DPR: The Mariners are in!

Back in 2001, the Seattle Mariners — galvanized by the incomparable Ichiro — won 116 games and ran away with the American League West. The West had only four teams then — Billy Beane’s Moneyball A’s, the California Angels (who understood back then that they were in Anaheim and not LA), and the incomprehensible Texas Rangers.

The division would be just four teams for another dozen years — until the 107-loss Houston Astros moved over from the National League.

The point is: There seems NO POSSIBLE WAY for the record-setting 2001 Seattle Mariners — with a rookie Ichiro and fiery Lou Piniella managing and Edgar still crushing baseballs — to not win a single division title for the next 24 years.

Yet, here we are. For most of the entire life of Julio Rodríguez, the Seattle Mariners never won the AL West. The Astros won it seven times, the A’s and Rangers six times each, and the Rangers four times. 

And those Mariners — those lovable but doomed Mariners — tried a million different things but simply could not break through.

Wednesday, finally, they did. And they did it in style, at home, with their absurdity of a catcher Cal Raleigh hitting his 59th and 60th home runs, with their bashing third baseman Eugenio Suárez hitting his 48th, with their electric centerfielder Julio hitting one of his own, and that made it 16 wins in 17 games. The Mariners, after a winding few months, have found their mojo, and they have won the West, and they’re in golden shape for a first-round bye. 

And as more than one Brilliant Reader has pointed out, we have an actual shot at a World Series matchup between the Mariners and Brewers or Mariners and Padres — the three longstanding teams that have never won a World Series.*

*The other two teams to have never won a Series — the Rockies and Rays — have only been around since the 1990s. 

By run differential, there has never been much of a doubt that the Yankees are the best team in the American League East. After the 8-1 victory over the White Sox on Wednesday, the Yankees have outscored their opponents by 152 runs. 

The Blue Jays, meanwhile, have outscored opponents by 57 runs.

And yet, the Yankees and Blue Jays are now tied for the AL East lead … with Toronto still having the tiebreaker edge.

Baseball!

But here in the last few days, it does seem like order is being restored. The Blue Jays have lost six of seven, the Yankees have won seven of eight, and it sure feels like the Jays are like the exhausted marathon runner trying desperately to hold off a fresher runner in the final half mile.

Spoiler: The exhausted marathon runner almost never holds off the fresher runner.

But we’ll see. The Yankees have one more with the White Sox, then three with the Orioles. The Blue Jays have one more against the hot-again Boston Red Sox and then three with the Rays. 

I’ve avoided talking about the MVP race because I’m a voter this year, and we’re not supposed to talk about who will pick. And I won’t. But I think it’s OK to say that there hasn’t been a race like this in many years. It isn’t just that Aaron Judge and Cal Raleigh are each putting up historic seasons for playoff-bound teams.

It’s this:

There will be NO explaining to Seattle Mariners fans NOT voting for a catcher who is on the brink of breaking the American League record for home runs in a season.

And there will be NO explaining to New York Yankees fans NOT voting for a living legend with a 173-point OPS edge.

I will only say this — and I’ll have a lot more to say about it when I finish this piece I’ve been working on: I’m slowly coming to the realization that Baseball Reference WAR just doesn’t work for me anymore. I love BR, I really do; it remains my go-to for baseball research, and I think that Sean Forman is one of the most important baseball figures of the last two decades.

BUT …

Baseball Reference WAR:

There’s no way. There’s just no way that a catcher — a VERY GOOD catcher — with a .959 OPS, 60 home runs, 125 RBI, and 155 games played is two full wins behind Judge. I mean, obviously, there is a way, it’s the math they use, but I don’t buy it. It doesn’t match up with whatever I know about baseball.

Then you look at Fangraphs WAR.

YES. That matches up with what I believe. I think Judge is having a 10 WAR season, and I think Raleigh is right behind him, and I think the small gap between them makes this race a toss-up. I think these two incredible players are each having out-of-this-world seasons that would win MVP awards in pretty much every other year. 

And I think that huge bWAR gap — which I find pretty inexplicable even with Judge’s offensive advantages— will have an outsized influence on who wins the MVP, and I don’t like that at all.

BR Mati writes in to ask where José Ramírez ranks among players who have never won an MVP award. There’s a fantastic list of all-time greats who never won an MVP — Mel Ott, Derek Jeter, Al Kaline, Tony Gwynn, Eddie Mathews, Wade Boggs, and Eddie Murray, among them.

