There’s some principle in quantum physics which says elementary particles can be in two places at once. I did not study physics to the level to which I understand that, but I think it applies to a certain baseball franchise right now.
The Houston Astros were swept over the weekend by the Seattle Mariners, a development which happened right alongside the AL West-leading Rangers receiving a sweep of their own at the hands of the Brewers. The result is that while two wins over the three games would have left the Astros within half a game of finally obtaining first place, they instead remain alone in second, half a game back with the Mariners suddenly nipping at their heels and the Blue Jays threatening to bump them out of playoff position altogether. It was a performance bad enough to warrant the dreaded players-only meeting, with veteran catcher Martín Maldonado saying publicly the team needs to stop focusing on their opposition and start focusing on simply playing better ball.
It’s a strange year for the Astros, and a lot of this speaks to how successful the franchise has been at roster-building. On the one hand, Houston is near the top of the American League in pennant probability in most prediction systems and futures markets. The team is a clear World Series contender with a fearsome starting pitching 1–2 punch. On the other, the team is transitioning to its next identity. Carlos Correa and George Springer have been gone for years now, plural, and Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman are each just over a year from hitting free agency, a point at which each will be of an age past a player’s traditional prime.
The Justin Verlander acquisition reversed this, to an extent, but 2023 has been a reloading season for the Astros, one which would have been seen as a rebuilding season were the roster not so good to begin with. Now, after being swept by the Mariners, the Astros are in the thick of it, the fifth-safest character in an American League where only two teams are safe to make the playoff field. The Astros don’t just have the Mariners to worry about, or the Rangers if the goal is winning the division. There’s the Blue Jays. There’s the Red Sox. There are the Rays and Orioles in potential Wild Card Series matchups. And while the team reloads, the depth is lacking. Houston has only nine position players projected by FanGraphs to amass positive fWAR over the rest of the season, and with Hunter Brown allowing nine home runs over his last six starts, the rotation beyond Verlander and Framber Valdez is looking suspect.
A question in baseball right now is how long a franchise can be great, and how much success they can achieve while at the pinnacle. The Astros have the most postseason success of any team in baseball this last decade, with four pennants and two titles. One of those titles, though, is accompanied by heavy historic protest, and two titles in ten years is not dynastic. Some of this is the postseason format, but a lot of it is just baseball. It is hard right now to get good and stay that way. There’s a reason there hasn’t been a repeat champion since the Yankees did it those three times in a row during the Clinton Administration. Roster construction is highly competitive. The game has changed. The Dodgers, the best regular season team these last ten years? They’ve won one title and only made the World Series three times, and their title comes with protests of its own, being the product of the shortened Covid season.
It’s possible Houston will turn this skid around, win the division, roll through the Twins or somebody in the Division Series and trot off to what would be their fifth World Series appearance in a seven-year stretch. They could even win it, whether they win the division or not. But at the moment, they look like the latest empire to quickly fall, having hardly ever peaked. They should be good again next year, too, but the further time goes on, the more the well looks dry. The Astros ranked last today in Kiley McDaniel’s farm system rankings at ESPN. The future is not especially promising.
The Giants Found Another Pitcher
One element of this broader roster competitiveness is that baseball is still trying to figure out the exact importance of starting pitchers. There was a hard lean into openers for a few years, but they’ve become rare again, with one primary exception: The Giants currently have two starting pitchers and a whole bunch of bullpen. It doesn’t appear to be by design—Alex Wood, Ross Stripling, and Sean Manaea were brought on to be starters, I would presume—but there’s some choice involved. Beyond Logan Webb and Alex Cobb, the Giants have been quick this year to shuffle starters out of the deck.
This exercise has worked rather well. The Giants are a game and a half ahead of those chasing playoff position in the National League, with the Cubs a little buffer between themselves and the pack. But, they still don’t seem to want to be all ‘pen three to five days a week.
Tomorrow, top Giants pitching prospect Kyle Harrison will make his debut for San Francisco in a road game against the Phillies, the team the Giants are chasing in the race for home field advantage in the Wild Card Series. We don’t talk too much about top prospect debuts in here, because they’re so many in number these days, but this is one that should have big ramifications in the playoff race, and likely in the playoffs once they arrive, given the Giants are likelier than not to get there. This is a big shot at stability for a team that’s patched holes all season.
Seiya Suzuki Is Above Average Again
Friday was a frustrating game at Wrigley Field, feeling so winnable and forcing the Cubs into a spot where if they didn’t win both Saturday and Sunday, they’d have managed a losing record over the first five games of this advantageous two-week stretch. As it stands, they did go only 3–2 on the week against two of the four worst teams in baseball, but it’s hard to ask for more than splits and series wins in so small a sample. They gained half a game on the Brewers, they lead the race for the 6-seed by a game, there’s still a week left of friendly matchups.
Cody Bellinger was the weekend hero, but Seiya Suzuki has been getting some buzz, and it’s worth revisiting him. He’s back above 100 in wRC+, meaning he’s been better than a league-average hitter on the season, and FanGraphs projects him to finish at an even 2.0 fWAR, nearly exactly what his $17M average salary implies he should achieve. It’s a little more complicated than that—there was an additional $3M per year averaged out across the contract which went to the Hiroshima Carp—but basically, Seiya Suzuki continues to meet financial expectations despite dealing with some degree of injury. I understand there are Cubs fans who want more than that, but if a guy is playing to his salary and also playing to his initial projection–system expectations when he joined the club (he was projected to be a 2–3 WAR player), that’s not a Suzuki problem. That’s a problem with thinking every top offseason signing from Japan is supposed to turn out like Shohei Ohtani. By the way? If Suzuki can continue to meet expectations through the end of next season, he’ll have matched Ohtani’s production in his first three American years. That is a very bad comparison because of age differences and hopefully injury differences, but it’s not like Ohtani came over and immediately started playing like Babe Ruth and Roger Clemens’s lovechild.
