Buried amidst other great baseball moments from 2022, the Guardians won the Central this weekend, clinching the division title after opening the division an afterthought. In April, the Guardians could be found at odds of 14-to-1 (or possibly longer) to win their division. They wrapped it up with more than a week to spare.
It’s been a storybook season in Cleveland, and José Ramírez, as is his wont, has been at the center of it. In April, he defied off-field expectations, agreeing to a seven-year extension likely to keep him in Ohio up to the doorstep of the end of his career. Since then, he’s merely done what he always does on the field, averaging more than half a base per at-bat, his slugging percentage trailing those of only five American League hitters. The eminently lovable third baseman has been the superstar Cleveland needs him to be, and now he’ll get a chance again to be that star in October, which he’ll enter just two wins away from the limelight of Yankee Stadium, anchoring the lineup opposite Aaron Judge.
We steer towards Judge for a reason here, and that’s that he is, hands down, Major League Baseball’s best player this season. He’s on the verge of tying Roger Maris’s home run mark. He’s leading baseball by more than a win’s worth of WAR. He’s playing in baseball’s biggest market, for baseball’s biggest brand, and no moment is overpowering him. Yet if you were to name the best player in the game today, would you pick Judge? Or would you pick José Ramírez?
It’s not a binary choice, and Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, and even the likes of Jacob deGrom make strong cases. But since 2016, the first year Ramírez took a full season’s worth of at-bats, only two players have accumulated more fWAR: Betts and Trout, the latter of whom should be turning the aging corner and beginning his slow, still-incredible decline.
The question is not who has been the best player in 2022 (Judge), or who would you pick first to build a franchise around in these coming years (Ohtani). The question is: Who is baseball’s best player? Who, right now, should be expected to do the most in any given month of the sport? You can argue for Judge, and you can argue for Trout, and you can argue for Ohtani and deGrom and Juan Soto. But you can also argue for José Ramírez, the man who has made Cleveland his land, and is one month at his best away from making the whole sport his kingdom.
Three Races Left
With the AL Central over and both the AL East and NL Central just awaiting the inevitable, we’re down to three postseason races: The NL East, between Atlanta and the Mets; The NL Wild Card, between the Padres, Phillies, and Brewers for two spots; and the AL Wild Card seeding shuffle, between the Blue Jays, Rays, and Mariners.
The Orioles, some will note, are only four losses back of the Mariners in that AL Wild Card chase, just a game further behind than the Brewers are of the Padres, whom we included. Part of this is somewhat habit—we wrote off the Orioles, and they haven’t yet gotten close enough to force us to write them back in. There’s also the intricacy where the Phillies are simultaneously fighting the Padres for the fifth seed and the Brewers to stay in the playoffs at all—we could call the NL Wild Card two separate races, one for seeding and one for making the field, but that’s not what this feels like. Overall, it’s arbitrary. Sorry, Orioles fans. Keep winning and we’ll pay attention to you again soon.
What’s happened since we last talked baseball:
Aaron Judge
Still no 61st home run from Aaron Judge, with Sunday’s game called final early due to rain, though that probably only took one at-bat away. The Yankees are in Toronto to start the week.
NL East
Wins for both Atlanta and the Mets on Sunday, a win for Atlanta again yesterday while the Mets rested. It’s a one-game gap, and they’ve played the same number of games, so nothing special about it where it’s zero losses or two losses. It’s one win and one loss, and the Mets hold the tiebreaker.
NL Wild Card
Atlanta’s win on Sunday meant that the Phillies lost, and with the Padres winning, that gap has stretched to a game and a half. On the other side of Philadelphia, the Brewers couldn’t finish the sweep against the Reds, so it’s still a game and a half there.
AL Wild Card
The Blue Jays beat the Rays on Sunday and the Yanks last night. The Mariners allowed eleven in the sixth after scoring eight in the fifth on Sunday, ultimately losing 13-12 to the Royals. I would imagine there are people panicking in Seattle, and I don’t think they should yet, but it’s hard to blame them.
The News
Matt Carpenter is sounding likely to return for the playoffs, giving the Yankees a little more firepower…hopefully. For them. Carpenter’s performance in the Bronx was startling, and it came over a small sample, and that often points towards regression.
