba of the National League wild-card race.</p>
<p id="pauBxm">But assuming that both teams make it to October, the Dodgers would be, at the very worst, Chicago’s equal on talent. And given the depth of the Dodgers’ pitching staff, I’d make them favorites in a hypothetical NLCS rematch. </p>
<p id="MdEOSz">The Machado trade also gives the Dodgers two advantages that won’t show up in their games this season. First, the trade boxes the Phillies and Brewers out of the running for the best player on the market at the deadline, and Machado could’ve been a game-changer for either team since the shortstop situations in both Milwaukee and Philadelphia are even more dire than the one Los Angeles faced. That means an easier road to the wild card if the Diamondbacks pass the Dodgers for the NL West lead or an easier road to the pennant if they don’t. Or both. </p>
<p id="LiEb1J">Second, the Dodgers can now roll out the red carpet for one of the best players on this coming winter’s free-agent market. Machado’s extremely unlikely to sign an extension without at least testing the waters, but the Dodgers will have almost four extra months to talk numbers now, and life in Los Angeles will become a known quantity rather than a leap into terra incognita.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="5N2ueV">While Diaz is the only top-100 prospect heading to Baltimore, <em>Yahoo Sports</em>’<em> </em>Jeff Passan said that <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1019729640921993216">evaluators he’s spoke with said</a> “Baltimore did well in Manny Machado trade.” This is the<a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/16/17571406/trade-deadline-manny-machado-baltimore-orioles-rumor-rental"> quintessential rental trade</a>: The price looks steep up front, but the Dodgers have much to gain, and the deal looks even better for them the harder you look.</p>
<p id="UjgOlq"><em>This piece was updated after publication to reflect that the deal is now official.</em></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/18/17584734/what-does-mannywood-2-0-mean-for-the-dodgersMichael Baumann2018-07-17T06:05:02-04:002018-07-17T06:05:02-04:00The 2018 Red Sox Might Be the Best in Franchise History
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<p>In the regular season, at least. Thanks to a few key factors that call back to the last best Boston team, the Sox are on a record-setting win pace.</p> <p id="xVNL94">The most successful regular-season Red Sox team ever played so long ago that it christened Fenway Park. It won the World Series in a Game 8 after Game 2 was deemed a tie on account of darkness; its best pitcher, Smoky Joe Wood, threw 344 innings; its center fielder, Tris Speaker, won the second-ever AL MVP award.</p>
<p id="9GOlzu">The 1912 Red Sox won 105 regular-season games, lost 47, and tied 2, good for a cumulative .691 winning percentage. No other team in Boston’s history has won so many games, even in a 162-game season, and no Boston team since integration has won even 100. Until, perhaps, this season, as the 2018 Sox are more than halfway to making their claim as the most successful Boston squad ever.</p>
<p id="CgdsHp">That’s not a minor thing for a franchise with eight World Series trophies and 13 total pennants. At least in the regular season, though, no Boston team has ever been better than the 2018 Red Sox have been through 98 games, as they wait at the All-Star break with a league-best 68-30 record (that’s a .694 rate), an <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/BOS/#franchise_years::8">illustrious run differential</a> to match, and a season-high 4.5-game lead over the Yankees in the AL East. Yankees manager Aaron Boone wasn’t much exaggerating when <a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/24104342/yankees-manager-aaron-boone-says-red-sox-win-every-day">he said</a> the Red Sox “win every day”—Boston’s won 12 of its last 13 and has lost three games in a row just once all season.</p>
<p id="SFOaq7">In just about every possible permutation, the Red Sox are a top team. They have the best record in the majors at home, and the second-best on the road; they have the second-best record against teams with a losing record, and the second-best record against teams that are .500 or better. They also have the best record against right-handed pitchers, and their only relative weakness—their record against lefty starters is just 14-11—might now be fixed, with platoon masher Steve Pearce hitting .423/.500/.692 since coming to Boston in a late-June trade.</p>
<p id="rw4W3T">Boston’s worst month thus far was May, when it went 18-11; over a full season, that winning percentage still translates to 101 wins. In other words, the worst month Boston has had in 2018 would still put them on pace for the franchise’s most successful season in decades. If they play at a .500 clip after the All-Star break, the Red Sox will still finish with exactly 100 wins. If they duplicate their May performance the rest of the way, they’ll win 108. If they continue at their overall rate, they’ll reach 112. Boston is striving toward its third straight division title, but it’s never aimed this high before.</p>
