Major League Cricket began its inaugural season last night, the American league drawing excited press from sporting outlets such as…NPR and the Wall Street Journal.
Ok, so it’s a curiosity. But!
We, in America, like to think of ourselves as the most athletic nation in the world, and to be fair, we might be. We tend to perform pretty darn well at the Olympics. But for all the quadrennial “What if our best athletes played soccer?” hypothesizing every time the men’s national team craps out before or during the World Cup, we never ask the same of India, which either sometime recently or sometime imminently took/will take the title from China of most populous nation in the world. Training and nutrition and average height differ, but in a country more than four times our size, there are some pretty good athletes.
Those athletes are playing cricket.
Every time someone refers to cricket as the world’s second-most popular sport, I do a double take. It’s something I know is true, it’s obviously true for obvious reasons, but it still makes me step back. It’s such a paradigm-shifting truth from our football-focused world. Err. Country.
Estimates say American football has roughly 400 million fans worldwide. Those same estimates say cricket has roughly 2.5 billion fans. That’s more than six times the number.
Why?
It’s fair to wonder whether a lot of it is familiarity. American football, like a lot of our entertainment, tends to do well overseas, once it gets there in the right package. NFL Europe didn’t have a good run, but regular season NFL games in Europe are skyrocketing, clearly worth their while for the league. Global trends are a long-term game, and American football is experiencing some major issues domestically with regard to youth participation, but if the sport can figure out how to navigate the danger it poses to the human brain, it’s not impossible for it to one day become as successful globally as it is in the States. I wouldn’t bet on it—there are so many headwinds, and the NFL is taking a decidedly incremental approach, which implies incrementalism is necessary—but just because something is more popular doesn’t mean everyone would choose it if circumstances were equal.
It’s also fair to wonder whether there’s something America is missing with cricket. Maybe there’s something there we’ve just never quite caught, speaking societally. Maybe cricket really will pick up steam. It’s easier to do that than it used to be.
In the Internet Age, every sport is its own niche, meaning survival no longer requires finding a way to break through to lead SportsCenter at least one to four times a year (Stuart wrote about things related to this last weekend). There are reasons Major League Soccer is expanding, and those probably aren’t just tied to the sport’s youth popularity. There are reasons more and more college sports are gaining regular followings. If there’s so much room for college volleyball, there might be room for cricket as well.
Major League Cricket is using the “T20” format, which is supposed to shorten matches to three hours. This year, there are six teams, with half based on the West Coast, one in Texas, and two hailing from the broadly defined Northeast. They’re playing a 15-game regular season, with the top four teams reaching the playoffs. Not all six teams will host—in fact, only the Texan team is hosting matches, with the other half played in North Carolina, which doesn’t have a team—and the season will be over by the end of July, but every league has to start somewhere. Maybe this will fizzle as other American cricket efforts have. Maybe it won’t.
MLB Contenders and Factors
We like to use a Contender/Factor dichotomy in college sports, designating which teams are title threats and which teams are playing a role in the title conversation without threatening themselves. Let’s try it for Major League Baseball, with the second half-ish of the season beginning tonight.
Contenders: Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Los Angeles, Houston, Toronto, Texas
Per FanGraphs, there’s a 64% chance one of these six teams wins the World Series. These are the six teams with better than a five percent chance individually.
Of the six, Atlanta is a major cut above the rest. More than twice as likely as the Rays to win it all and, with the Rays, one of just two teams with a 95% or better likelihood of making the playoffs (last year at this point, there were five such teams), the Braves continue what just might be the greatest era in their franchise’s long history. Their develop–and–extend approach continues to click on just about every front, and even when it doesn’t click, when multiple key starting pitchers get hurt, their depth is sufficient to withstand the obstacle. This is baseball, so they’re only 1–in–4 likely to win it all, but this is baseball, so that’s pretty darn good. They can spend these next two and a half months fine-tuning. That’s a comfort no other team currently has.
The Rays come next, boasting the best record in the American League but dealing with the best division in baseball at their heels. FanGraphs only has Tampa Bay with roughly a 7–in–10 chance to win the AL East, and in the current playoff format, failing to win one’s division drastically shrinks pennant and World Series odds. The Rays are kind of like Atlanta in terms of their depth, but true to form, Tampa Bay lacks the star power. Each franchise is a machine of often interchangeable parts, but Atlanta’s disguised as a conventional team. The Rays are an academic exercise taking place in the real world.
The Dodgers are in a similar spot to the Rays, enjoying a worse present situation in the division (they’ve only just passed Arizona, and by mere percentage points) but holding higher potential overall and facing weaker competition. Los Angeles was supposed to take a step back this year, retooling and getting their payroll in order, and they probably have taken a step back, but they were stepping back from a great spot.
The Blue Jays, Astros, and Rangers are in similar territory to one another, each talented enough to contend for the title if they make the postseason but none as good as Atlanta or Los Angeles, none with as good a record as Tampa Bay, and all three playing in a league that’s much deeper at the top than the NL is. The Astros and Rangers are neck and neck with one another. The Blue Jays are trying to hold off the Yankees and catch back up to the Orioles in the race to be next up behind Tampa Bay.
Factors: Baltimore, Miami, Arizona, San Francisco, Minnesota, Milwaukee, New York (AL), Philadelphia, Cleveland, Cincinnati, San Diego, Boston, Seattle, New York (NL), Anaheim, Chicago (NL), St. Louis
Here’s where it gets messier, because baseball is baseball. There are gradients and tiers within this category, but at a certain level, all 17 of these teams’ situations fit under a standard description:
It would be really surprising if they won the World Series, but they’re not out of the mix.
