For baseball fans, the All-Star Break is too long, an unending desert of baseball-less woe. For players, the break is too short, something of a truncated vacation, particularly for those who play in the Midsummer Classic.
But the flow of the calendar is undefeated, and MLB returned Friday as teams start to take stock of where they stand ahead of the trade deadline. Let’s walk through the five main on-field stories of the weekend.
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For more than a decade now, the Dodger’s biggest superpower has been inevitability. Even when L.A. is down, a comeback feels like just a matter of time. The end result of a given game, more often than not, is a Dodgers victory. The only unanswered question is the path to that point.
But during the first half of this season, the Dodgers weren’t particularly imposing. They lacked that trademark zip; they were the baseball team equivalent of a flat soda. A laundry list of injuries and down-lineup underperformance were the major culprits, but the Dodgers simply weren’t inspiring fear from their opponents or confidence from their fans.
Their first series out of the All-Star break against the Red Sox was a different story. Leading by a run with one out in the eighth inning Friday, Boston elected to walk Will Smith to load the bases to set up a double play. Freddie Freeman made them pay, lacing a low line drive over the short wall in right field for a go-ahead grand slam. Saturday’s contest was an even more vintage affair, with the Dodgers twice crawling back from a late-game deficit. Kiké Hernández, on the day he reached 10 years of MLB service time, tied things up both times. Los Angeles won comfortably Sunday after punishing Boston starter Kutter Crawford in the middle innings.
The Dodgers are still desperately in need of trade-deadline reinforcements on both sides of the ball, but it was encouraging to see them play with the urgency and verve that were lacking for long stretches of the spring and early summer.
Also, Shohei Ohtani almost hit a ball out of Dodger Stadium.
Astros close gap, tied atop AL West with Mariners
On June 18, the Seattle Mariners held a 10-game lead over the Houston Astros atop the American League West.
It was an earned advantage. The Mariners’ magnificent starting rotation had dominated, and their strikeout-happy offense had pushed enough runs across to tally up wins. Houston, meanwhile, had gotten its season back on track after an abysmal April but still looked far flimsier than in previous seasons. There were reasons to believe the Astros could trim the gap in time, but nobody expected these two teams to be tied atop the division just a month later.
Well, that’s what happened.
Houston strolled into the Pacific Northwest over the weekend, taking the first two games at T-Mobile Park before the Mariners salvaged the finale on Sunday. Seattle’s offense was, once again, a figment of the imagination. Since June 18, the Mariners have a .206 batting average, a .350 slugging percentage and a 29.5% strikeout rate. And despite their win in Game 3, they made the difficult decision to place first baseman Ty France, an All-Star just two years ago, on waivers. To make matters worse, Seattle center fielder Julio Rodriguez, who has underwhelmed thus far this season, sprained his ankle crashing into the wall Sunday.
Houston deserves credit for clawing back into the fight — not that anybody is particularly surprised. Their starting pitching, which was ravaged by injuries early on, has the fourth-lowest ERA in baseball over the past month. A drastic turnaround for Hunter Brown and an expected resurgence from Framber Valdez have been the biggest drivers.
Unless the Mariners can unearth an offensive savior — they’re calling up top 1B prospect Tyler Locklear from Triple-A to replace France — this now feels like Houston’s division.
Pirates show they’re real in series win over Phillies
The Pittsburgh Pirates are a half-game back in the National League wild-card race.
That sentence is a testament to both the mediocre middle of the NL and the Pirates’ impressive play over the past few weeks. Over the weekend, the Buccos had another impressive showing, taking two out of three from the MLB-best Phillies.
First baseman Rowdy Tellez made history in a wild one on Friday, becoming the first player in franchise history to have three sac flies in one game. Oneil Cruz hit a ball 120 mph off the center-field wall as Pittsburgh battled back from a late three-run deficit against Orion Kerkering and José Alvarado, capping things off with a Nick Gonzales walk-off single. Saturday saw Cruz drop jaws once again; the beanpole unicorn shortstop ripped a laser-beam homer over the wall in right-center field as the Pirates won two in a row.
It was an important start to a key stretch for the Buccos; five of their next seven series are against teams above them in the NL wild-card standings.
Braves fall to Cardinals, lose another key player
It has been a bizarrely unlucky year for the Bravos, who won’t have Ozzie Albies for approximately the next eight weeks after the plucky second baseman fractured his wrist Sunday. Atlanta dropped its home series against St. Louis, which is now just 2.5 games behind the Braves for the top NL wild card, but losing Albies is a much more significant blow. An All-Star a year ago, the 27-year-old Curacaoan was having something of an average season by his standards but remained a crucial pillar of the Braves’ offense. Atlanta looks set to promote prospect Nacho Alvarez Jr. in his place.
Southpaw hurler Max Fried also hit the IL due to some forearm discomfort, which, understandably, elicits shudders and chills of worry, but Fried was adamant that it was a minor issue and he expects to be back relatively soon.
Atlanta is still 8.5 games behind Philadelphia in the NL East, the largest divisional gap in MLB. The Braves look like a near lock to make the playoffs as a wild card, but the top spot, given their injuries, no longer feels like a given.
Bobby Witt Jr. shined last week in the Home Run Derby, but he didn’t get the glow he deserved in the actual All-Star Game. The spectacular Gunnar Henderson got the starting nod, and when Corey Seager was named as a replacement, it was clear that he, as a hometown rep, would get priority over Witt. That meant that even though he found a way to make a phenomenal play at shortstop, Bob Jr. got only one at-bat in the Midsummer Classic.
He took that out on the baseball this weekend against the lowly White Sox, going 9-for-11 with a walk and a long bomb in the three-game set. By virtue of Boston’s three losses in Los Angeles and Minnesota’s two losses to Milwaukee, Witt’s Royals now cling to the last AL wild-card spot.
A return trip to postseason baseball is a legitimate possibility in Kansas City for the first time since 2015. Their superstar shortstop is a massive reason for that.