<p id="eGLtIq">Although the actual connections between the 1912 and 2018 Red Sox are tenuous—again, the former played so long ago that Babe Ruth wasn’t even in the majors yet—the modern bunch is not too dissimilar from its ancestral group in terms of roster composition. Mainly, the 1912 Sox relied heavily on a handful of star performers rather than immense depth. Speaker paced the lineup with a four-digit OPS and league-leading WAR total, while Wood led the rotation with an MLB-best 34-5 record, hurling 10 shutouts and amassing a 1.91 ERA. Beyond Speaker, though, only one Boston regular managed a <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/BOS/1912.shtml#players_value_batting::13">three-WAR season</a>, and the Sox surrounded Wood with a group of solid but not spectacular starters.</p>
<p id="ERJ2Fp">In 2018, Speaker and Wood have been replaced by Mookie Betts and Chris Sale, respectively. The latter leads the majors with a 37.2 percent strikeout rate, has an AL-best 2.23 ERA, and is pitching even better than he did in his remarkable first half in Boston last season. Sale also looks to benefit from first-year manager Alex Cora’s more cautious workload plan, designed to give the Boston ace a more even pace throughout the season and prevent a second-half burnout. In his first 20 games last year, Sale threw 100-plus pitches 19 times and 97 in the other game; this year, he’s reached triple digits just 12 times in 20 outings.</p>
<p id="hs68Oy">Beyond Sale, Eduardo Rodríguez (3.44 ERA) has been Boston’s second-best starter, but David Price and Rick Porcello have been merely OK and the oft-injured Drew Pomeranz downright awful. Craig Kimbrel (1.77 ERA, 30 saves in 32 chances) has weathered a minor decline in velocity to control the ninth inning as effectively as any closer in baseball, but the bridge portion of the bullpen has been, again, solid rather than spectacular, and Boston is <a href="https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2018/07/red-sox-interested-in-significant-bullpen-addition.html">on the prowl</a> for a more trustworthy eighth-inning man by the trade deadline. The combination of decent arms plus Sale and Kimbrel has worked thus far, though, as Boston ranks second in the majors in runs allowed per game.</p>
<p id="avNMAt">The lineup is even more effective, ranking first in runs scored per contest, but it’s also even more lopsided, as Rafael Devers, Jackie Bradley Jr., and Eduardo Núñez have all been well-below-average hitters, as has the team’s complement of catchers. The top of the order has been sufficiently indomitable, though, that it has more than compensated for the stragglers at the bottom.</p>
<p id="6CPRhf">That brilliance starts <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/5/24/17387168/mookie-betts-boston-red-sox-mike-trout-war">with Betts</a>, who hasn’t relented from the scorching pace he set to start the season. Since returning from a disabled-list stint last month, his power levels have returned to the stratosphere, but he’s still reaching base nearly half the time, and his overall 202 wRC+ is still the best in the majors. Betts has more help than Speaker did, too: By FanGraphs WAR, four different Boston position players (Betts, J.D. Martinez, Andrew Benintendi, and Xander Bogaerts) have been worth three wins already this year, while no other team has more than two such players.</p>
<p id="O2n7sn">Signed in February as <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/2/19/17030124/boston-red-sox-sign-jd-martinez">Boston’s answer</a> to New York’s Giancarlo Stanton acquisition, Martinez has been even better than the new Yankee this season. The Red Sox DH is hitting .328/.393/.644 and has a shot at the Triple Crown—he leads the league in RBI and is tied for the lead in home runs—and his 176 wRC+ ranks third among qualified hitters, behind only Betts and Mike Trout. Benintendi has improved after a rookie season that disappointed relative to expectations, and Bogaerts has been perhaps the greatest pleasant surprise in Boston’s lineup: In five previous seasons, the shortstop had <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx?playerid=12161&position=SS&statArr=40&legend=1,2&split=base&time=season&ymin=&ymax=&dStatArray=">never before posted</a> even a league-average isolated power mark, but this year, with 16 homers and 26 doubles already on his ledger, he’s besting the likes of Stanton and Cody Bellinger in ISO.</p>