Even the Cardinals, who have publicly said they’re going to sell at the trade deadline, have the best roster on paper in a division that boasts four of the worst ten on-paper rosters in baseball. They’re eleven and a half games back of the Reds, and the Reds still have to worry about them. This is mostly a testament to how badly the Cardinals have underperformed their talent, but it also speaks to how bad the Reds and Brewers are.
At least one of the Reds, Brewers, Cubs, and Cardinals will not only make the playoffs but will host a Wild Card Series, and the same is true of the Twins and Guardians across the AL–NL divide. Part of why this Factors section is so thick this particular year is that the Central Divisions are so, so, so bad. Even worse than usual, and they’re usually pretty bad. The Central Divisions are awful, and in a few years, baseball’s going to need to do something about it if it hasn’t changed.
In the meantime, there are very few clear sellers at the upcoming deadline. This is part of why the Cardinals have the calculus they have.
Another reason this caste is so large in number is that there are a ton of fun, young overachievers right now. The Orioles, Marlins, Diamondbacks, and even the Giants join the Reds as teams punching above expectations and doing so largely on the backs of young bases of talent. Of those four, the Orioles and Diamondbacks occupy the best positions, Baltimore having closed the gap with Tampa Bay to a mere two games and Arizona hanging on in the aforementioned scuffle with the Dodgers. The Giants, though, are the biggest World Series threat of the four, boasting a few starting pitchers (Logan Webb and Alex Cobb most prominently) who make the team a great fit for October. The Giants are hanging around the playoff picture throwing a lot of bullpen games. You don’t need as many bullpen games in October, and when you do—when you’re playing the Wild Card Series/NLDS gauntlet—it doesn’t hurt to be the team prepared for that kind of baseball. The Marlins? It’s a similar story to 2020. Great young pitching leads the way.
Yet another reason things are so packed in the middle is the underperformance of the New Yorkers. The Yankees are in a fine place, they’re in the middle of the playoff race and are more likely than not to reach October. They also just fired their hitting coach and are fearful Aaron Judge could miss the entire year with the toe injury he’s been dealing with for a long time now. The Mets? The offseason world champions are in a similar spot to the Cardinals vis-à-vis staring down tough decisions. Add the Padres to this mix too. Very similar story to the Mets.
From there, it’s a bunch of medium teams. The Phillies had higher expectations than they should have enjoyed, the Red Sox’ expectations were unreasonably low. The Mariners and Angels remain the Mariners and Angels.
The Rest: Detroit, Chicago (AL), Pittsburgh, Washington, Colorado, Kansas City, Oakland
There’s a big gap between the first three of these and the last four, but they’re all functionally in the same place. The Pirates had a great month, had an ok month, and then returned to earth with a thump. The White Sox and Tigers have faded. All seven are out of the picture. They’re talent scrap yards the rest of the way.
Miguel Amaya, Brailyn Marquez, and Brennen Davis
Follow minor league prospects in any system long enough and you’ll encounter heartbreak, promising players going down with injuries and slowly then quickly falling off the table. Brennen Davis, it is very sad to see you go.
FanGraphs released its midseason prospect update on the Cubs this week, and Davis, who once ranked 13th in baseball and was 38th in the minors this offseason, now ranks 44th in just the Cubs’ system. The injuries have mounted, and the latest—a core muscle issue requiring surgery—is the worst yet. He can still come back—Amaya has, and he looked like he was toast—but Davis is just as likely to be a great player as Richard Gallardo and Riley Thompson, which is to say he’s hardly getting mentioned.
In happier news, the farm system is still good, and its top is getting better, and its top is shifting more towards pitchers. This last piece raises some concerns—the Cubs haven’t broken through with a starting pitching prospect yet (Justin Steele was a relief prospect, comically in hindsight)—but given how big a problem the rotation is for the Cubs looking forward, it’s probably necessary for the North Siders to stock the mound from within.
The update notably does not include recent draft picks—I’m not sure when or if those will be added, they were part of the list last year but the timing seems later—but regardless, the Cubs’ farm remains strong. Pete Crow-Armstrong leads the way, but James Triantos continues his ascent, and Ben Brown and Jordan Wicks may be waiting in the wings to at least help fill out the rotation, even if neither is likely to really be an ace.
It’s a massive series this weekend, of course, the future of the season continuing to weigh in the balance. Kyle Hendricks starts against Brayan Bello tonight, and for as good as Hendricks has been, that’s concerning, because Bello—a rookie—has been great. Marcus Stroman starts tomorrow against James Paxton, and again, concerning. Paxton is on a little tear, and Stroman has cooled beginning with the blister in England. On Sunday, Justin Steele faces Kutter Crawford, and while Crawford isn’t bad (4.19 FIP, 3.68 xERA, better FIP since moving to the rotation at the beginning of June), the roadmap for the Cubs to win this series is to steal one of the first two and Steele the rubber match on Sunday. Meanwhile, we’d probably like the Brewers to take their series against the Reds, bringing the division lead one game closer to Chicago even if it puts two teams into that first place slot.
Oh Yeah, the Iowa State Gambling Investigation
Matt Campbell was asked at length about the gambling investigation yesterday at Big 12 media days, and to be honest, I’d kind of forgotten about it. When it broke this spring, I figured either it would go national or disappear, and I am evidently wrong, the state-specific investigation evidently continues. Campbell did say, “It’s so minimalistic in terms of numbers,” which is a good sign, but he also made clear that Iowa State won’t play anybody under active investigation, which is smart but does lend a weight to this thing that—back when it seemed more destined for slaps on wrists and stern warnings to the rest of the country—was previously lacking. We will learn a lot on September 2nd if the investigation hasn’t wrapped by then. I’d be interested to know if the Hawkeyes are in a similar boat for September 9th.