Eugenio Suárez should be back for the Mariners tonight, and Jerry Dipoto spoke positively of Julio Rodríguez’s own rehabilitation. I do think that Seattle fans are mostly wanting a playoff berth at this point, and while things after that aren’t gravy, there’s that temptation. I say that to say: Missing the playoffs would be the end of the world, winning any playoff series would be cause for elation, and anything between those two would still be a successful season up in the Northwest.
Don Mattingly won’t come back with the Marlins next year, ending a weird tenure that felt surprisingly natural. The Marlins are in a little bit of no-man’s land, but separating from a manager is a good way to signal that you recognize that, at least.
The Rays are planning to start Tyler Glasnow on Wednesday, flipping the direction of their injury flow at a crucial time. He’s not stretched out yet, but the plan is to give him two regular season starts and then use him as part of a piggyback in October, and if there’s anyone I’d trust to handle a piggyback, it’s the Rays. Some value there from Kevin Cash.
The Brewers got Freddy Peralta back on Sunday, meaning last year’s top three starters are all active for this final stand. I don’t hate their chances, and if they do crack the playoff field, the Cardinals are going to be sweating a few bullets over that three-game set, heightening the importance for St. Louis to put these guys away this week.
The Cubs
Nice win on Sunday, great to see Nico Hoerner back active, excited that we’ll get Willson Contreras back tonight. We haven’t talked much about ticket prices in a while, but it’s impressive how much this last homestand’s games are going for, especially with the weekend portion against the Reds, another team who’s out of the hunt and one the Cubs play regularly. The Cubs have something special with that.
With Contreras and Seiya Suzuki returning, Jared Young is going back down to AAA, and Michael Hermosillo has been designated for assignment. It’s hard to see Hermosillo making a long-term positive impact, but he’s scary to let go. Some really good tools there, and just a really tough go of it on the development front between the pandemic and injuries.
The Smokies won their Championship Series opener and have a chance to clinch the Southern League title tonight, which, again, is a great reflection of the organizational health.
Iowa State, Why??
I’m not upset with Hunter Dekkers or the offense. Baylor’s defense is legitimate, and Dekkers’s first pick was one that would’ve been called a hell of a throw if Baylor hadn’t made a hell of a play on it. Is Dekkers better than Brock Purdy? No. But there’s still a pretty good chance he will be, and he isn’t playing badly.
It’s upsetting to allow 31 points to the Baylor Bears, and to get eaten alive through the air.
You can blame some of this on the targeting call on Beau Freyler, and many are, but the Cyclones allowed 9.2 yards per pass attempt. That’s not a difference one player is going to make. Right call or wrong call, Iowa State let Baylor throw it all over the field, and they did it so early that it forced the offense to try to come back, something this offense must not be asked to do right now.
Making it all worse, Kansas State beat Oklahoma and Texas Tech beat Texas, tearing open a Big 12 in which had Iowa State pulled this off, Iowa State would have a decent claim to being the conference favorite. Instead, it’s up in the air between OU, Oklahoma State, and Baylor, with all of Texas, K-State, Texas Tech, and ISU looking capable but inconsistent while TCU and Kansas remain unbeaten but unproven. It’s a deep league, but it’s open for the taking, and Iowa State may yet be the team that takes it, but it’s likeliest to come in a messy, tiebreaker-strewn landscape, and it’s scary to see the team only favored by a field goal this weekend against Kansas.
The thing that’s so frustrating about losing because of the defense, for Iowa State right now, is that the defense is supposed to be the program’s backbone. Jon Heacock is supposed to be a star, and he’s definitely a great coach, and the defense has been good, but it is just not good enough to not need a high-powered offense alongside it. Maybe the offense will step up and become good enough to bail the defense out. Maybe the defense, with upgraded talent coming in through the recent recruiting advances, will get better. But Heacock’s likely on his way to a bigger gig, and it just feels like he’s never quite done enough to save Iowa State in games like Saturday’s. It’s not fair to get mad at a guy for being an A- defensive coordinator. That’s really good. But he gets talked about as an A+ defensive coordinator and I’m just not convinced the results back it up.
Win Saturday, and Iowa State’s got a shot at the Big 12 title. Lose Saturday, and Iowa State’s in danger of missing a bowl. That’s this conference, right there.
