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We interrupt your mid-July search for your favorite tube of sunscreen for this important announcement: Somehow or other, the All-Star break is going to arrive in like 15 minutes.
So yes, it’s that time again — time for me to hand out my coveted midseason awards. Best I can tell, this year’s awards ceremony once again will not be hosted by Hugh Grant, Hugh Jackman, Reggie Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson, Juan Samuel, Juan Pierre or Pierre Cardin. So I’ll just have to do this myself. Ready? The envelopes, please!
AL MVP of the half-year: Aaron Judge, Yankees
Aaron Judge looks to the dugout after launching another long ball. (John Jones / USA Today)
Gunnar Henderson is a both-sides-of-the-ball game-changer. But he’s not the American League MVP. Bobby Witt Jr. and Juan Soto can play for my team any time. But they’re not the AL MVP, either.
No, the AL MVP is one of those rare humans who feels larger than life, larger than the Empire State Building, larger than the sport he plays. Aaron Judge towers over everyone and everything these days. So I appreciate that he made at least one of these awards soooo easy to pick.
Has it dawned on us yet where Judge is headed over these next few months? And by that I mean: Toward one of the most spectacular offensive seasons of our time, or any time. His current pace is absolutely mind-warping:
| OPS+ | HR | AVG | OBP | SLUG | RBI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
202 |
55 |
.307 |
.424 |
.672 |
143 |
(through Wednesday)
Just so you know, only two other men have ever had that year:
| PLAYER | AVG | OBP | SLUG | OPS+ | HR | RBI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Babe Ruth, 1921 |
.378 |
.512 |
.846 |
239 |
59 |
168 |
|
Babe Ruth, 1927 |
.356 |
.486 |
.772 |
225 |
60 |
165 |
|
Jimmie Foxx, 1932 |
.364 |
.469 |
.749 |
207 |
58 |
169 |
(Source: Baseball Reference / Stathead)
Mickey Mantle (1961), Barry Bonds (2001), Mark McGwire (1998) and the 2022 version of Judge himself were near-misses. But you get the picture. And I haven’t even mentioned that Judge is also on pace for 92 extra-base hits, a number that only Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and Alfonso Soriano have reached in the history of the Yankees.
But the other reason Aaron Judge is the MVP revolves around what he means to a Yankees lineup that depends on every ounce of superhero magic Judge has in him, especially as his team has unraveled over the past few weeks. Take a look at how Judge’s production compares with what this juggernaut is getting from all other Yankees not named Juan Soto:
| JUDGE | OTHERS | |
|---|---|---|
|
AVG |
.307 |
.235 |
|
OBP |
.424 |
.299 |
|
SLUG |
.672 |
.370 |
|
OPS |
1.096 |
.669 |
With every category, the gap between Judge and his non-Soto-esque teammates gets not just wider, but wilder. A 302-point difference in slugging? A 427-point gap between his OPS and theirs? This isn’t the Oakland A’s lineup we’re talking about. This is the lineup of a $303 million baseball team.
So with the utmost respect for any other candidate you’d like to make a case for … sorry! Here comes the Judge — again — to collect another prestigious midseason MVP award. Why is anybody throwing this dude a strike?
MY AL MVP TOP FIVE: Judge, Henderson, Witt, Soto, Steven Kwan.
NL MVP of the half-year: Shohei Ohtani, Dodgers
A third MVP award for Shohei Ohtani? He’s on his way. (Jonathan Hui / USA Today)
Isn’t it funny how Shohei Ohtani MVP debates aren’t like anyone else’s MVP debates? Then again, maybe that’s just how it works on Planet Unicorn. But let’s explain anyway.
The 2021-23 version of this debate went: If he’s going to pitch and hit, you might as well give him this thing every darned year because nobody can compete with that. Only Aaron Judge, the 2022 62-homer edition, was able to power through that logic.
But now, here in 2024, it’s all flipped on Shohei: If he’s not going to pitch and he’s not going to play the field and he’s only a DH, how can he possibly win this award? Isn’t that the question? If David Ortiz never did, if Edgar Martinez never did, then maybe no DH ever will — or should — win an MVP trophy. Right?
Ehhh, wrong. We should never have unshakeable, illogical rules like that — especially when we’re talking about this man. He’s currently rocking along with a 190 OPS+. And is that good? If he keeps that up, it would merely be the best offensive season any DH has ever had.
