Hi Everyone —
Tears all around the house today as Katie left to study abroad for a semester (whoa!). Colleges should offer a “Help your 20-year-old daughter pack for a semester abroad” major because, yikes, that was a journey.
A couple of quick updates, and then let’s catch up on all the pennant races!
Today’s PosCast should be up any minute now, and in it, we talk about the very special September 10 PosCast where I will announce my new book! Surprises galore!
Of course, I will also make the announcement here at JoeBlogs on that day as well. In fact, starting September 1, I’ll be doing a daily countdown of what I believe to be the 10 greatest sports books ever written. I’ve got a cool way of ranking them, I think. Should be fun!
The JoeBlogs Store is up and running … Katie and I are planning on adding a few new items very soon, but for now we’ve got a hat, a Brilliant Reader T-shirt, a coffee mug, and more. Let us know if there’s specific merch you’d like to see in there (Katie could use some college spending money!).
Liz Thompson has sent us the first version of the Official JoeBlogs Scorecard. We’ll make a couple of adjustments to it and send one out to everybody who signed up to be part of our official scoring celebration next week!
Now … on to the baseball!
Some of you who are old-timers like me will remember just how much fun it was to get the old Sporting News. I particularly loved the countless notes columns that would be in there. The notes columns often had outdated information, random opinions that didn’t fit anywhere else, odd tangents … and I absolutely loved every single minute of it.
So, in that spirit, let’s do a messy, rambling, and fun look at the American League pennant races. We’ll do the National League tomorrow.
American League East
Where we stand
Toronto leads the division by five games and has more or less a 100% chance of making the postseason. The Red Sox — after taking three of four from the Yankees — are in second place, and they are currently in the No. 1 wildcard spot. The Yankees are a half-game behind the Red Sox, and Baseball Reference gives them a 90% chance of reaching the postseason. The Rays are below .500 and more or less out of the postseason. Baltimore is already thinking about next year.
Rambling thoughts
Do you know who’s having a fantastic year? Bo Bichette. It’s funny, you can look at that Blue Jays team for hours and never really figure out how they’re so far ahead in this division. Their lineup, sans a couple of big stars, is meh. Their starting pitching and bullpen are less than meh (meh-minus). But here they are, five games up in the division, fourth in the league in runs scored, and it seems to me that Bo Bichette is just not getting the credit he deserves for helping make this happen.
I think this is because Bo Bichette is allergic to walking and because his defensive numbers at shortstop are horrendous.
This combination hurts Bichette’s WAR. Baseball Reference and Fangraphs both have him at three wins above replacement; a good year, but not quite a star year. But it should be noted that Bichette is hitting .304, he leads the league in hits and doubles, and he’s fifth in the league in championship WPA, which may not be a perfect stat, but it does give you a pretty good idea of how much a player is contributing to a team’s championship hopes. There are actually three Blue Jays in the top five in championship WPA (Bichette, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and George Springer). …
Aaron Judge is hitting .207 and slugging less than .400 since returning from the shoulder injury. He did start throwing to bases in warmups, but the Yankees are still not ready to put him back in the outfield. If you’re a Yankees fan and want good news, it’s this: There are still five weeks to get him ready for the postseason, and if he can get healthy, that lineup could be a monster now that Giancarlo Stanton seems to have found the fountain of youth.*
*Yikes is Stanton hot. He is hitting .349 in his last 34 games and has smashed 15 home runs.
I don’t ordinarily feel a lot of empathy for the New York Yankees, but …
A Yankees player I empathize with?
Yep. Keep reading for Tigers waves, MVP thoughts, Cal Raleigh chasing history, and a little Pasquatch trivia Join JoeBlogs to get your daily baseball joy.
Join JoeBlogs