Looking ahead to the week, the Cubs have some tough matchups against the Tigers, a team who still retains some shred of a chance to sneak into the playoff picture. Alex Faedo, who pitches opposite Javier Assad tonight, has been a sub-5.00 pitcher by FIP in his MLB experience. Reese Olson, who’s matched up with Drew Smyly tomorrow, has posted similar numbers. Tarik Skubal, who goes against Jameson Taillon on Wednesday, has a 1.99 FIP since making his season debut on the Fourth of July, and he has the prospect–ranking history to make that a threat. It’s hard to have a ton of confidence in Smyly in his return to the bullpen, too, and Taillon and Assad aren’t exactly Cy Young candidates.
It’s going to be on the offense, then, and even with Justin Steele and Kyle Hendricks pitching at some point in Pittsburgh this weekend, it’s going to be on the offense then, too. This team’s greatest strength is its ability to score runs, and while it isn’t great at that—only 10th in the league in fWAR—it’s the best thing going aside from individual performers. Score runs, and the Cubs should get the four or five wins we’re looking for. Don’t score, and it could get a little grim.
Above the Cubs in the picture, the Brewers play just five games this week, enjoying the two days off that the Cubs got last week. They’ll host the Twins tomorrow and Wednesday, and they’ll host the Padres for three over the weekend. Exiting Sunday, they and the Cubs will have played the same number of games on the year, taking the games–back vs. loss–column debate off the table when measuring the division deficit. If the Cubs can win three more games than Milwaukee—a tall task but possible with a little help—they’ll enter next week’s series trailing by only one game, no matter how you count it.
Below and around the Cubs, it’s busy. The Reds, Diamondbacks, and Marlins are each a game back, and the Giants lead Chicago by only half a game. San Francisco’s in Philadelphia through Wednesday and hosts Atlanta over the weekend, meaning the Cubs will hopefully be able to climb into fifth place in the NL, and if not, the Cubs should be able to gain some ground on the Phillies in fourth. The Reds, meanwhile, will be playing ten games in nine days out west beginning tomorrow, with three against the Angels and four against the Diamondbacks this week (they were hurricaned out today). Arizona has two against the Rangers in Phoenix before the Reds get to town, and the Marlins have three in San Diego before heading home to host the Nationals for the weekend. None of those schedules is as kind as that of the Cubs. It’s a big week.
The Packers Continue to Look Fine
The Packers had another preseason game, and the headlines came from the injury sustained by Patriots cornerback Isaiah Bolden, who was stretchered off the field in the fourth quarter at which point the coaches ended the game. Thankfully, Bolden is reportedly doing alright.
There wasn’t much to take away from the preseason game at a high level. The Packers’ basic situation is that markets have them finishing a few games under .500 and finishing third in the NFC North, but those same markets think the division favorites might only go 9–8. It’s not exactly murderer’s row in the Upper Midwest right now, and the result is that competence and some well-placed victories could get the Packers a playoff home game. The range of uncertainty is large, too, owing to the first-year quarterback part of the situation. We aren’t going to get clear answers until possibly a whole month into the season. In fact, we hopefully won’t get clear answers before then. If we do, given the Packers open against the Bears, Falcons, and Saints, the answers will probably be bad news.
Djokovic vs. Alcaraz, Round 4
For the fourth time ever, Novak Djokovic faced Carlos Alcaraz yesterday, and this time, the elder of the two won, bringing home the Cincinnati Open after winning tiebreakers in both the second and third sets. With the U.S. Open’s qualifying beginning this week and no clear third challenger to the pair right now, we could be seeing one of the biggest men’s tennis matches in years in the very near future.
Bad People Can Be Good Coaches
If you want a brief account of why people don’t like Jorge Vilda, here’s a piece from CBS Sports from yesterday morning. If you want a briefer account: Jorge Vilda, head coach of Spain’s women’s soccer team which just won the World Cup, runs a reportedly harsh operation. Some of the complaints go back to places above Vilda’s rung on the Royal Spanish Football Federation’s organizational ladder, but some outlets have reported more than half the complaints came back to him. Also, he kissed one of his players on the lips yesterday in celebration.
One response to this from the women’s soccer world has been to say that coaches must not be that important, since such a bad coach just won such an important trophy. Maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re wrong. But it’s coming from a similar corner which placed a lot of blame for the United States’ team’s failures on Vlatko Andonovski, the head coach, which makes it seem that what this corner really wants to be true is that if they don’t like someone, that person must be ineffective at his or her job, and vice versa.
I’m not suggesting that this corner—and I don’t know how large the corner is or isn’t, I’m not perfectly plugged into the women’s soccer discourse, which is part of why I don’t have much of an opinion on Vilda or Andonovski’s effectiveness myself—should like Vilda. He doesn’t seem like someone I like. But a good sign you’re in an echo chamber is if you’re throwing out arguments with obvious logical flaws, or even with direct contradictions, and you’re seeing a lot of nodding heads. Echo chambers are probably fine in the sports world—I don’t think it really matters if a few thousand people have a silly opinion about Spain’s women’s soccer coach—but they aren’t fine everywhere, and logical laziness is a habit which seems to transcend the divides of church and state and sport.
This Was Fun
Of all the delightful parts of the Phillies and Nationals playing in Williamsport last night, this clip was my favorite. As Perrault says, this is something the kids in question will never forget, and as it goes when the Little League World Series is at its best, the memory came in the opposite of a patronizing manner.
You know who will also remember this fondly? The kids on the team from Rhode Island who won the game, kept their season alive, and beat the favored team of three iconic MLB players from the generation above their own.
Let the kids compete.