I think it’s still too early to figure out where Ramírez belongs among that calvalcade of stars. I do think there’s something to say about Ramírez’s remarkable career, something I couldn’t help but think about again during Wednesday’s game with the Tigers.

He’s the only Cleveland player who can hit. Again.

I don’t mean to disparage Steven Kwan, who is a fine player, and Kyle Manzardo, who has hit some home runs, or promising rookie George Valera, who hit the big two-run homer that gave Cleveland the lead.

But year after year, for five years now, Ramirez has been the whole offense. I mean all of it. Look at this:

Cleveland Runs Created Leaders since 2021:

The whole offense. This team already can’t score runs. Without Ramírez? They’re toast. They've made the playoffs in two of those four years, they’re very close to making the playoffs again this year, and there’s simply no way without José.

That’s not what the MVP award is now — the award goes to the best player, period. Ramírez has never been that, at least not by the numbers. There’s always a Judge, a Shohei, a Trout, a Mookie ahead of him. This year, he’s having ANOTHER six-WAR season, he’s hit 30 homers, stolen 40 bases, scored 100 runs, and I don’t think anyone gives him any shot of winning the MVP.

But on Wednesday, with Cleveland up 3-1 in the seventh, Detroit manager A.J. Hinch felt so desperate that he put in his closer Will Vest to shut the door with the bases loaded and nobody out. Vest indeed got the first two outs. But then came José. He hit a hustle double that scored two. It was his club-record-tying 725th extra base hit. The standing ovation lasted a long time. He’s bigger than an MVP in Cleveland.

Detroit lost its eighth game in a row — and their fifth straight game to Cleveland in the last week — and the Tigers are now a full game behind the Guardians in the AL Central … and what’s left to say? How do you blow a 10-game lead in 21 days? 

That sounds like a Kate Hudson movie.

How can you sum this up? Brilliant Reader Dean sends this along: On September 1, the Tigers’ magic number to win the division was 15. Cleveland’s magic number was 36.

Today: Detroit’s magic number is still 6.

Cleveland’s? Three.

I guess you can find some hopeful stuff to say about the Tigers — they still have one more game with Cleveland, there’s still time for them to salvage their season, they are still a game up with the tiebreaker in hand for the final wildcard spot — but this team has certainly not inspired hope lately? The hard truth is that the Tigers are a deeply flawed team held together by duct tape and glue and the mastery of Tarik Skubal. They didn’t do anything useful at the trade deadline. Their bullpen has collapsed. 

Cleveland, meanwhile, can’t hit at all. They still have the lowest batting average, lowest on-base percentage, and lowest OPS in the league. But the Guardians have two things that put them in position for a late-season run.

You’ve seen it throughout their recent winning spree — here are the bullpen numbers for each of the last 13 games (of which they won 12).

Obviously, these numbers are otherworldly … for charting purposes, the bullpen’s ERA is 1.62 over the stretch. But beyond the numbers, everybody on the run-prevention side is doing the job. Starters are going five or six innings pretty much every night. And then the Cleveland bullpen, even without Emmanuel Clase, has Cade Smith, Jakob Junis, Hunter Gaddis, Kolby Allard, Eric Sabrowski, and others who are more than capable of shutting teams down for three or four innings. Cleveland is building that reputation of a team you better get in the first five innings or you won’t get them at all. That’s a powerful thing.

The Red Sox definitely seemed like a teetering team for much of September, but they seem good now — their magic number is now 1.

I don’t know that any player has been more important to his team than Crochet has been to the Red Sox. 

He has pitched seven times since mid-August, when the Red Sox were in a real fight for a wildcard spot. The Red Sox won all seven of his games. Crochet leads the league in innings, strikeouts, and has a tidy 2.59 ERA. In another year, he’d be an MVP candidate. In a Skubal-free year, he’d be the runaway Cy Young winner. 

The Mets, Reds, and Diamondbacks are all within one game of each other for the last playoff spot in the National League.

On Tuesday, the Mets were destroyed by the Cubs, the Reds found a way to lose to the Pirates at home, and the Diamondbacks failed to score with the bases loaded and one out in the 10th against action hero Jack Dreyer and human pinball machine Blake Treinen and lost to the Dodgers in 11.

I mean, somebody’s gotta step up, right?