<p id="jWVnBD">The Red Sox boast an aberrant lineup compared with the 2018 baseline, as they successfully marry strikeout avoidance with batted-ball damage. Betts, with his 11.8 percent K rate, is the clearest encapsulation of this trend, as Boston’s hitters haven’t needed to sell out to access their power, nor have they diluted their success on contact in an effort to evade the rising strikeout tide. Rather, Boston strikes out the least of any team in baseball, and both its <a href="https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search?hfPT=&hfAB=single%7Cdouble%7Ctriple%7Chome%5C.%5C.run%7Cfield%5C.%5C.out%7Cdouble%5C.%5C.play%7Cfield%5C.%5C.error%7Cgrounded%5C.%5C.into%5C.%5C.double%5C.%5C.play%7Cfielders%5C.%5C.choice%7Cfielders%5C.%5C.choice%5C.%5C.out%7Cforce%5C.%5C.out%7Ctriple%5C.%5C.play%7C&hfBBT=&hfPR=&hfZ=&stadium=&hfBBL=&hfNewZones=&hfGT=R%7C&hfC=&hfSea=2018%7C&hfSit=&player_type=batter&hfOuts=&opponent=&pitcher_throws=&batter_stands=&hfSA=&game_date_gt=&game_date_lt=2018-07-15&hfInfield=&team=&position=&hfOutfield=&hfRO=&home_road=&hfFlag=&hfPull=&metric_1=&hfInn=&min_pitches=0&min_results=0&group_by=team&sort_col=ba&player_event_sort=h_launch_speed&sort_order=desc&min_pas=0#results">batting average on contact</a> and isolated power marks are the second-highest in baseball. The Red Sox glean some advantage from playing in Fenway Park, but they’d be just as scary in a neutral environment: Baseball Savant’s xwOBA stat, which measures any given plate appearance’s “expected” outcome based on batted-ball data, pegs Boston with the <a href="https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search?hfPT=&hfAB=&hfBBT=&hfPR=&hfZ=&stadium=&hfBBL=&hfNewZones=&hfGT=R%7C&hfC=&hfSea=2018%7C&hfSit=&player_type=batter&hfOuts=&opponent=&pitcher_throws=&batter_stands=&hfSA=&game_date_gt=&game_date_lt=2018-07-15&hfInfield=&team=&position=&hfOutfield=&hfRO=&home_road=&hfFlag=&hfPull=&metric_1=&hfInn=&min_pitches=0&min_results=0&group_by=team&sort_col=xwoba&player_event_sort=h_launch_speed&sort_order=desc&min_pas=5#results">most effective offense</a> in the majors, with the Red Sox as a team approximating individual stars like Kris Bryant, Buster Posey, and Shohei Ohtani at the plate.</p>
<p id="rvqrv2">Even those individual performances, though, would not necessarily yield a franchise-best record were it not also for helpful contextual factors. The sheer imbalance in the American League this year—FanGraphs projects three AL teams to win 100 games and three more AL teams to lose 100—has afforded Boston the opportunity to feast on bad teams. They’re 9-1 against the Orioles, 6-1 against the Rangers, and 5-1 against the Royals and overall have a 36-11 record against teams with losing records. No team has done better in that split over a full season since the 114-win 1998 Yankees.</p>
<p id="FIwzAp">Unsurprisingly, the 1912 Red Sox embraced a similar strain of intraleague stratification, going 17-5 against the 53-101 St. Louis Browns and 19-2 against the 50-102 New York Highlanders in that franchise’s last season before changing its name to the Yankees. It’s no coincidence that Boston’s best-ever record dovetailed with New York’s worst-ever mark. This season is different, as New York is also playing at a 100-plus-win pace, but if anything, Boston’s current position relative to the Yankees’ is even more satisfying. There’s a real rivalry now, for one, as 1912’s season-long stomping came before the Ruth sale; for another, the dual-wild-card playoff structure means that if Boston maintains its division lead, New York will be forced for the third time in four seasons into the wild-card game. This year, that means, potentially, a winner-take-all date against Seattle star James Paxton then a divisional round with ace Luis Severino slated to pitch just once.</p>
<p id="nKjbR7">The wild-card route is inarguably worse than the division-winner route, but Boston will travel a perilous playoff path regardless of its ultimate standing in the AL East this season. The Astros have merged their historically great lineup from 2017 with a <a href="https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/5/7/17325468/houston-astros-starting-rotation-dominance-gerrit-cole-justin-verlander">historically great starting rotation</a>, with the <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=rel&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2018&month=0&season1=2018&ind=0&team=0,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0">second-best bullpen</a> in the majors thrown in for good measure. The Yankees aren’t going away, with Gary Sánchez and Gleyber Torres slated to return from injury soon and an easier schedule than Boston’s in the second half, and Cleveland’s talented core makes Terry Francona’s crew as good a bet as any team to capture the AL pennant.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="ngf2IM">That’s the greatest difference between the 1912 and 2018 Red Sox; it’s not the respective innings totals of Wood and Sale, or Betts’s raised supporting cast versus Speaker’s, or even which team finishes with a better regular-season winning percentage. (Through 98 games, the 2018 version is one win ahead.) It’s that the former advanced straight from the regular season to the World Series, while the latter will have to navigate two equally impressive opponents just for the chance to win another title. These Red Sox might be the most successful in franchise history, better than any squad with Cy Young or Ruth or Williams or Yaz or Clemens, but they can’t escape the fact that they play in 2018. After all, the 2018 Astros are on pace to finish with the best record in franchise history, too.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/7/17/17580100/boston-red-sox-best-team-ever-2018-1912Zach Kram