Big to Beat the Bucs
Contrarily, the defense got it done for the Packers in Tampa Bay, holding the line after the offense failed to put the game away. There’s still a lot of offensive clicking to be done—and on the other end, this wasn’t the same Bucs offense we’ll be seeing by December—but there were bright spots, ranging from David Bakhtiari being healthy enough to split time on the offensive line to Romeo Doubs’s nice day. With the win, the Packers climb alongside the Eagles as the team to beat in the NFC, grabbing an important tiebreaker chip over the Buccaneers.
Other NFL thoughts:
- The Eagles do sure look good, and there’s a common opponent between them and the Pack in the Vikings who can’t be ignored. But even with that: What’s each team’s ceiling? Maybe I’m taking Philadelphia lightly, and I admittedly don’t know them as well as I know the Packers, but it’s hard to see as much upside with them as there is in Green Bay.
- I’d still take the Bills over anyone in the AFC, and it seems the market would as well. Good for the Dolphins, but the Dolphins feel a little like the Vikings in that it’s hard to buy them being as good as their record.
- Mac Jones’s injury might buy the Patriots some narrative help (it sucks for Jones, don’t want to ignore that piece of it), but this was a bad team with Mac Jones, and that’s gotten to feel normal but it should be shocking. Bill Belichick, for so long, could do no wrong. Now, it’s all fallen apart. What the hell happened? Was it really Tom Brady leaving?
- I don’t know how the hell the Colts won after looking the way they did the first two weeks, but it’s grounds for concern for Kansas City. They’ll probably be alright, but put ‘em in the suspicious pile.
- The Jaguars look good. Both West divisions look a lot worse than we expected.
- The Lions are so close to being 2-1, if not 3-0, and they’ve got a favorable two weeks coming up but after that it starts getting hard. It’ll be a lot of fun if it works, but there was so much ground to make up for Detroit as a franchise.
Survive and Advance
The NASCAR playoffs have become a war of attrition, with Sunday’s race at Texas a debacle in which yet another non-playoff driver won (Tyler Reddick, who’s already been eliminated) and two of the cars who left it above the current cutline (the Trackhouse guys) did so by taking away their drivers’ chance at winning, prioritizing finishing the race by doing everything they could to prevent blowing a tire. It’s not what NASCAR wants, but it’s grimly exciting. Poker’s a game of chance, too, but in the long run, the best players do win.
The Colton Herta Situation
My impression is that there are two main long-term silly season questions happening between F1 and IndyCar. The first one is the Andretti family’s attempt to introduce an American team into F1. The second is when Colton Herta can get behind an F1 wheel, either for the Andretti team or AlphaTauri, who reportedly was ready for Herta as soon as 2023.
I haven’t read much on the Andretti situation, but with Herta, what’s happening is that a dumb rule is being enforced that’s keeping him out. IndyCar is evidently not viewed on par with Formula 2 by F1’s Super License system, which is more than a little laughable given the results between drivers jumping between F1 and IndyCar. That said, at least F1’s enforcing the rule. It isn’t serving its purpose—the sport’s still a rich kid’s playground with little competition—and thus needs changing, but if you’re going to have rules, you have to enforce them, and F1’s doing that, which will probably be good for it in the long run.
Housekeeping
For those following the bets: Apologies for not getting the soccer futures up on Friday. We’re still a little all over the place (apologies if we’ve missed any big news in the NBA, NHL, or NFL, and apologies for our delay on two interesting college football bits we’re planning to address tomorrow), so our futures cadence on soccer and college football isn’t flawless. If we don’t get soccer futures in tomorrow or Thursday, we’ll do a double batch on Friday. College football will happen tomorrow or Thursday, NFL will remain on Thursday. Go Padres, go Rays.
**
Viewing schedule, second screen rotation in italics, all games on MLB TV (not a single national broadcast—oof):
- 6:10 PM EDT: Tampa Bay @ Cleveland, Kluber vs. Bieber
- 7:05 PM EDT: Atlanta @ Washington, Muller vs. Espino
- 7:07 PM EDT: New York (AL) @ Toronto, Taillon vs. Berríos
- 7:10 PM EDT: Miami @ New York (NL), López vs. Carrasco
- 7:40 PM EDT: Philadelphia @ Cubs, Wheeler vs. Stroman
- 7:40 PM EDT: St. Louis @ Milwaukee, Mikolas vs. Houser
- 9:40 PM EDT: Los Angeles @ San Diego, Anderson vs. Snell
- 9:40 PM EDT: Texas @ Seattle, Tinoco vs. Ray
