Hey, and welcome to this week’s mailbag! Matt Martell is on a well-deserved
trip, so I’m piloting issues in his stead. Matt picked a fairly good time to get some R&R; with a few month left within the season, the playoff subject is principally set. As Michael Baumann famous in his piece yesterday, “there has not been a playoff race so settled this early within the season as this 12 months’s Nationwide League. No less than not up to now 12 seasons. There’s at all times been somebody with some hope in every league, even within the two-Wild Card rounds, and particularly in that hateful COVID-necessitated 16-team bracket from 2020. Not this 12 months within the NL. Barely, this 12 months, within the AL.” Coming into play on Friday, the Reds trailed the Mets by 4 video games for the ultimate NL Wild Card spot; their playoff odds sat at a paltry 4.4%. The Junior Circuit didn’t provide far more intrigue; the Royals, sitting three video games again of the Mariners for the third Wild Card in that league, had playoff odds of simply 12.6% because the lengthy weekend loomed.
However that doesn’t imply there’s no enjoyable available. Kyle Schwarber hit 4 house runs in a single recreation this week! Jonah Tong and Payton Tolle made their main league debuts! There’s Hello-Chew aplenty! And whereas we principally know who shall be taking part in October baseball, each of the West divisions stay unsettled.
Your questions this week don’t particularly concern the playoff race, although two of them contain key gamers on groups that hope to make deep postseason runs. We’ll additionally zoom out to ponder what number of groups might end .500, in addition to the way forward for public pitching evaluation. Earlier than we do, although, I’ll remind you all that whereas anybody can submit a query, this mailbag is unique to FanGraphs Members. Should you aren’t but a Member and want to maintain studying, you possibly can join a Membership right here. It’s one of the best ways to each expertise the location and help our employees, and it comes with a bunch of different nice advantages. Additionally, if you happen to’d prefer to ask a query for an upcoming mailbag, you’ll want to ship us an e-mail at mailbag@fangraphs.com.