At some point Friday evening, the 1,215th final score of the 2018 Major League Baseball championship season will be entered in the logs. It's the natural halfway point -- peak baseball -- when we have as many games behind us as we do ahead.
The first half of the season has gone as expected and has been completely surprising. It's been thrilling, and it's been staid. It's been heartening and disappointing. It's been just another season -- unlike any before it, but somehow very much familiar.
It feels like there has been more chatter than usual about the state of baseball, with attendance down and debates over tweaks to the game popping up almost daily. The drop in attendance is real, though the theories about it are not. The fact is, we don't know why attendance is down. We suspect the likely factors -- the weather, the stratification of the leagues, the lack of action generated from balls in play -- but we don't really know what is behind the slowly clicking turnstiles. We also don't know if it's a trend or a blip.
It's always good to take these wide-lens surveys of the game, whether you're a writer, a fan or the commissioner. We should always be open to discussion about baseball's place in the culture and its bid for your disposable dollars. Baseball has always been subject to evolutionary forces, is evolving right now as these words sink into your left cerebral hemisphere, and will evolve in the future even after we've all tapped into the universal subconscious. You can't stop it.
While we've been preoccupied with the possible directions of this evolution, it feels like a couple of key parts have been overlooked.
One: The game is still really fun and compelling. Sure, you run into contests where the strikeouts and pitching changes seem interminable. There are a few markets where there are currently too many low-stakes games, an unfortunate by-product of too many teams rebuilding at the same time. But in a few years, those same teams will be all-in trying to win.
And two: There are legions of people all over the world who still totally dig it.
With that lullaby out of the way, let's run through some first-half awards. All of them are made up. There will be no ceremony and no cash prizes. Recognition is its own reward.
Most Emergent Team: The boring way to put this is that it goes to the team that has increased its average win total in my simulation model since the beginning of the season. That team would be the Atlanta Braves, who have improved their forecast from 73.2 wins to 89.0. This is real, Braves fans.
The Vanishing Team: The converse of the Braves has been the Baltimore Orioles, whose forecast has dropped from a sad 72.7 to a tragic 56.6. And they haven't even traded Manny Machado, Zach Britton and Adam Jones yet.
Rocky Balboa Award: This is the team whose title odds have jumped the most from Opening Day. It's different from the change in win forecast because it's more of a knockout game. The winner is ... the Houston Astros. There's a certain amount of randomness built into the simulation model to capture the likelihood of breakouts, collapses and such. The Astros were my preseason favorite, with a 19 percent shot of repeating as champions. That rate is up to 32 percent. Houston is currently winning an average of 107 games in the model. The Astros are good.
The Cream Power Trio: Yes, it's a classic-rock reference you probably don't get unless your vinyl-record collection is not meant to be ironic. In most years, the title odds of the Astros' juggernaut would near 40 percent by now. But they're not, because the second- and third-best teams in baseball are also in the American League and are also exceedingly strong. Boston currently has the second-best title odds (13 percent) and the Yankees are third (12 percent). Since you're wondering, in this power trio, the Astros are clearly Eric Clapton, the jazzy Red Sox are Jack Bruce and the bam-bam Yankees are the perfect Ginger Baker. Look it up, kids.
Jake LaMotta Award: This recognizes the team whose odds have taken the biggest dive, though this club can't use LaMotta's excuse that it was intentional. Baseball's first-half Stumbling Bull is the Dodgers, whose title odds have slipped from 14 percent to 8 percent. But this club isn't about to hit the nightclub circuit. L.A. is showing increasing rage potential with each passing week.
The Rush Power Trio: Seriously, you can't stop me from doing this. There has been lots of talk about Mike Trout's pursuit of the best season ever. And there's good reason for that, even though as we reach the midpoint, his pace has slowed a bit. But he's not the only one having a historically epic season.
During the divisional era, there have been just 16 players to crack double digits in fWAR. Only once during that span have two players done it in the same season: In 2001, Barry Bonds (12.5) and Randy Johnson (10.4) both got there. At the moment, there are three players on pace to do it in 2018. There's Trout, of course, who is currently on a 12.2 WAR trajectory. But Jose Ramirez (10.3) and Max Scherzer (10.2) are on target, too. Sure, it probably won't last, but don't lose track of Mookie Betts (9.2), whose pace took a hit when he was on the disabled list. But if he doesn't miss anymore time and keeps doing what he's doing, he can get there as well.
The MVP Award That Does Not Seem Obvious: That would be the National League, of course, or the league that does not have Trout. Let's rule out pitchers for now. We can have that debate later. The top position players in fWAR pace are Atlanta's Freddie Freeman (7.0), Milwaukee's Lorenzo Cain (6.8) and Colorado's Nolan Arenado (6.3). Freeman and Cain play for division leaders. It's shaping up as a good race but is also ripe for a surprise contender. Here's one: Miami catcher J.T. Realmuto (6.0). No, he has no chance if he remains on the Marlins. But what if he gets dealt to, say, the Nationals and helps put them over the top with a big finish?
