Baseball, Explained Nightly

Yordan Alvarez is chasing the rarest thing a hitter can do

Yordan Alvarez leads the AL in all three of the categories that define a great hitting season: batting average (.317), home runs (37) and RBI (94). Leading all three at once is called the Triple Crown. It has happened twice since 1967 — Miguel Cabrera in 2012 and Carl Yastrzemski before him. Nobody hands out a trophy for it; it is simply a thing that almost never happens. And it is bigger than three categories. Of the 71 AL hitters who bat often enough to qualify for a leaderboard at all, he also has the highest on-base percentage (.433) and slugging percentage (.604), and the most total bases (299) and walks (96). His OPS is the highest too, but that one comes free: OPS is those two percentages added together, so leading both means leading it. He plays for the Houston Astros.

Careful: It is not won until the season ends, and batting average is the fragile leg — a two-week slump ends it. Say “is holding”, never “has won”.

Say this “Alvarez is holding a Triple Crown right now — that has happened twice since 1967.”

The Braves are letting a big lead slip

Teams are grouped into divisions, and winning your division is the clean way into the playoffs. So what matters is not your record on its own but your record against the team chasing you — which is why standings are written as “games back”. The Braves led the NL East by 8.5 games 18 days ago. It is 3 now. Nothing dramatic happened; they simply played worse than the Phillies for three weeks, which in baseball is how leads disappear.

Say this “3 games is still a real lead, but they’ve given back a third of it in under three weeks.”

Who is actually winning

Six divisions, and the winner of each goes to the playoffs. Of the 30 clubs, the Brewers have won the most: 86-53. The two tightest races right now: AL West: Astros (70-69) lead the Rangers by 1; AL Central: White Sox (73-65) lead the Guardians by 3.

Say this “The Brewers have more wins than any of the other 29 clubs and it’s barely being discussed.”

The fastest arm in baseball: Jacob Misiorowski

Jacob Misiorowski throws a baseball harder than anyone else alive. Of the 25 fastest pitches thrown in the major leagues this season, 24 are his. He topped out at 105.5 mph, and the fastest pitch by anybody else all year was 103.8. He has reached that shelf in 8 different games. There is one nuance worth having: Mason Miller averages more (101.5 mph) — but he is a RELIEVER, throwing 443 pitches all season, one inning at a time. Misiorowski is a starter who averages 100.6 mph across 1486 pitches. Holding that for six innings is the harder thing by a distance. And he is not merely wild: 227 strikeouts against only 39 walks, with a 1.97 ERA against a league average near 4.00.

Say this “The thing about Misiorowski isn’t the 105.5 — it’s that he’s a starter holding 100.6 average over 1486 pitches. Relievers do that for one inning.”

Pete Crow-Armstrong is about to join a club nobody joins

Thirty home runs and thirty stolen bases in the same season is called 30/30. It is rare for a simple reason: the players with enough power to hit thirty are usually too big to steal thirty, and the players fast enough to steal thirty usually cannot hit thirty. Pete Crow-Armstrong sits at 38 and 32 — he is already there. He plays for the Chicago Cubs.

Say this “Crow-Armstrong’s about to go 30/30 and nobody’s talking about it.”

How Misiorowski actually gets beaten

Jacob Misiorowski has allowed 84 hits all season, which is very few. Of those, 14 were home runs — 17%, against 13% for starters generally, so an unusually large share. That matters because it tells you HOW he loses: when he is beaten it tends to be one swing rather than a rally, which is the profile of a pitcher nobody strings hits together against.

Say this “What gets him isn’t rallies — 14 of the 84 hits he’s allowed left the park.”

The first-year players worth knowing

A rookie is a player in his first full season. Most are finding their feet; a few are already putting up numbers that would be a good season for anyone, and those are the names to have. Sal Stewart (Cincinnati Reds) — 31 home runs, 105 RBI; Kazuma Okamoto (Toronto Blue Jays) — 28 home runs, 78 RBI; Carter Jensen (Kansas City Royals) — 21 home runs, 64 RBI; Nolan McLean (New York Mets) — 172 strikeouts, 3.06 ERA; Parker Messick (Cleveland Guardians) — 161 strikeouts, 2.46 ERA.

Say this “There’s a rookie in Reds with 105 RBI. Nobody outside that city has heard of him.”

Kyle Schwarber is striking out at a near-record rate

Kyle Schwarber has struck out 198 times, which is on pace to be among the most in any season on record. A strikeout is the one out a hitter has no say in — he makes it without putting the ball in play at all, so nothing good can happen by accident.

Careful: Do not turn this into a verdict on him as a hitter. League-wide strikeout rates have roughly doubled since 1980, so every modern hitter strikes out more than his grandfather did. The game changed, not the man — and he hits a lot of home runs, which is the trade the strikeouts pay for.

Say this “Sure, but you can’t compare strikeout totals across eras — the whole league’s rate has roughly doubled since 1980. It’s a record, it’s just not an indictment.”