The Baseball Blog: A Few Thoughts with 50 Games to Play

A Glorious Summer or a Prelude to Baseball’s Winter?

I may be guilty of having a short memory but I cannot recall a baseball season in which there were so many compelling and tight races this late in the year. The NL West has 4 contenders as usual, including 3 teams from different parts of California. The battle for 1st place in the NL Central has been tight for months, and it just got a bit hotter with the recent words of rivalry exchanged between Brandon Phillips and Tony LaRussa, and the preemptive dustup on Tuesday night. In the East, the Braves are trying to unseat the 2-time defending NL Champs in the final season of Bobby Cox’s career.

Over in the AL, the richest and most storied franchise in history is in a dog fight with one of the cheapest and least supported in the game. And the Yanks’ hated rivals from Boston are battered and beaten but lingering. It’s business as usual in the AL Central, where we can basically assume that things will still be undecided at the start of the final day of the season (and maybe at the end of the final day of the season). The only team with a comfortable lead atop their division hasn’t won a division title since 1999 and has only 3 such titles in their 38 year history. And we haven’t even gotten close enough to the end to start focusing on the Wild Card races. The pennant races haven’t been this exciting, this late in the year since...well, since ever as far as I know.

And yet, baseball is dangerously close to being eclipsed by preseason football…almost 6 weeks prior to the start of the NFL season. Most of the stories in the sports world have faded towards the end of the summer, but baseball has still not been able to grab the spotlight and hold the attention of the nation’s sporting public. Why? I mean, we all understand that football has become king in this country and probably will be for decades to come. Baseball’s “America’s Pastime” moniker has been outdated for many years now. But it would now appear possible that baseball has moved behind basketball as well.

You can talk about attendance and you can talk about ratings, but in this day of 24-hour sports news, 24-hour sports talk radio, twitter, blogs, etc. it isn’t difficult to gauge the interest in a certain game or a certain team. Right now, baseball seems to be an automatic afterthought. If these races stay as competitive as they have been all year and go down to the wire, baseball should be the main event. If that isn’t the case, the clown who will soon have a statue erected in his honor outside Miller Park should be concerned.

Yanks still on Pace to Reach a Hondo

Going into Tuesday the Yankees had the best record in the majors and were on pace for 100.8 wins. If they reach the 100 win plateau for the 2nd year in a row they will be the first team in either league to post back to back 100 win seasons since the Yanks did it 3 straight times from 2002-2004. The Padres have the best record in the NL and are on pace for 94.3 wins. No NL team has won 100 or more games since the Cardinals went 100-62 in 2005.

More on the Year of the Pitcher

Going into Tuesday, Ubaldo Jimenez was still on pace to win 25 games. No pitcher has won more than 22 games in a season since Randy Johnson won 24 in 2002. No pitcher has won more than 24 games since 1990, when Bob Welch won 27 for the A’s. There are currently 6 pitchers on pace for 20 or more wins. That would be the most 20-game winners in a season since 2002 when 6 different pitchers reached 20 wins. Last season no pitcher won more than 19 games.

Going into Tuesday, 6 qualified pitchers had ERA’s under 2.50. That would be the most pitchers with ERA under 2.50 since 7 pitchers did it in 1992. Josh Johnson’s ERA is still under 2.00 and he would be the first qualified pitcher to finish the season with a sub-2.00 ERA since Roger Clemens in 2005. There are also 6 pitchers who have WHIP rates currently under 1.05. 3 pitchers currently hold WHIP rates under 1.00. There have not been more than 5 pitchers with WHIP rates under 1.05 in a single season since before 1990. The last time 3 pitchers finished the season with sub-1.00 WHIP was 2004.

With 8 complete games at this point, Roy Halladay has a shot to match CC Sabathia’s 2008 total of 10 complete games which was the highest total since Randy Johnson went the distance 12 times in 1999. Halladay also has 3 shutouts this season. He needs 2 more to get to 5 and tie several players for the most shutouts in a season since the turn of the millennium.

The Return of the Homer?

Going into Tuesday night, 30 players had reached 20 homers on the season. Jose Bautista hit his MLB leading 35th dinger on Tuesday night. Last year Carlos Pena and Mark Teixeira tied for the AL lead with just 39 homers. In 2008, Miguel Cabrera led the AL with only 37 homers.

Bautista is on pace to become the first MLB player to hit 50 homers since 2007. Still, runs and homers are down across the game. If the season ended today it would be the first time since 1992 that the average runs per game was below 4.50, and the first time since 1993 that the MLB average was less than 1.00 homers per game.