Max Mercy Award: It's Max Muncy. Clearly. I mean, doubles, triples (OK, walks), homers ... whatever he wants to do, he does. I mean, how could a guy be this good who came from nowhere?
The Cy Young Award That Does Not Seem Obvious: The AL candidates are a beastly group. New York's Luis Severino might have emerged as the favorite, but this could change with each turn of the proverbial rotation. Houston's Justin Verlander is right there. So is Boston's Chris Sale. Cleveland has both Corey Kluber and Trevor Bauer. Of all the awards races, this one might be my favorite.
The Gilligan Award for Top Skipper: The National League has all the best candidates here. Two of them are so dissimilar in appearance, style and personality that they should be paired on the next great reality show: Philadelphia's Gabe Kapler (Phillies fans are hating this right now, but you know what haters do) and Atlanta's Brian Snitker, who is not a likely candidate to be suggesting possible uses for coconut oil. Milwaukee's Craig Counsell is a great pick as well and might be the most unsung skipper in baseball right now. But my at-the-moment pick has to be Arizona's Torey Lovullo. A.J. Pollock has missed much of the first half. Paul Goldschmidt has had a down season. Taijuan Walker is out for the year. The Diamondbacks' offense ranks 29th in OPS+. Yet here we are, with Arizona 12 games over .500 and playing better than anybody in the National League. (Except for Cincinnati. No, really.)
Offseason Move That Paid Off in a Way You Never Saw Coming: The Dodgers' acquisition of Matt Kemp is certainly a great choice here. But I'm going with Detroit's Leonys Martin. From 2015 to 2017, Martin hit .228/.283/.345 in more than 1,000 plate appearances while bouncing from the Rangers to the Mariners to the Cubs. Detroit picked him up on a one-year, $1.75 million deal over the winter because they didn't want to put Al Kaline's statue in center field. Well, Martin has hit .257/.329/.438 and is on pace for 4.4 WAR. With his wheels and cheap contract, the Tigers might actually be able to flip Martin for something before the trade deadline.
What the numbers say
Is this what an All-Star starter looks like?
Baseball released its final All-Star voting update the other day, the last tally before we find out who the fans have picked to start in this season's Midseason Classic. I generally don't get worked up about All-Star voting. Now that the game once again has no real-world consequences, it truly is a contest for the fans, and whoever they want to put in it is just fine with me.
Still, I can't help but view askew the American League balloting at a couple of positions:
That's a lame, race, no? Let's start with catcher. Gary Sanchez is the AL leader here by fWAR, and Wilson Ramos is second, so the fans are mostly on the money, but this isn't about them -- it's about what they have to choose from. Sanchez is hitting .190/.291/.433, and there was even some talk he might be sent to the minors.
I think there are a couple of things going on here. First, teams have increasingly been doling out for catchers strong in pitch-framing, while ignoring the offensive end of the equation. But even more than that, teams are just much more reluctant to play catchers every day.
Since 1969, there have been 178 instances in which an AL player who was primarily a catcher had at least 500 plate appearances in a season. Last season, there was one: Sanchez. This season, only Sanchez and Ramos are on pace to get there.
This might simply be a by-product of the fact that the best catchers in the game right now -- Willson Contreras, Buster Posey, Realmuto, Francisco Cervelli, Yasmani Grandal, Tucker Barnhart -- all happen to play in the National League.
As big as that schism is between the leagues right now, it's nothing compared to what's happening at first base:
Jose Abreu and Yuli Gurriel are good players, but there is no depth at this position. Mitch Moreland is having a fine season, but he was an afterthought in last winter's free-agent market. Albert Pujols is an all-time great but is on pace for his second consecutive sub-replacement performance. And Miguel Cabrera isn't even playing! He's done for the season with a ruptured biceps and hasn't appeared in a game since June 12.
The top six first-sackers by fWAR (prorated to 162 games) all reside in the National League: Freeman, Joey Votto, Goldschmidt, Jesus Aguilar, Brandon Belt and Cody Bellinger. And that list doesn't even include disappointing Cubs 1B Anthony Rizzo, who could jump back toward the top of this leaderboard before long.
According to Baseball-Reference.com, there are five positions that have posted a higher collective OPS in the AL than first base, which is at .734. Those positions are third base (.773), designated hitter (.762), shortstop (.759), right field (.759) and left field (.744).
Shortstop! Has the defensive spectrum flipped?
