The best team in the majors gets a nice perk — and not much of a postseason guarantee.
The perk is home field throughout the playoffs. But many of these elite regular-season clubs have not stuck around the playoffs very long.
In the past 13 World Series following a 162-game season, the team with the majors’ best record won it all just three times: the 2018 Red Sox, 2016 Cubs and 2013 Red Sox. Only once in that time did the teams with the best record in each league meet — in 2013, when the Red Sox beat the Cardinals.
The Phillies went into the All-Star break with the majors’ best record — 3 ½ games better than the Guardians and, in the National League, 6 ½ games ahead of the Dodgers, who signed Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto and were projected as the team to beat.
But, to date, the Phillies have proven deeper and tougher than the Dodgers — and everyone else.
In a just world, the Phillies deserve to win it all. They have been assembled expertly, and it kind of feels as if it is their turn. Remember in the NBA when it seemed a team needed to serve an apprenticeship of getting in the playoffs and having some heartbreak to toughen them up on the road to finally breaking through as champions?
The Phillies reached the World Series in 2022. They were on the brink of doing it again last year and then lost Games 6 and 7 of the NLCS at home, where they had been 9-2 in the past two postseasons.
“I don’t feel like we feel we deserve anything, but it is a very hungry group,” third baseman Alec Bohm said Monday.
And talented. On Media Day at the All-Star Game, players assemble on risers, and Bohm began a row with teammates Jeff Hoffman, Matt Strahm, Trea Turner, Bryce Harper and Cristopher Sanchez that represented every facet of the team — and was missing Ranger Suarez and Zack Wheeler, who also were selected but bowed out.
“We know what the expectation is, and it’s to win the World Series,” said Turner, who joined the Phillies after the 2022 campaign. “It’s a big goal, but I think we’re all pulling in the right direction. I think we got the right people for it.”
The Phillies essentially have had success in every realm of roster-building, beginning with owner John Middleton’s financial willingness to try to win. That has allowed the Phillies to succeed not only at big-money free agency with Harper, Turner, Wheeler, J.T. Realmuto, Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos, but then also to retain key performers such as Wheeler and Aaron Nola. They have had the keen eye to sign seemingly minor free agents such as Hoffman and Strahm.
Their farm system has brought Bohm, Suarez, Bryson Stott and Seranthony Dominguez, and the pieces to make small but meaningful trades for Brandon Marsh (for Logan O’Hoppe) and Edmundo Sosa (Jojo Romero).
And the belief system is strong — as it should be based on track record — that Middleton and president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski will push this month to make a trade or two to further improve the roster. No one would be surprised if Dombrowski more aggressively used his farm base than any other team (except perhaps the Padres) to address his bullpen and maybe add a righty-hitting outfielder.
And Rob Thomson, after succeeding Joe Girardi as manager, has helped foster a sturdiness, togetherness and tough-minded focus. The Phillies have looked like a team on a mission.
“We’re a team that just really wants to win,” Harper said. “We have the demeanor. We have the right guys to do that. Obviously, it’s baseball and everybody knows how the game works, right? A team gets hot, then anything goes. People saw that last year as well. So I think we just have to keep being ourselves, playing our game, understanding that. Rob Thompson does such a great job of letting everybody know their job and what they are going to do. We have a really good ‘next man up’ mentality. We have a lot of good veteran guys in the clubhouse as well. We have a lot of fun — it’s a very fun clubhouse. And, obviously, John Middleton and Dave Dombrowski do a great job of bringing in the right guys.”
There is a throwback quality to the Phillies in their tenacious style of play and in a rotation that is asked to take the ball and go through a lineup more than two times — their 26 outings of at least seven innings is seven more than any other team. Phillies ranked third (Wheeler, 2.70), fourth (Suarez, 2.76), fifth (Sanchez, 2.96) and ninth (Nola, 3.38) in ERA among Nationals League starters.
Does that catch up to the Phillies in the end, with their starters wearing down? Is it just that the longer playoffs now are tougher to get through or that the five days off for having the best record creates some instant rust?
