The MLB All-Star Game usually signifies the dog days of summer and the sporting calendar. Sure, the Paris Olympic Games are set to entice us for a couple of weeks, and the WNBA will entertain American sports fans until football makes its triumphant return in late August, but the second half of the Major League Baseball season also has some fascinating story lines to follow.
Paul Skenes has electrified baseball with his rookie campaign, Aaron Judge is on pace to challenge a home run record he set two years ago, and second place and first are 8.5 or fewer games apart in all six divisional races, setting the stage for an exhilarating second half of the season.
While playoff baseball can be as dramatic as any event in sports, the September division races, recently expanded wild-card spots, and individual award races make for a competitive final few months of the regular season. Baseball fans can sometimes get lost in the daily rhythms of constant games, but it’s important to zoom out and think bigger after the All-Star break. Here are my nine boldest takes and predictions about the remainder of the MLB regular season.
A Philly will win the National League Cy Young award, but it won’t be Zack Wheeler.
Disclaimer: I am a Phillies fan. I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that my Twitter username was “Aaron Nola Enjoyer” at various points during their 2022 and 2023 playoff runs.
The Phillies boast four of the top 14 starting pitchers in the NL by FanGraphs WAR (wins above replacement). This formidable starting pitching lineup was a major reason the Phillies were the best team in MLB in the first half of the season. The quartet of Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola, Cristopher Sánchez, and Ranger Suárez has consistently dominated opposing lineups all year long, even though Wheeler and Suárez took extended rests because of minor back issues coming out of the All-Star break and didn’t pitch in Pittsburgh in the opening series over the weekend. Suárez was briefly the Cy Young favorite in mid-June, but four mediocre to poor starts heading into the break saw his chances plummet.
Wheeler is the established ace of his staff, grinding through the first half of the season to the tune of a 2.70 ERA. But because of Wheeler’s back tightness, one of the other Phillies star pitchers has real upside potential to win the Cy Young. Sánchez allowed only two home runs in the first half of the season, when he threw in 103 innings and had a 2.96 ERA. He doesn’t have elite strikeout skills, but his ability to draw ground balls and suppress home runs has made him a dominant force as the hitting weather has improved.
Sánchez has found a few extra miles per hour on his fastball, but his changeup remains his money pitch. At the break, Sánchez was second in pitching WAR, behind only Atlanta’s Chris Sale. Nola registered his two highest-velocity fastball outings in his final two starts before the break, and his uptick in strikeouts—coupled with his work ethic—suggests that he’ll be in the mix in the second half, too.
The four best MLB records will all come from East Division teams.
Three of the four best records in MLB are separated by just 201 miles along the I-95 Northeast corridor. The Orioles and Yankees will likely battle for the American League East crown for most of the summer and into their final series from September 24 to 26 in the Bronx. The Phillies entered the break 8.5 games ahead of the Braves, but Atlanta is poised for a second-half run and will finish in the top four in MLB with the rest of the top East Division contenders.
Given the Dodgers’ pitching uncertainty—Yoshinobu Yamamoto is on the injured list and Tyler Glasnow and Clayton Kershaw are returning this week—baseball’s West Coast juggernaut is quite vulnerable right now. The Astros recovered from their awful opening month, but the gap is too big for them to catch up to the game’s elite teams in the second half. Cleveland has the second-best record in the sport, but I retain some doubts about that team (more on that later).
With all the questions surrounding many of the league’s top teams, the four leading East teams are who I feel best about in the second half. The Braves, in particular, are winning in different ways this year. Last season, Atlanta’s historically elite offense out-slugged any potential pitching concerns that emerged.
2023 Braves Stats (Rank)
Offensive wRC+: 125 (first)
Starters ERA: 4.36 (17th)
Bullpen ERA: 3.81 (11th)
2024 Braves Stats (Rank)
Offensive wRC+: 98 (17th)
Starters ERA: 3.73 (9th)
Bullpen ERA: 2.98 (2nd)
Despite losing Cy Young favorite Spencer Strider to injury for the season, the Braves have an elite pitching staff and a dominant bullpen. Sale, Max Fried, Reynaldo López, and even rookie Spencer Schwellenbach have impressed in the rotation. What if Atlanta starts hitting closer to last year’s numbers?
Cleveland will not win the AL Central.
Cleveland finished the 2023 season dead last in ISO, a measure of a hitter’s raw power. The offense couldn’t slug, and it’s not like the Guardians made a bunch of huge additions to their lineup to boost their power ahead of this season. But seemingly out of nowhere, they finished the first half 10th in ISO and have a five-game lead over the Twins and Royals for first place in the AL Central. The Guardians won the division in 2022, and the Twins won last season. But it doesn’t look like Cleveland will hold its lead this year.
Usually, the Guardians rely on their elite pitching and defense to overcome any lineup deficiencies. Their bullpen finished the first half ranked first in ERA, but the starting pitching was below average in ERA, and Shane Bieber’s injury, plus Triston McKenzie’s ineffectiveness, leaves real holes in the depth of the staff. As impressive as Tanner Bibee has been at the top of the makeshift rotation, the Guardians won’t be able to outhit the starting pitching forever.
Cleveland ranks dead last in hard-hit rate, second to last in barrel rate, and fifth worst in xwOBA (expected weighted on-base average). This offense is still short on production, and it doesn’t have the pitching to overcome that this year. They are a scary team in a short series because of the bullpen, but the Twins and Royals will have opportunities to chase them down in the second half of the season.
The NL West race will come down to the final weekend.