That could be, but one thing you see is that there are a lot of established American League first basemen producing very little. In addition to Pujols and Cabrera, who was doing fine before he was injured, you have Minnesota's Joe Mauer (.215 average with one homer in 35 games) and the horrific problems of Baltimore's Chris Davis (.150 average with six homers).
Together, the Pujols-Cabrera-Mauer-Davis quartet is due to earn a combined $104.1 million this season. They are on pace to produce a collective minus-2.7 fWAR.
Since you asked
Jon Lester and what advanced metrics say
You see me frame topics in a results vs. expectations manner frequently, which I suppose is a natural by-product of maintaining a system that fruitlessly tries to calculate what's going to happen. The past few years, as Statcast data has matured and the related leaderboards available at BaseballSavant.mlb.com have expanded, my WAR-based processes have become augmented by the tracking data, which is more of a fundamental bridge between the quantitative prism and more scout-based approaches.
So, I'll peek a few times a week at the leaders and laggards in WOBA minus xWOBA, for both hitters and pitchers. The former is a measure of what a player has actually produced, while the latter is a measure of what he should have produced based on the quality of his pitches (or the quality of the balls he's hit into play, if he's a hitter).
That's why I wasn't surprised when I read the deep dive into the underlying indicators for Cubs lefty Jon Lester, written by Jay Jaffe at Fangraphs.com. According to that WOBA minus xWOBA metric, only Oakland's Sean Manaea has outperformed his fundamentals more than Lester.
From the perspective of traditional stats, Lester's season has been manna for a beleaguered Chicago rotation. In fact, those old measures might even mark Lester as a Cy Young contender if he weren't in the same league as Scherzer and Jacob deGrom. Through Wednesday, Lester is 10-2 with a 2.18 ERA.
But it's been a season built on moxie for Lester -- a player regarded as one of baseball's fiercest competitors -- whose average fastball velocity (90.9 mph, per Fangraphs) is the lowest it's been since 2007.
I saw this firsthand last week, when Lester beat the Dodgers, throwing seven scoreless innings in a 4-0 Cubs win. Lester struck out just one of the 28 batters he faced, but got outs, aided by a dynamic defense that made four plays I underlined in my scorebook. Trust me, I'm stingy with those underlines. Before that, the most batters Lester had ever faced in a start with zero or one strikeouts was 26. He's now had 12 career starts with that many (or fewer) whiffs. In the other 11, his ERA is 11.06.
Here's the thing: None of this is news to Lester, which makes his comments after that outing against the Dodgers so interesting. The questions were in a news-conference setting.
How much do you marvel at that defense behind you?
JON LESTER: It wasn't exactly ideal on my end, with pitching. Really didn't have much today and kind of grinded through that one. The defense, they've been picking us up all year. It's kind of like, here, I don't have anything, so just hit it and hopefully those guys will run it down and catch it.
Joe Maddon was saying it seemed like you looked very calm on the mound.
JL: I'm glad it looks that way. Today was definitely not calm internally. Just very thankful that's a W. I think maybe two years ago, maybe even last year, I don't know that I get past the fourth inning with what I was dealing with, just mechanically and stuff-wise.
What comfort do you take in the reality that you've been worth every penny of that contract you signed? You had to hear so much about that contract the first year.
JL: Oh, I'm not worried about that. I've got two, maybe three, more years to screw it up on the other end, I guess. I was very fortunate to fall into a year where I had some people bidding against each other. In no way, shape or form did I expect a contract like what I got, and I'm very grateful for it every day. But the last thing I'm worried about is that. I'm worried about my teammates and performing and the city and doing my job.
Jon, your record is almost the same as it was two years ago, and your ERA is, in fact, better. How do you compare the way you're pitching now to the way you were pitching two years ago?
JL: Very different. Now I'm relying a lot more on my defense. In '16 I had a lot better stuff, consistently better stuff. I've had starts this year where I've felt really good and physically been able to repeat and do the things that I've done in the past. But obviously I've thrown a lot of baseballs. There is some wear and tear there. Obviously I'm not going to be the same pitcher I was last year, or two years ago. We're making adjustments. We're figuring out new ways to get guys out. I know people are making a big deal how hard balls are hit or whatever, but an out is an out. I really don't care. I'm still yet to have a homer robbed, so hopefully I get that somewhere down the line the next couple of years. That would be nice.
Coming right up
Who could forget the Vic Delmore game?
Saturday marks the 59th anniversary of the Vic Delmore game. You probably have no idea what I'm talking about, so allow me to explain in narrative fashion. This was mostly pieced together from the archives of the Chicago Tribune, the book "Take Me Out to the Cubs Game," by John C. Skipper, and a New York Times obituary. Details vary according to account, so what I've got here is my best interpretation of how it played out.
