In baseball, there are no guarantees. Just ask the ’04 Yankees, who watched like helpless toddlers as the Boston Red Sox overcame a 3-0 series deficit to send the Bronx Bombers packing early. Or ask the 2011 Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves, who found themselves on the wrong end of the two most brutal September collapses in history.
Every at-bat in the sport is unpredictable—fastball, changeup, curveball, slider. Then, when you think you’ve seen it all, knuckleballs and eephus pitches are tossed.
It’s only fitting that the unpredictability of every pitch and every swing in baseball serves as the perfect analogy for the annual pursuit of individual greatness.
As we surpass the halfway mark to the All-Star break, it’s time to analyze the past and project into the future to find the few men who will reign supreme by the end of the season, recognized as the best players and the best pitchers of the season.
AL MVP: Nelson Cruz
When a player has a realistic shot at the Triple Crown, he will be the favorite for the MVP award.
Miguel Cabrera’s magical 2012 campaign is still fresh in the lore of baseball history, but beyond that it’s easy to forget that the Triple Crown (to lead in home runs, runs batted in (RBI), and batting percentage) is one of the greatest feats of individual dominance known to the sport. We have only witnessed the accomplishment 17 times in history, and not a single active MLB player was even born when the Crown was won by a man not named Miggy (Carl Yastrzemski in 1967).
Heading into Tuesday’s matchup against the Tampa Bay Rays, Cruz leads the Majors with 17 homers, second in the AL with 35 RBIs (Kendrys Morales, 37), and third in the AL with a whopping .341 batting average, trailing Prince Fielder’s .365 BA in the young season.
Of course, the Mariners are going to need some more wins, sitting at 21-23 at the moment, but being led by the scorching Cruz, that should not be difficult. As it is now, projecting into the future, Cruz’s first regular season MVP hinges on his ability to climb the individual rankings and personify batting perfection. Cruz needs the Triple Crown to win the MVP award.
NL MVP: Bryce Harper
You read it earlier. Bryce Harper in the NL is matching Cruz’s every move in the AL, to the delight of the nation’s capital.
Baseball is a team sport. How could it not be, with nine players on the field and over a dozen more in the dugout and the bullpen? This year, however, the Washington Nationals are redefining baseball.
Gone is the old model of the sport, at least in the first quarter of the 2015 season. The Nationals have surged from an average team in a competitive division to a feared force in the league on the backs of Bryce Harper and pitcher Max Scherzer. But how can such a conclusion even be drawn?
The math aside, FanGraphs Baseball reveals the most current Wins Above Replacement rates (WAR) for the season. The sabermetric statistic analyzes the total contributions by a player to their team, and spits out a single number to represent it. In other words, according to FanGraphs, WAR answers the question, “If the player was injured and replaced by a freely available minor leaguer, how many fewer wins would the team earn?”
With the ball jumping off of Harper’s bat on seemingly every swing, accumulating 16 home runs (first in NL) and 41 RBIs (second in NL), as well as a .333 BA (fourth in NL), it’s perhaps no surprise that Harper also leads the league in WAR, at 3.4. In comparison, reigning AL MVP Mike Trout trails with 2.8. Fellow teammate Max Scherzer leads all pitchers with 2.5.
The Kid, impulsive and arrogant at times (more often than not), has supported his words with the performance of his life. While certainly not viewed as the ideal leader in the locker room, his value speaks for itself. On a team with some of the best pitchers in the world (Gio Gonzalez, Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmermann), it’s The Kid who is truly irreplaceable.
And it doesn’t hurt that the Nats are 27-18.
AL Cy Young: Dallas Keuchel
Argue all you want, King Felix is not The Man this year.
Sure, Felix Hernandez is 7-1 with a 2.19 ERA, his usual outstanding performance, but there’s another man – a new man – leading the pack in 2015.
The meteoric rise of Dallas Keuchel, a man who, before this season, was virtually unknown by fans outside of Space City, is fun to watch. 10 starts and a 6-1 record later, Keuchel has only given up 3 home runs – and two were from a bad start yesterday.
Keuchel has pitched 72.2 innings, enough for sole possession of third place in the AL. In his many innings of work, how baffled are batters?
Batters are hitting .190 against Keuchel. In the American League. That’s right, no pitchers are batting, and Keuchel still has the third-lowest BAA (batting average against) in the whole league, behind NL pitchers Shelby Miller’s .172 and Zack Greinke’s .187.
The Astros have an AL-leading wins record of 29-17, undoubtedly because of the pitching of Dallas Keuchel. No player has been able to figure out Keuchel, and truthfully, neither have experts nor fans alike. Where did Keuchel emerge from, and how high is his ceiling?
NL Cy Young: Gerrit Cole
Yes, we have the same first name.
But aside from a common namesake, we are nothing alike. After all, I haven’t struck out 63 batters en route to a 6-2 record with a 2.05 ERA, nor have I won the NL Pitcher of the Month Award in April after long strings of quality starts.
He does not have the most wins, the most strikeouts, or the lowest ERA.
So?
With three quarters of the season left to play, Cole has already shown flashes of brilliance above the levels of a competitive field of NL pitchers. Only two home runs have been surrendered by the Pirates ace, and his unrivaled consistency dating back to the end of the 2014 season holds promising potential for his rise to the top.
When Cole is able to win 6 games despite the Pirates scoring a laughable 11 runs while he is on the mound (Baseball-Reference.com), and Pittsburgh is 16-19 in non-Cole starts, the value of Gerrit Cole emerges, and he should be regarded as the dark horse for the Cy Young Award, with a legitimate case by the end of the season.
With over 40 games in the books, the 2015 season is still young and unpredictable. The picks are merely predictions into the future, and barring injuries, the stars will have to continue to shine. We, as fans, can only squeal in excitement as the race to the top follows the rollercoaster track.