Padres general manager A.J. Preller’s Super Bowl—the MLB trade deadline—is fast approaching. Giants GM Farhan Zaidi is still searching for a significant move to boost the Giants. The Dodgers are vulnerable right now, given the Mookie Betts and Max Muncy injuries and their aforementioned pitching uncertainty. San Diego is expected to get Fernando Tatis back at some point, and if their topline pitchers can get healthy for the Padres and Giants, those two teams are poised to chase the Dodgers, along with reigning NL champion Arizona, through the final weekend of the season.
The Dodgers will need innings in the second half from unproven prospects, and the farm isn’t nearly as deep right now as it’s been in past years to make a big, splashy trade.
When fully healthy, Los Angeles is still the best team in the division by a wide margin, but the emergence of rookies Jackson Merrill (San Diego) and Heliot Ramos (San Francisco) is helping those teams close the gap. Many pundits penciled the Dodgers in as NL West and NL champs once they spent a billion dollars in the offseason, but I’m here to quote Lee Corso and say, “Not so fast.”
St. Louis will finish last in the NL Central.
Just 10.5 games separate first and last place in the NL Central, which makes it MLB’s most tightly contested division after the break. The Cardinals surged to claim second place in the division in the summer months, but they won’t stay there. They are the definition of average across the board, but the case against St. Louis is that Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt can no longer carry this offense as they did into the playoffs in 2021 and 2022.
Arenado has a 98 OPS+, roughly league average. The Cardinals’ third baseman has never been a Statcast darling, but at age 33, he has his worst hard-hit rate and average exit velocity by a wide margin this season. Goldschmidt, 36, had a .658 OPS in the first half and has shown no signs of improvement. Relying on the unproven Brendan Donovan and Alec Burleson feels like a major risk.
St. Louis has a solid bullpen, but the Cardinals have by far the worst run differential in the division (-31) thus far. (The second worst is Pittsburgh, at -11.) All four teams chasing Milwaukee could change a lot between now and the trade deadline, but the parity should keep all of them involved in the pennant race for now.
The Toronto Blue Jays will lose 90 games.
Toronto’s starting rotation’s top-five ERA last season really papered over the cracks of its core offensive hitters’ diminishing returns. The Blue Jays made the playoffs as an 89-win wild-card team, but this year has been a mess, and I think there’s real potential for them to trend further downhill in the second half.
First, Toronto could look to move some of its pitchers in a sell-off situation. The Blue Jays are in the toughest division in baseball, and their proven veteran starters could bring in quite the prospect haul, given the leaguewide demand for starting pitchers at the trade deadline.
Second, the Blue Jays have only two above-average hitters on the active roster this season. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has a 135 OPS+ and has created solid but not elite production at first base. Bo Bichette, George Springer, Daulton Varsho, and Justin Turner are all underperforming veterans, and it appears to be an age-related decline in the case of Springer and Turner. The Blue Jays offense is bottom eight in barrels and hard-hit rate.
FanGraphs projects them to lose 86 games this year. I’d bet the over.
Wyatt Langford will hit 12 second-half home runs and run away with AL Rookie of the Year.
This pick admittedly isn’t as bold because the betting markets have Langford as the front-runner in the AL Rookie of the Year race. If the voting were to happen today, the award would almost certainly go to Baltimore outfielder Colton Cowser or New York starting pitcher Luis Gil. However, Langford may have finally found his swing and power stroke in the 25 games leading into the break.
He had a .240/.298/.320 slash line in his first 47 games. In his last 25 to conclude the first half, he posted a .280/.352/.505 line. Langford is on a path similar to Gunnar Henderson’s slow start in 2023 (which was followed by an easy Rookie of the Year victory). He has a very short swing and still generates a lot of bat speed. There are 29 hitters with an average swing length under 7 feet, and in that group only Giants OF Heliot Ramos has a faster swing than Langford.
Steven Kwan will not win the batting title.
Guardians fans are probably not reading this anymore, likely still disgusted by an earlier sentiment about their chances to win the AL Central. If they are still reading, now would be a good time for them to look away. Kwan lapped the field in batting average in the first half, with an incredible .352, and is at .346 after the opening weekend of the second half. No other qualified hitter is higher than .337 (Bobby Witt Jr.).
In many ways, Kwan tells the story of the Guardians’ last three seasons better than almost any other player. He hit .298 and had a high BABIP in 2022 as Cleveland marched to a division title with its contact-first approach. But then Kwan’s overall stat line took a real step back, as did the Cleveland offense, and finished with a .268 average in 2023. (His strikeout and hard-hit rates, though, were almost comparable to those from the previous year.)
This year, Kwan is hitting the ball a bit harder and striking out less, but more is needed to sustain anything close to his current average. Expected batting average (xBA) isn’t a perfect metric, but Kwan’s .308 is considerably worse than Bobby Witt Jr.’s .331.
Aaron Judge will break Aaron Judge’s home run record.
Judge’s 62 home runs in 2022 broke the American League record while he was en route to an MVP award win. He will break that record in 2024 and win another AL MVP award. The Yankees’ lineup depth has been lacking this season, but Judge’s numbers are better through the first half of 2024 than in the first half of 2022.
Thus far, Judge is hitting the ball harder, barreling it slightly more, and slugging .680 with a 1.116 OPS. It’s impossible to run out of superlatives to describe his performance as a hitter in the past few seasons. But it’s also easy to forget how mediocre he was in March and April. Since May 1, though, Judge has been on a pace (.810 SLG) that would make Barry Bonds sweat.
I’m looking forward to seeing Judge chase his record in the second half, especially when the ESPN cut-ins start to annoy football fans again.
