Are the Yankees the Best Team in the American League?

Plus, some project updates and a thank you for your support this week.

I’m in Houston for a really cool project, and I just want to say: Houston heat is different from all the other kinds of heat. I’m melting.

But man, barbecue at The Pit Room is good.

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On this week’s The Joy of Baseball, Molly and I catch up with actor Bill Glass, who plays Dr. Rick in those hilarious Progressive “Don’t turn into your parents” commercials. Bill’s a great guy, and he’s getting back into baseball after years away, and doing this podcast is such fun for Molly and me.

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I believe we are just days away from putting up the sign-up sheet for the FIFTY SEASONS preorder campaign! Just a reminder: If you preorder my upcoming book FIFTY SEASONS (coming out February 2!), save the receipt/order number, and when you enter it into the sign-up sheet, you will automatically (and I believe immediately) get the table of contents for the book (so that you can see which seasons are in the book — I think you’ll get a huge kick out of that) PLUS a chapter about the invention of batting average that I, alas, had to cut from the book for space and narrative reasons. I LOVE that chapter, so I’m glad to get it out there for folks.

Again, that’s if you preorder from anywhere — Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Target, etc. — but you should already know that if you preorder from our good friends at Rainy Day Books, you will also get a signed copy that I will personalize any way you like.

The Rainy Day folks did a fun little video about it:

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I want to take a moment and thank all of you who have sent kind messages and left kind comments about our good boy Westley. I will tell you, I sobbed all the way through that essay. It means the world to me that it touched so many of you, and I know Westley would get a huge kick out of it too.

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The last time I cried like that, really cried, while writing a piece was when I wrote Buck O’Neil’s obituary twenty years ago for The Kansas City Star.

I republished that piece to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his passing, coming up this October 6. Bob Kendrick and I are planning on doing a special event in Kansas City on that day. I’ll get you details when we figure them out.

And this is a good time to say that I’ll be in Kansas City next week — Saturday, September 26 — for the Hall of Game induction. This year, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is inducting four remarkable players: the wonderful Ralph Garr, Sarge — Gary Matthews Sr. — Reggie Smith, who I think has a powerful Hall of Fame case, and a special one for me, a childhood hero, Andre Thornton. Thunder!

Also, we will be making a very special announcement that I don’t want to spoil, but it will be incredibly cool. I hope you’ll come out if you’re in and around KC!

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I don’t have much time here because I need to drive four hours and be in Austin this evening for the Jenkins Medal Awards Dinner. I’m introducing this year’s lifetime achievement winner, the remarkable Thomas Boswell. It goes without saying that Tom is a hero, and reading him was like taking a masterclass on the art of baseball writing.

What strikes me most about Tom is that he had pretty much the perfect career (or at least what seems to me the perfect career). He grew up in Washington, got his first job in Washington, and stayed in Washington for his entire career. He wrote baseball better than any newspaper writer for thirty-five years when Washington didn’t even have a baseball team. And then he wrote the World Series column when the Nationals won it all in 2019. It’s something of a dream. And it can never happen again.

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You probably saw that Aaron Judge had to leave Wednesday’s game with tightness in his lower leg, and as I’m writing these words, nobody has any idea how serious the injury is. Even if it isn’t serious, nobody has any idea how healthy Aaron Judge can be after missing more than three months with a rib injury. We only know that since his return, he’s 4-for-23 with 13 strikeouts and one walk. And he’s 34 years old.

It’s possible the Yankees are still the best team in the American League without Judge, but that’s simply because no team in the American League inspires confidence. The Rays have the best record in the league by a fair amount, but that’s in large part because of their superb 24-14 record in one-run games. I can’t get over the fact that the Rays have a losing record in so-called “blowout games” — that is, games decided by five or more runs. The best teams ALWAYS have lopsided winning records in blowout games.

Here are the last 10 World Series winners’ records in blowout games:

• 2025: Dodgers, 29-10

• 2024: Dodgers, 25-18

• 2023: Rangers*, 37-23

• 2022: Astros, 35-13

• 2021: Braves, 28-14

• 2020: Dodgers, 17-1

• 2019: Nationals, 29-19

• 2018: Red Sox, 38-17

• 2017: Astros, 35-19

• 2016: Cubs, 42-13

*OK, be honest — did you remember that the Texas Rangers won the 2023 World Series?

It just makes sense that the best teams will win the vast majority of their blowout games … that’s at the very heart of what makes them the best teams. They will simply overpower other teams at times. But these Rays are 21-23 in blowout games, and I can’t make any sense of it.

As for the rest of the American League — the Red Sox fired their manager earlier this season because the team was such a disaster. Cleveland and Chicago are battling to win a division nobody wants. Nobody has a winning record in the American League West. I cannot remember a league so uninspiring.

And yet, this is baseball, so it’s not only possible but likely that one of these teams will get super hot and run the table in October. We’ll never solve this game.