It's June 30, 1959. The Cardinals are playing the Cubs at Wrigley Field, back in the days when there were no lights, so it's a Tuesday afternoon. It's the top of the fourth, with St. Louis up 2-1, bases empty and one out. Up to the plate steps Stan Musial, facing Chicago's Bob Anderson. Musial, well, you've probably heard of him.
Behind the plate is a man named Vic Delmore, who umpired in the National League from 1956-59 and, apparently, had a salty relationship with Reds manager Birdie Tebbetts. In a published obituary, Delmore is quoted as once saying, "Umpires, like ballplayers, have bad days, too. Sometimes, if you make a wrong decision, you feel badly about it -- worse than anybody else." These comments will come to take on an ominous portent.
With the count 3-1, Musial checks his swing on an Anderson pitch well off the inside corner of the strike zone. The ball evades Cubs catcher Sammy Taylor, rattles around the backstop and ends up near Chicago public-address announcer Pat Pieper, who, by most accounts, has the ball tossed to him by the Cubs' bat boy. Some accounts say Pieper picked up the ball, but he said after the game that he never touched it. However it happens, the ball ends up near Pieper.
Pieper is a fascinating story in his own right. He first worked for the Cubs as a vendor in 1904 at the West Side Grounds. He followed them to Wrigley Field in 1916, when he took over the P.A. job, which he then held for 58 years, all the way until 1974. Wrigley Field regulars will know the voice; it's the old-timey recording the Cubs play just before the introduction of starting lineups, uttering the words "Attention! Attention, please! Have your pencils and scorecards ready, and I will give you the correct lineups for today's game." In those days, Pieper performed those duties from a bench near the Cubs' dugout.
Anyway, believing Musial contacted the pitch and that ball four should have been ruled a foul ball, Taylor lays into Delmore and is joined by Anderson coming in from the mound. As Musial reaches first, the St. Louis coach there notices the ball is still somewhere near the backstop, and that the Chicago catcher and pitcher are embroiled in an argument. So he waves his arm windmill style, spurring Musial to try for second base. So far, we're still in the terrain of odd but not weird. Until ...
With the FIRST ball still live, and maybe or maybe not in the mitts of the P.A. announcer, Delmore decides it's a good time to pull out a SECOND ball and hand it to Anderson. Quickly, the hurler realizes that Musial is trying for second. He wheels and throws in the direction of Cubs second baseman Tony Taylor. That SECOND ball flies over Taylor's head into center field.
Watching all this from his position at third base is Chicago's Alvin Dark, one of the better infielders of the 1950s. He went on to manage the Oakland A's to the 1974 World Series crown. As the scene around home plate is playing out, Dark races toward the backstop, yells at Pieper to unhand the FIRST ball -- the one Pieper said he never actually touched -- and the ball remains on the ground. Dark snags it and uncorks a throw to Hall of Fame Cubs shortstop Ernie Banks, who is somewhere between second and third base, but closer to second. This throw is accurate, so the FIRST ball is in Banks' glove between the bases, while the SECOND ball is soaring into center field.
Musial does not notice Dark's throw to Banks, but does see Anderson's errant throw flying into center. So Stan the Man does what any heady baserunner would do and takes off for third base. Waiting for him, with the FIRST ball, is Banks, who tags Musial. After a delay, Musial is ruled out by second-base umpire Bill Jackowski, leading to an on-field melee.
"I never knew there was a second ball," Musial said afterward. "And darned if I felt Banks tag me!"
The Cardinals won the game 4-1, though they finished it under protest. The lead on the game story the next day by Tribune writer Edward Prell read, "Baseball reached a daffiness ceiling in Wrigley field Tuesday." (Yes, the "field" was in lowercase.) He added, "Not even Bill Veeck of the White Sox could have conjured up such a zany episode."
Zany, indeed. There's more, but it's not so zany.
After the season, Delmore didn't see his contract renewed by the National League, so he was out of a job. Some say it was because of the Wrigley Field debacle. Others say it was because of a conflict of interest: He had married a secretary who worked in the office of NL president Warren Giles, where umpiring assignments were doled out.
Whatever the reasons, there was a mild outrage over Delmore's dismissal. Very mild. In his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, it was reported that 2,000 to 3,000 angry fans had sent telegrams and letters of protest to Giles on Delmore's behalf. Giles said it was more like a dozen. He added that Delmore was a "fine gentleman" but he had told the poor umpire there had been "three or four incidents which broke down my confidence and that of others in you."
A harsh assessment for an umpire. According to Dark, the incident "ruined [Delmore], and he was a great fellow and a good umpire." On June 10, 1960, just under a year after the Wrigley Field incident, Delmore, age 44, died at home of a heart attack.