The only other DH who even approached that was Edgar, with a 185 OPS+ in 1995. So how’d he fare in that ’95 MVP race? The voters rewarded him with a third-place finish and four first-place votes. And that’s how it seemingly always works for guys who play no position, no matter how prodigiously they’re mashing.
Not that we have many comparable players or seasons. Even if we drop the bar to a 170 OPS+, it’s an exclusive group — and the MVP voters didn’t seem interested in anybody in it.
We won’t include the 60-game pandemic season of 2020. And it’s hard to count Ohtani’s 2023 season, because he also had this side gig where he was busy piling up more strikeouts on the mound than Justin Verlander. So that leaves only three true DHs who had a qualifying season with an OPS+ of 170 or better: Ortiz (171) in 2007, Victor Martinez (172) in 2014 and Travis Hafner (181) in 2006.
Want to guess how many first-place MVP votes they got? Zero would be a fine guess.
Even Ortiz, who was productive enough to roll up six seasons with a top-six MVP finish, only collected 17 first-place votes in his whole career: 11 in 2005 (when he finished second to Alex Rodriguez), four in 2003 and one each in 2004 and 2016. In fact, over the five seasons from 2003-07, Big Papi had the highest OPS of any hitter in the American League (1.014) while his team was winning two World Series — and got no MVP trophies out of it.
But is that Shohei Ohtani’s problem? No, it is not. Is that our problem as voters, or awards-column authors? Nope. Not our problem, either.
As we speak, Ohtani leads his league in home runs, extra-base hits, OPS, slugging and runs scored (among other things). And how many DHs have ever led their league in all of those categories over a full season? None. Naturally.
But you should know that over the past 70 years, only eight players have done it at any position: Judge (2022), Mickey Mantle (1956), Carl Yastrzemski (1967), Frank Robinson (1966), Albert Pujols (2009), Mike Schmidt (1981), George Foster (1977) and Ryan Braun (2012).
So as exceptional as Bryce Harper has been in Philly this year, with a bat and glove, it’s still apparently impossible for anyone to compete with the unique greatness of Ohtani — a man unleashing his wrecking ball on everything we ever thought one baseball-playing human was capable of.
MY NL MVP TOP FIVE: Ohtani, Harper, Mookie Betts, Marcell Ozuna, Elly De La Cruz.
AL LVP of the half-year: Bo Bichette, Blue Jays
What happened to Bo Bichette? (John E. Sokolowski / USA Today)
I can’t believe I’m even typing this. I’ve always thought of Bo Bichette as a star, a natural-born hit machine, a face of his franchise. How he turned into this guy — the Least Valuable Player in the entire American League — is a mystery. Not just to me. To pretty much everyone I asked.
He has spent the past three months playing like a fellow who would rather be somewhere other than Toronto. And the irony there is, if that’s how he actually feels, probably the worst way to inspire somebody to trade for you is to go out and make yourself the odds-on LVP favorite.
Before I recite Bichette’s unsightly numbers, I should remind you that this award is not the same thing as saying someone is the worst player in the league. Javy Báez — a guy with an OPS+ of (gasp) 29 — has that distinction locked up in Detroit for the third straight year. But the LVP isn’t an “honor” I automatically bestow on guys like him.
No, I look at the Blue Jays as the most disappointing team in the whole sport. So Bichette swoops in here because I’m not sure that would be possible without the massive underachievement of their once-charismatic shortstop.
Check out just a few of Bo Bichette’s inexplicable “achievements” and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
He can’t hit! This is a guy who led the league in hits two years in a row, and was headed for three in a row last year until he got derailed by knee and quad issues. Now he’s spitting out a gruesome .222/.275/.321 slash line, with fewer home runs (four) than Ernie Clement (six). But here’s the biggest shocker. There are 68 AL hitters with enough at-bats to qualify for the batting title. Who has the worst OPS+? Yup. Bo Bichette (at 70).
He can’t even hit a fastball! Everybody knows you should never, ever throw a first-pitch fastball to Bo. Oh, wait. Check that! Take in the view of his year-by-year average against fastballs (in all counts), according to Statcast:
2019 — .357
2020 — .351
2021 — .310
2022 — .309
2023 — .328
2024 — .226
One of these years is not like the others.
He can’t hit left-handers! Bo eats left-handers for breakfast. That’s just a fact … um, I mean that used to be a fact.
2019-23 — Hit .321 and slugged .537 versus left-handers.