Maybe. Recent history shows how difficult the pathway through October is.
But after one half of a season, the Phillies are deservingly the team to beat.
What about the Dodgers?
I was in Glendale, Ariz., for a few days in February when the Dodgers opened camp. It felt like the right place to be, the center of the baseball universe. They had signed Ohtani and Yamamoto, and also added Tyler Glasnow and Teoscar Hernandez among others as part of a $1 billion-plus splurge.
Ohtani, Glasnow and Hernandez are All-Stars (Glasnow is not active for the game). And the Dodgers are comfortably first in the NL West. Yet the first half was underwhelming.
“We hit a lot of speed bumps when everyone just expected us to roll though,” said All-Star first baseman Freddie Freeman.
You know who the Dodgers are a lot like? The Yankees.
They each added a megastar in the offseason: Ohtani and Soto. They further took their payrolls over $300 million by adding starting pitching: Yamamoto and Marcus Stroman. They are, of course, the coastal superpowers, but coastal superpowers who have had trouble winning championships. The Dodgers have one since 1988 — in the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign. The Yankees have one since 2000, not even making the World Series since winning it all in 2009.
Both got off great this season, but then sputtered. The Yankees had the majors’ best record through June 14 at 50-22 and its worst thereafter at 8-18. The Dodgers were 51-31 through June 26, the second-best record in the NL. They finished the first half with the majors’ second-worst record in the ensuing stretch at 5-10, and, as Freeman emphasized, “It has been like 40-45 games in which we have been maybe not even a .500 team.” The Dodgers are 23-23 in their past 46.
The Yankees finished the first half with the majors’ fourth-best record at 58-40, just ahead of the Dodgers at 56-41.
But the Yankees trail the Orioles in the AL East while the Red Sox are 3 ½ games further back. The Dodgers already know they are going to win the NL West for the 11th time in 12 years. They lead the Padres and Diamondbacks by seven games.
So they can spend the trade deadline and the second half fine-tuning and getting healthy.
Mookie Betts arguably was the NL MVP front-runner in mid-June when he went down with a right hand fracture. He likely returns in August. But it is in the rotation where the Dodgers can make the most gains. They know that neither Tony Gonsolin nor Dustin May will be back. But Glasnow said he expects to rejoin the rotation soon after the break. Clayton Kershaw is apparently not far behind. Yamamoto (triceps) is out until at least mid-August. Besides trying to get Walker Buehler healthy, they are trying to get him right after he pitched poorly this season.
In their last six games before the break, the Dodgers started Bobby Miller, Gavin Stone, Anthony Banda, James Paxton, Justin Wrobleski and Brent Honeywell (a day after he was claimed off waivers from the Pirates). Which moved Freeman to note, “So much happened to us that was not on our Bingo card.”
There is a lot of potential here to deepen and improve the rotation to be strong in the end.
“We’re still in first place,” Freeman said. “We still have got a really good team. We still have got a lot of guys coming back. I think we are going to be OK.”
Roster stuff maybe only I notice
Rangers closer Kirby Yates is an All-Star for a second time. That is quite a feat for a player who signed with the Rays as an undrafted free agent in 2009.
Back then there was still a 50-round draft. But the 2024 draft concludes Tuesday after three days and 20 rounds. It has been 20 rounds since 2021. It was only five rounds in 2020. From 2012-19, it was 40 rounds, and it had been 50 rounds from 1998-2011. Prior to that, from its inception in 1965, the draft had basically been unlimited. Teams could keep drafting as much as they wanted.
But in attempts to restrict costs, MLB has cut back on the number of minor league teams, how many minor leaguers can be under contract and the scope of the draft.
So what was rare with Yates — the undrafted free agent — is becoming more common. There were 31 who played in the majors in the first half of this season after there were 27 all of last season, 26 in each of the previous two years and as few as 15 as recently as 2017.
