MLB Notes: September 16th

I say it every week, but the season really is winding down. Only three weeks of baseball left before the playoffs. Speaking of the playoffs…

The New Playoff System Looks Like a Dud

You can’t judge anything by one season’s worst of data. But, given we only have one season’s worth of data, the new playoff system is kind of a dud. At least the run up to it, we only have a few teams hanging around that have any chance at the playoffs. In the AL it’s the Orioles who are 4.5 games out of the last Wild Card spot who have the only semi-realistic shot to unseat any of the current playoff seat occupiers. In the NL, the Brewers are 1.5 out and can catch the Padres or, at 2.5 more games, the Phillies. Beyond those scenarios, every playoff team is set.

And that’s with three weeks to go! What kind of suspense is this creating? One fewer Wild Card spots would mean you’d have the Padres and Brewers fighting with the Phillies for the last Wild Card spot in the NL and a fantastic three way race between the Mariners, Blue Jays, and Rays, not to mention the Orioles on the fringes, in the AL. But sadly we’ve been denied that particular battle, at least in the regular season.

The new playoff format does reward the two best division winners in both leagues, so there is some intrigue when it comes to that, except actually no there isn’t. The two best division winners in the AL are both 10 or more games up on the Guardians, so no suspense there. The NL features the Dodgers and Mets as the top two teams, both who are at least six games up on the Cardinals. Perhaps the Cardinals could go on a big run and catch one of either New York or LA, but that’s pretty unlikely. 

No, for the most part with 20 or so games left, we already know who will keep playing once the playoffs begin, and we even know the general order of the teams as well. 

It should be stated though that it’s possible the new playoff format will be better once the actual playoffs begin. Maybe this setup will really assist the teams with the best records, and maybe it’ll be a better and more fun representation of the sport. But sadly it seems that as long as this is the law of the land, the old timey pennant race may be a thing of the past.

Can Pujols Reach 700?

Considering how good Albert Pujols has been over the past few seasons (i.e. not good) and considering he’s 42 years old as of this writing (if not older), coming into the 2022 season, it wasn’t expected that Pujols would be able to reach the 700 home run threshold. He began the season with 679 homers, so he’d need 21 to reach 700. The last time Pujols hit that many in a season was 2019, when he hit 23. So, three years later and three years older, it wasn’t realistic to expect Pujols would be able to reach this milestone given the degradation of his skillset. 

And yet, he’s almost there! The Cardinals have 18 games remaining and Pujols needs three homers to reach 700. Just three! 

How in the heck is he doing this? That’s a great question, and one that I can’t answer, but I can tell you what he’s doing. Pujols, at age 42, is absolutely crushing lefty pitchers. He is hitting .205/.298/.365 against right handers, but .359/.402/.767 against lefties. He’s got 12 homers against lefties in 117 PAs. If he did that over a full year (600 PAs), he’d hit 62 homers!

Perhaps even stranger, I’ve found myself caught up in the chase, rooting for Pujols to reach 700. I’ve never cared about Pujols before. I’ve never been a Cardinals fan, and even during his otherworldly first decade, I hardly ever watched him play. But now I’m constantly checking the box scores and trying to follow along with Cardinals games to see if he’s in the lineup and if so I try and follow his at-bats if at all possible. 

Pujols is retiring at the end of the season, and when he does he’ll do it with the fourth most homer runs of anyone ever, regardless of whether or not he hits number 700 or not. Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, and Albert Pujols. That’s something. The closest active player to Pujols is Miguel Cabrera who, it seems clear, doesn’t have anywhere near the 200 more homers he’d need to catch Pujols in him. Neither does the next active guy on the list, Nelson Cruz. After that, you have to get down to number 80 on the all time home run list, Giancarlo Stanton. Stanton’s 373 are 324 homers behind Pujols. At 32 and with his injury history, almost doubling his career total doesn’t seem likely for Stanton. 

The only active player who you could say has any chance of getting anywhere close to Pujols is Mike Trout, who is sitting at 345. While that could happen if Trout can stay healthy and productive over the next decade, I’m guessing Pujols will be fourth on that list for quite a while. 

Judge Keeps Judging 

With two more homers against the woeful Red Sox, Aaron Judge has reached 57 on the season. The Yankees have 23 games left to go. Three would tie the 60 that Babe Ruth hit in 1927. One more would tie Roger Maris for the most homers ever hit by a Yankee in a season, a mark which is also the most homers ever hit by an American League player in a season. Five more homers in those 23 games would give Judge the most home runs by any player ever in American League history. It would also leave him seventh on the list of most homers hit by a player in a single season. 

Judge has no shot at Barry Bonds single season record of 73, but breaking Maris’s mark would be a remarkable achievement in its own right. So can he do it? Well, put it this way: in the last 11 games, Judge has six homers. If he keeps up that pace he’ll end up with the third most homers ever hit in a single season behind Bonds’ 73, Mark McGuire’s 70, and just ahead of the current third place mark, Sammy Sosa’s 66. 

In a season relatively devoid of playoff intrigue, it’s nice to have two players striving for history. It gives us something to pay attention to and to root for, at least until the playoffs arrive.