2024 — Hitting .153 and slugging .196 versus left-handers, with no home runs and only two extra-base hits in three months. Average versus left-handed starters: .106! What the heck.
In other news … He’s hitting .115 in the first inning this season, with no extra-base hits. … He’s hitting only .209 and slugging .254 after he gets ahead in the count. … And in 35 plate appearances in the late innings of close games, he’s gotten only five hits all season (all five of them singles).
I feel like I’m writing this in some bizarro universe where everything has turned upside-down. But these are the times I need to remind myself there’s a term to describe when something like this happens: L-V-P!
MY AL LVP “TOP THREE”: Bichette, Báez, Gleyber Torres.
NL LVP of the half-year: Tim Anderson, unemployed
It’s been a steep fall for Tim Anderson, whom the Marlins released on July 5. (Sam Navarro / USA Today)
It’s not that hard to remember a time when we used to look at Tim Anderson as … what’s that word again? … Oh, right. Good. An actual good, productive baseball player.
He was an All-Star in 2022 and 2021, a year when he hit a walk-off homer into a corn field. He was a top-seven MVP finisher the year before that. He was a batting champ in 2019. He hit 20 homers and made the stolen base leaderboard in 2018. He was even a productive player for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic as recently as 16 months ago.
So … who the heck shortstop-napped that guy?
There was some dude wearing Tim Anderson’s uniform for the Marlins this year — for three months, anyway. But I hope you covered your eyes when you watched him, because it reminded me of, well, this.
Where would you hide in the horror movie? #GEICOween pic.twitter.com/JfwjbTDc5w
— The GEICO Gecko (@TheGEICOGecko) October 17, 2022
Except in this case, there was nowhere for Tim Anderson to hide. So as the Marlins’ once-hopeful season descended into a flame pit, they just kept running him out there, until they couldn’t convince themselves to do that anymore. So on July 5, they released him, possibly because of unreal stuff like this:
He was the all-time Zero Hero in June! Have you ever heard of this? A guy who started 21 games in a calendar month and emerged from that month with zero walks and extra-base hits? Yeah, Tim Anderson just had that month. Only one other player in the past 60 years has had a calendar month like that: the legendary Steve Jeltz for the 1988 Phillies (but in a September with 20 fewer plate appearances). So wait. Make that two players!
He played Beat the Streak! But that stretch didn’t just begin in June. Would you believe this guy somehow went two months, and 38 games in a row, without an extra-base hit? And he went 23 games in a row — we’re talking nearly 100 straight plate appearances — without a walk? That. Happened. The 23 consecutive games he started without a walk or an extra-base hit was the longest streak of dueling goose eggs in more than 30 years, since Darren Lewis went walk-less and XBH-free for 27 games in a row for the 1993 Giants.
He also had more errors than walks! Nine errors, seven walks. Is that good? Or how about this: More errors than extra-base hits and stolen bases combined (9-7). Holy Mario Mendoza! How’d that happen?
But let’s also mention … that Anderson “slugged” .226 and had an OPS+ of 30! … and that he hit .164 with runners in scoring position … and that he went 2-for-20 with runners in scoring position and two outs … and that he went 3-for-32 against the Braves and Phillies.
I’m honestly just scratching the surface of those grisly numbers. Whatever. What I still can’t figure out is what the heck happened.
“Look at his numbers since The Punch,” said a high-ranking decision-maker on one NL team … so I did!
Since José Ramírez flattened Anderson in their fabled boxing match at second base, on Aug. 5, 2023, guess what player has the worst slugging percentage (.257) and OPS (.514) in baseball? Did I just hear thousands of you readers shouting, “Tim Anderson”? Heck, yeah, I did. You’re the best LVP students ever.
MY NL LVP “TOP THREE”: Anderson, Kris Bryant, Jeff McNeil.
AL Cy Young of the half-year: Tarik Skubal, Tigers
Tarik Skubal gets the nod over Corbin Burnes, Garrett Crochet and Seth Lugo. (Lon Horwedel / USA Today)
That sound you hear, off in the distance, is the thumbs of thousands of Orioles fans, reading this and pounding out story comments that go something to the effect of: If you don’t think Corbin Burnes deserves the Cy Young Award, you know less about baseball than my garden hose.
Well, I’ve never met your garden hose. But I promise I spent more time thinking about this than all the hoses in your neighborhood combined. Now here’s what I think: If this was the Most Pivotal Trade of the Year award, you’d all be right. Because Corbin Burnes has been exactly that.