The need to scout independent leagues is becoming a more pertinent issue for teams, especially in potentially finding more arms to survive the grind of the season.
Caught my attention
MLB’s calendar at this time of year doesn’t make sense.
The draft is Sunday-Tuesday, coinciding with the All-Star festivities and game. The Hall of Fame induction ceremony is next weekend during the run-up to the July 30 trade deadline.
There are too many significant events atop each other, cannibalizing attention.
I believe the Hall of Fame induction ceremony should be moved to late June. It should come after the NBA and NHL postseasons, when baseball is the most prominent league playing and more attention can be focused on such an important event. Schools are out. The temperatures are more moderate than in late July for the older Hall of Famers who sit on stage for the event.
I would think about having the event on a Sunday afternoon and playing only one game that day — at night from Cooperstown.
The draft also should be moved back to June. By the time it is held now, there are high school players who have not played for around two months. If a college team did not make a regional for the College World Series, the players have not played for a month or more. How is that good for preparing them for the major leagues, especially because MLB (in another cost-cutting maneuver) eliminated short-season minor leagues? Draftees are now too often going long periods without playing or playing against much older competition before they are ready.
And the draft also distracts manpower and attention for each franchise away from prepping for the trade deadline.
Currently, the Futures Game is played on Sunday afternoon on the final day of the first half and the draft is held at night.
Better that the draft be moved to June and the Futures Game is played on national TV on Sunday night as a way to better present the best young prospects to the country.
Last licks
MLB annually crows about how many first-timers are involved in the All-Star Game to promote how bright the future is, including 38 this year. And I get it. You want to sell tomorrow.
But perhaps I am spoiled. The first All-Star Game I remember watching came when I was 7 in 1971, and no one was talking about first-timers. That game featured 18 future first-ballot Hall of Famers and 25 Hall of Famers in all, including both managers (Sparky Anderson, Earl Weaver), an NL coach (Walter Alston) and umpire Doug Harvey plus — among others — Pete Rose.
And most of these guys were well into historic careers. Heck, the NL starting outfield was three Hall of Famers in Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Willie Stargell, which meant future Hall of Famers Lou Brock and Roberto Clemente were on the bench, along with Rose, Bobby Bonds, Willie Davis and Rusty Staub.
That was just one league’s outfield.
It was a different world, of course. Back then, this was your chance to see out-of-market stars, as opposed to now when every game is available. And also with the way starting pitchers are used now, it is harder to have the kind of legendary careers that Steve Carlton, Juan Marichal and Tom Seaver had.
But forgive me if I like established greatness.
And if I want to continue my rant: What can be done to stop the Home Run Derby from becoming like the NBA Slam Dunk contest, overflowing with not the people that the fans want to see?
This year’s event included eventual winner Teoscar Hernandez and Alec Bohm, who were scheduled to bat seventh and eighth in the NL lineup on Tuesday. Good for them for participating and Pete Alonso for being a true power hitter who always wants to be part of this.
But how many more folks would be watching if Aaron Judge was on one side of the bracket and Shohei Ohtani the other, and how many more would tune in if they started moving toward each other for a final? And Alonso and Bryce Harper and Rafael Devers? You know the obvious guys.
The players can’t talk about growing the game and then run away from this event.
OK, last old man on the lawn moment (for this week, anyway): MLB did a good job of not waiting until the Monday press conference to get the word out that Pirates phenom Paul Skenes would start for the NL. It was an attempt to build some buzz into the event with a pitcher who is generating buzz. The second job was to make sure that in the bottom of the first he faced Gunnar Henderson, Juan Soto and Aaron Judge.
No disrespect to Cleveland’s Steven Kwan, who is having a terrific first half and is the kind of low-strikeout hitter that might be a challenge for even Skenes.
But America is not tuning in to watch Kwan, who is leading off for the AL, followed by Henderson and Soto. Judge is batting fourth.
So unless someone reaches base, we will not have a matchup that would be alluring: Judge vs. Skenes.
Is this all really so difficult to get right?