He has also been as irreplaceable as any great starter on any contender in baseball. Which, come to think of it, is why the Orioles made that trade. But here’s an important thing to remember before we get any further:
That’s not what Cy Young debates are made of!
This is not the Most Valuable Pitcher award. It’s about performance, period. It’s about who has pitched the best, period. And if that’s the question, Tarik Skubal is the answer.
It seems almost incomprehensible that only three Tigers starters have ever won a Cy Young Award: Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer and Denny McLain. That means Jim Bunning, Jack Morris, Mickey Lolich, Mark Fidrych, David Price, Frank Tanana and Rick Porcello were among the many Tigers aces who never did. But Tarik Skubal? He’s well on his way.
I took a lot of time digging in on the excellent cases for Burnes, Garrett Crochet and Seth Lugo. But if this is just about who has pitched the best, I think I picked the right man. Here’s why:
Skubal versus Burnes: These two guys are so close in ERA (2.43 for Burnes, 2.37 for Skubal), that’s not a factor. But Skubal leads Burnes in WHIP, strikeout rate, opponent OPS, opponent slugging and opponent average. And once Skubal makes his last start before the All-Star break, their workloads will be virtually the same.
Skubal versus Lugo: Lugo is No. 1 in the league in ERA and batters faced. So he’s been tremendous for a Royals team that signed him, dreaming of this. But Skubal has a hefty lead in strikeout rate, FIP, WHIP and opponent OPS. So if Domination Factor is a useful tiebreaker in Cy Young debates, Skubal runs that table.
Skubal versus Crochet: Crochet ranks in the top three in the AL in both WHIP and strikeout rate, which always rockets a guy to the top of my list. But wait. So does Skubal. And Skubal’s ERA (2.37) is seventh-tenths of a run lower than Crochet’s (3.08). As fantastic as Crochet has been for the White Sox, I don’t see the argument for placing him ahead of Skubal.
And I bet you didn’t know that … Skubal has the third-best strikeout rate in the league plus the best walk rate (1.6 per nine innings). So he’s filling up the strike zone and still not getting hit … Speaking of which: Left-handed and right-handed hitters are batting under .200 against him. … And opposing cleanup hitters are hitting .109/.160/.130 against him (with one extra-base hit). That computes to an OPS+ of minus-18!
Finally, who has a more overpowering pitch mix than Tarik Skubal? This dude throws five pitches — and hitters have a batting average under .200 against four of them. But hold on, because … none of those are even his wipeout pitch, because he also throws a changeup with a 47 percent whiff rate (49 strikeouts, 29 hits against that dastardly invisi-ball).
So Skubal’s manager, A.J. Hinch, tipped his cap to all the other candidates out there, but made the case for his ace this way:
“I love the way Tarik has dominated the strike zone. As the attention grew on him, he has continued to throw strikes, miss bats and keep the ball in the ballpark. He’s been the definition of a Cy Young candidate.”
And as much as I appreciate everything about Burnes, Crochet and Lugo, I agree!
MY AL CY YOUNG TOP FIVE: Skubal, Burnes, Crochet, Lugo, Logan Gilbert.
NL Cy Young of the half-year: Chris Sale, Braves
At age 35, in his 14th MLB season, is this the year Chris Sale wins a Cy Young? (Dale Zanine / USA Today)
Who’s the best active pitcher who has never won a Cy Young Award? It’s pretty much a dead heat between Zack Wheeler and Chris Sale. Isn’t it? So how perfect is it that that’s almost exactly how I see this NL first-half Cy Young race?
But first, can I mention that, in retrospect, Wheeler should already own one of those awards? Remember 2021? It now seems so clear that Wheeler deserved to win that year. In fact, this spring, another team’s ace — with no connection to either Wheeler or the NL winner in ’21, Corbin Burnes — went on an unprompted rant about it to me.
I don’t think that’s true of Sale, but he has a different claim to fame. He once somehow ripped off six straight top-five Cy Young finishes (2012-17) without ever winning once. Want to guess how many other active starters have done that? None. Obviously.
These two guys also rank 1-2 in ERA among all active starters with no Cy Young trophies. So it’s time that changed — for one of them. But it’s hard to figure out which one, because of course it is.
I decided the best argument for Wheeler is that he’s emerged as baseball’s most consistent front-of-the-rotation dominator for a Phillies team that wouldn’t have the best record in the sport without him. And, as always, he combines brilliance with volume. He has faced 55 more hitters than Sale has. And yeah, that matters.
But here, I think, is where Sale inches ahead:
He’s crushed it against the best teams. How about this stat: Against teams that are .500 or better, Sale is 5-0, with a 1.27 ERA — the best ERA in baseball against the best teams. (Wheeler in that same category: 3-2, 3.47.)
WHIP and strikeout rate don’t lie. When I do my Cy Young analysis, those two metrics are where I start. So when you find a guy who ranks in the top two in his league in both, as Sale does, that’s telling.
K/9 IP
Sale — 11.7
Wheeler — 9.7
WHIP
Sale — 0.94
Wheeler — 0.97
FIP happens. I’m always wary of delving too deeply into Fielding Independent Pitching in my Cy Young process for one important reason: FIP tells us more about what should have happened (theoretically) than what actually happened. And Cy Youngs are about performance, not projection. But I do look at FIP as a potential tiebreaker when a race is this tight. And there is such an eye-opening difference between Sale’s FIP and Wheeler’s FIP, it’s hard to ignore.
2024 FIP
Sale — 2.22
Wheeler — 3.32
For once, let’s not ignore “The Win”: Like virtually all voters in this evolving age we live in, I barely look at “wins” anymore. But Sale has 12 of them. And of his three losses, one was a 1-0 game, another was a 2-1 game, and he has a better strikeout rate, plus more innings per start, in the losses than the 12 wins.
Listen, I have nothing but immense respect for Zack Wheeler and the way he handles the responsibilities of acehood, every minute of every day, from April through Halloween. But remember:
The Cy Young is not the Most Valuable Pitcher award. It’s about who has pitched best. And I think the answer, as of this moment, is Chris Sale. But I also think this is about as tight as Cy Young races get.
MY NL CY YOUNG TOP FIVE: Sale, Wheeler, Ranger Suárez, Tyler Glasnow, Reynaldo López.
AL Cy Yuk of the half-year: Kenta Maeda, Tigers
Kenta Maeda’s gnarly numbers have Cy Yuk written all over them. (David Butler II / USA Today)
I just wish my friends from STATS Perform could tell me if the same team has ever produced a Cy Young and Cy Yuk in the same season. I’m going to guess no on that. But if things don’t change in the next couple of months, I may have a trip down a Cy Yuk rabbit hole ahead of me.
So stay tuned for that, because Kenta Maeda has charged to the top of the Cy Yuk leaderboard. In fact, he has charged toward the top of the all-time Cy Yuk leaderboard.
Welcome to the 7.00 ERA Club! Sixteen starts into his first season as the Tigers’ highest-paid starter (with a $24 million guarantee over this season and next), Maeda is sitting on a 7.26 ERA. Do you think he wants to know that in the live-ball era, only two qualifying starters have ever finished a full season with an ERA that started with a “7?”
Jack Knott, 1936 Browns — 7.27
Les Sweetland, 1930 Phillies — 7.71
So the American League “record” is 7.27 — almost exactly matching Maeda’s mark. And call me an alarmist, but I don’t think this is trending well for Kenta. His ERA over his past five starts: 10.13. His ERA over his last three starts: 13.11.
Ah, but his manager, A.J. Hinch, may have just rescued him from the pursuit of Jack Knott, by gonging him from the Tigers’ rotation “for the foreseeable future.” So there’s that.
Central casting! It’s amazing that the Tigers have a winning record against their division, considering they’ve spent the past three months letting Maeda pitch against it. His record in six starts against the Central: 0-2, with an 11.90 ERA!
That’s not right! Almost 90 percent of the world’s population is right-handed. I’m guessing that’s not Maeda’s favorite factoid about the world’s population, considering he has spent this year essentially turning the entire right-handed portion of the sport into 1936 Joe DiMaggio:
| HITTER(S) | OBP | SLUG | OPS |
|---|---|---|---|
|
DiMaggio, 1936 |
.352 |
.576 |
.928 |
|
RHHs vs Maeda, 2024 |
.359 |
.578 |
.936 |
Don’t tune into this FastCast! Scouts who have seen Maeda talk about his inability to get swings-and-misses on pretty much any pitch. But it all starts with the fastball — and hey, that’s going well.
According to Baseball Savant’s Pitch Arsenal leaderboard, Maeda’s four-seam fastball is basically the fifth most-pummeled pitch in baseball. It’s transforming all hitters who swing at it into Babe Ruth, 1926.
| HITTER(S) | AVG. | SLUG |
|---|---|---|
|
Ruth, 1926 |
.372 |
.737 |
|
vs. Maeda fastball, 2024 |
.375 |
.732 |
As always, this sport was filled with many deserving Cy Yuk candidates. But it’s hard to beat a guy turning an entire sport into Babe Ruth!
MY AL CY YUK “TOP THREE”: Kenta Maeda, Michael Soroka, Reid Detmers.
NL Cy Yuk of the half-year: Blake Snell, Giants
Blake Snell, from Cy Young to Cy Yuk. (John Hefti / USA Today)
Not all Cy Yuk profiles are created equal. And that explains how Blake Snell wound up in this space.
He’s here, in part, because he’s 0-3, with a 7.85 ERA, after seven starts as a Giant. He has made it through the fifth inning exactly once. He’s averaging more than 20 pitches an inning. And if his miraculous 84 percent rate of stranding base runners last year seemed unsustainable, he’s shown why this year.
| BASE RUNNERS* | SCORED | |
|---|---|---|
|
2023 |
202 |
32 |
|
2024 |
47 |
22 |
(*hits plus walks plus hit-by-pitches, minus home runs)
But in truth, that isn’t why he’s here in the Cy Yuk winner’s circle. He’s here because we need to consider the context of how he became a Giant, for the bargain price of $32 million a year, plus a $30 million player option he can exercise for next year.
Blake Snell is a Giant because the Giants had designs on contending, and assembling a potentially dominant rotation seemed like a good plan to do so.
But in a related development, Blake Snell is a Giant because Robbie Ray can’t pitch until the second half, because Alex Cobb can’t pitch until the second half and because the Giants couldn’t safely project Jordan Hicks to make it through a whole season as a starter.
So hey, what a lucky break that the incumbent NL Cy Young Award winner was still looking for work in the third week of March. Unless …
Unless, of course, he wasn’t ready to pitch after missing virtually all of spring training.
Unless, of course, he rushed back into the rotation on April 8 without facing a single minor-league hitter on a rehab start. (His choice.)
Unless, of course, he was so out of whack that he went 0-3, with an 11.57 ERA and 1.97 WHIP, in his first three starts (all blowout losses).
Unless, of course, he then strained a groin and wound up on the injured list for a month.
Unless, of course, he then found himself winless with three days left until the All-Star break.
So perhaps you might be thinking: Look, stuff happens — to everybody. He didn’t have much of a spring training. It’s not fair to be handing out Cy Yuks to well-meaning folks like this.
All of that is true, except for the fact that missing spring training wasn’t just some happenstance. It was a choice.
Snell and his agent, Scott Boras, had certain expectations. It wasn’t all their fault that nobody wanted to meet those expectations until the Giants came along. But what has happened since was always a potential consequence of holding out all those weeks.
So in the end, Blake Snell got the money, and I’m happy for him. But he also got this midseason Cy Yuk award. Life is complicated like that sometimes.
MY NL CY YUK “TOP THREE”: Snell, Jordan Montgomery, Dakota Hudson.
Rookies of the Year: Mason Miller, A’s, and Paul Skenes, Pirates
Is it me, or do these Rookie of the Year categories get harder every year? This sport is bursting with so many electrifying young shooting stars, it’s easier to figure out what to order at the Cheesecake Factory than it is to figure out who to pick for Rookie of the Year.
So feel free to fire off your arguments for Shota Imanaga, Luis Gil, Jackson Merrill, Michael Busch, Joey Ortiz, Wyatt Langford, Masyn Winn and a dozen more rookies. There are no wrong answers on this quiz.
I gave up trying to separate them all from one another — and went with my two favorite rocket-launchers.
Paul Skenes. Take a whiff. (Benny Sieu / USA Today)
Paul Skenes! I know he arrived in Pittsburgh for his big-league debut only two months ago. But I’m starting to think he’s pretty good.
Roy Halladay struck out 82 hitters in his entire rookie season (in 149 1/3 innings). Skenes has struck out 89 in two months (in 66 1/3 innings).
Mariano Rivera, the first unanimous Hall of Famer, gave up 17 runs in the first 15 innings of his career. Skenes has given up 14 runs in two months.
Randy Johnson and Max Scherzer combined for two starts in their entire Hall-worthy careers with zero hits allowed and 11 strikeouts or more. Paul Skenes now has two of those in the first 11 starts of his career.
So what we’re seeing here isn’t just a Rookie of the Year. It’s history.
Mason Miller likes triple digits. (Paul Rutherford / USA Today)
Mason Miller! There aren’t many reasons to watch the A’s this summer, unless your idea of fun is counting empty seats. But when Mason Miller lopes out of that Oakland bullpen, I highly recommend you stop whatever you’re doing to watch this guy spit lightning bolts.
He’s already thrown 286 pitches this season at 100 mph or faster. I don’t know how to put that in perspective for you, so how about this: That’s more pitches at 100-plus, in three months, than Gerrit Cole, Tyler Glasnow, Shohei Ohtani and Spencer Strider have combined in their whole careers (280). And that’s out of nearly 50,000 total pitches for those four.
Or maybe this will drive my point home: Miller already has fired up five saves this season with at least three strikeouts and no hits allowed. Remember that Mariano Rivera guy? Would you believe he never had more than three saves like that in any season of his career? Believe it.
If you read this section and only come away with the impression that Hey, maybe Mariano Rivera wasn’t that good, that wasn’t the idea here at all. We’re just providing perspective on two rookie pitchers who are already headed to their first All-Star Game … because they’re doing stuff even the legends of yesteryear never did.
MY AL ROOKIE OF THE HALF-YEAR TOP THREE: Miller, Gil, Langford.
MY NL ROOKIE OF THE HALF-YEAR TOP THREE: Skenes, Imanaga, Merrill.
Managers of the half-year: Stephen Vogt, Guardians, and Rob Thomson, Phillies
Stephen Vogt has led the Guardians to the AL’s best record. (David Richard / USA Today)
Here’s another impossible award to pick. I could easily have talked myself into Alex Cora, Matt Quatraro, Pat Murphy or Mike Shildt as the managers of the year — and then spun an eloquently convincing case for why you should pick them, too. But that’s not what I did. Was it? Instead …
Stephen Vogt: I’ve said many times that Terry Francona was the greatest manager of his generation. So naturally, he retired and turned the Guardians over to a guy who had never managed … and Stephen Vogt then led that team to a better 90-game start than any team Francona ever managed — in Cleveland, Boston or Philadelphia.
I haven’t changed my mind about Francona. But I’m blown away by the magic Vogt and his staff have worked with the Guardians. The youngest team in the league. A team we thought might make fewer home run trots than Aaron Judge. A team that has had almost everything about its vaunted rotation go wrong.
Instead, that team has the best record in the American League. And the manager has his pulse on everything about it. Pretty cool story.
Rob Thomson: I know this isn’t how us savvy baseball writers usually pick a manager of the year. Usually, we look at the standings, find the team we were most wrong about and conclude: Whoa, what a brilliant job that manager is doing, huh?
But that doesn’t describe the Phillies’ manager at all. I don’t know how many of us thought the Phillies would have the best record in baseball right now, or would find themselves 9 1/2 games ahead of Atlanta. But we knew this team would be good, possibly great.
I just think it’s time to recognize the manager’s big part in that success. Rob Thomson waited a lifetime to do this job. And from day one, he was so good at it. He can run a game and juggle a bullpen as if he’d been doing this as long as Tony La Russa. But that’s not his greatest talent.
The word I keep coming back to is trust. I think about it all the time when I watch him go about his job and listen to him talk. He shows total trust in his players, often without saying a word, and they feel it.
So, in a season in which the Phillies have lost J.T. Realmuto, Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Brandon Marsh and Taijuan Walker (among others) to injuries, they’ve gotten unforeseen mileage out of Garrett Stubbs, Rafael Marchán, Kody Clemens, David Dahl, Spencer Turnbull and a bunch of guys who were never supposed to be central figures on the best team in baseball.
The manager makes them all feel like they’re a part of it. He promotes a clubhouse culture where the stars do that. There’s a calm about his team that’s unmistakable. And you can connect every one of those dots to the guy in the manager’s office. Amazing to think he spent three decades working in this sport and almost never got this chance.
MY AL MANAGER OF THE HALF-YEAR TOP THREE: Vogt, Cora, Quatraro.
MY NL MANAGER OF THE HALF-YEAR TOP THREE: Thomson, Murphy, Shildt.
GO DEEPER
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(Top image: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic. Photos: Aaron Judge: Stacy Revere / Getty Images; Chris Sale: Rich von Biberstein / Icon Sportswire / Associated Press)
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