Three teams outdistanced the rest of the pack during the first half of baseball’s 2024 season, a period that came to a close after the games of June 28.
The Los Angeles Dodgers, Philadelphia Phillies, and Baltimore Orioles posted overall base values that exceeded plus-360 for the first half. No other major-league team did better than plus-244.
OBV is a joint measure of batting and pitching efficiency. A club’s hitters get positive credits if they reach more bases (through hits, walks, hit batters, stolen bases, and sacrifices) than a team of average batters would have attained under the same circumstances. The tables are turned for a franchise’s pitchers, who receive positive marks if they allow fewer bases than normal.
The Dodgers were remarkably balanced during 2024’s first half. Their hitters piled up a surplus of 195 bases, and their pitchers surrendered 185 fewer bases than the big-league norm. Those figures added up to an impressive OBV of plus-380.
The Phillies (plus-364) and Orioles (plus-361) were close behind at the half-year mark. Pitchers generated more than 50 percent of Philadelphia’s score, while hitters produced the majority of Baltimore’s OBV.
Fifteen teams had positive overall base values as of the morning of June 29. Here they are:
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1. Los Angeles Dodgers, OBV 380
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2. Philadelphia Phillies, OBV 364
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3. Baltimore Orioles, OBV 361
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4. Boston Red Sox, OBV 244
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5. New York Yankees, OBV 174
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6. Milwaukee Brewers, OBV 164
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7. Atlanta Braves, OBV 120
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8. Minnesota Twins, OBV 113
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9. Seattle Mariners, OBV 98
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10. Kansas City Royals, OBV 91
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11. Cleveland Guardians, OBV 89
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12. New York Mets, OBV 69
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13. San Diego Padres, OBV 39
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14. Houston Astros, OBV 36
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15. Cincinnati Reds, OBV 19
If 15 of the 30 major-league teams posted positive scores for overall base values during 2024’s first half, it stands to reason that the other 15 were underwater on the OBV scale.
The very worst were the Chicago White Sox. Their hitters reached 246 fewer bases than average, and their pitchers yielded 153 more bases than normal. The result was an atrocious OBV of minus-399.
Here are the 15 clubs that had negative OBVs as of June 29:
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1. Chicago White Sox, OBV -399
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2. Miami Marlins, OBV -369
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3. Colorado Rockies, OBV -310
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4. Oakland Athletics, OBV -217
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5. San Francisco Giants, OBV -159
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6. Pittsburgh Pirates, OBV -151
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6. Toronto Blue Jays, OBV -151
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8. Tampa Bay Rays, OBV -122
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9. Los Angeles Angels, OBV -118
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10. Arizona Diamondbacks, OBV -113
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11. Texas Rangers, OBV -112
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12. Detroit Tigers, OBV -47
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13. Washington Nationals, OBV -43
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14. St. Louis Cardinals, OBV -26
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15. Chicago Cubs, OBV -20
Our OBV rundown suggests that the Dodgers have established themselves as frontrunners for 2024’s world championship.
It’s an opinion that’s echoed by that indispensable website, Baseball Reference, which runs 1,000 daily simulations of the remainder of the regular season, along with the playoffs. (Click here to follow its latest updates.)
Baseball Reference gave the Dodgers a 17.8 percent chance of winning this year’s World Series as of the morning of June 29. Los Angeles was roughly three percentage points ahead of the runners-up, the Orioles (14.9 percent odds of taking this year’s series) and the Phillies (14.8 percent).
Only two other clubs have better than a one-in-10 shot at a world title, and neither is the New York Yankees. These (somewhat unexpected) contenders are the Cleveland Guardians (11.3 percent) and the Milwaukee Brewers (10.2 percent).
The graph shows the eight clubs with the greatest likelihood of winning 2024’s world championship, according to Baseball Reference’s midseason reckoning:
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The All-Star Game is slated for Arlington, Texas, on July 16, which is only two weeks ahead of us. Today’s quiz looks back to previous renditions of the contest that sportswriters love to call the Midsummer Classic.
Scroll to the end of this newsletter for the answers.
1. Where and when was the first All-Star Game played?
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A. Chicago’s Comiskey Park in 1933
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B. New York’s Polo Grounds in 1934
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C. Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium in 1935
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D. Boston’s Braves Field in 1936
2. Who made the most plate appearances in the history of the All-Star Game?
3. Who hit the most home runs in All-Star history?
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A. Henry Aaron
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B. Willie Mays
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C. Stan Musial
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D. Ted Williams
4. Who made the most pitching appearances in All-Star Games?
5. Which pitcher recorded the most strikeouts during his All-Star career?
I’ve railed before against the quality start. A QS, as you know, is awarded to any starting pitcher who works at least six innings and allows no more than three earned runs.
My objection is simple. If a pitcher surrenders three runs in six innings, his ERA for that game would be 4.50, which is considerably worse than this year’s major-league average of 4.02. How could that possibly be considered a quality performance?
I’ve suggested a substitute that I call the true quality start (TQS). It requires a pitcher to work at least seven innings and allow no more than two runs.
A total of 929 quality starts were recorded in the first half of 2024, but only 283 of them (30.5 percent) also qualified for the TQS designation.
San Francisco’s Logan Webb emerged as the TQS leader at the season’s halfway mark, recording nine true quality starts so far in 2024. Three runners-up had seven apiece. Here are the leaders as of June 29:
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1. Logan Webb, Giants, TQS 9
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2. Tyler Glasnow, Dodgers, TQS 7
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2. Chris Sale, Braves, TQS 7
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2. Zack Wheeler, Phillies, TQS 7
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5. Tyler Anderson, Angels, TQS 6
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5. Jose Berrios, Blue Jays, TQS 6
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5. Logan Gilbert, Mariners, TQS 6
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5. Aaron Nola, Phillies, TQS 6
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5. Framber Valdez, Astros, TQS 6
The Detroit Tigers couldn’t seem to get untracked 40 years ago. They actually suffered a losing week, an unusual occurrence for the 1984 club that would establish itself as the greatest of baseball’s Modern Era (1961 to the present).
The Tigers went 3-4 between June 25 and July 1. They began by dropping two of three to the Yankees, then split a four-game series with the Minnesota Twins.
Not that it mattered. The Tigers started the week with an 8.5-game lead over the second-place Blue Jays in the American League East, a margin that actually widened to nine games after Toronto was swept by the Milwaukee Brewers in a four-game series.
Detroit’s record on the morning of July 2 was still an impressive 55-22, easily the best in the majors.
Shortstop Alan Trammell advised fans not to worry. “You can’t have a perfect season,” he said. “It just doesn’t happen.”
The 1962 New York Mets would suffer more defeats than any other club in the Modern Era, a record that they augmented between June 25 and July 1.
The Mets went 1-6 for the week. They lost three straight to the Pittsburgh Pirates, then three of four to the Dodgers.
The standings at daybreak on July 2, 1962, showed the Mets in last place in the National League with a 20-54 mark, 29 games behind the first-place San Francisco Giants.
But the club did have one notable success during the week. The Mets signed 17-year-old first baseman Ed Kranepool for a $90,000 bonus on June 27. “I chose the Mets because of their good offer and the opportunity to play here soon,” said Kranepool, who would appear in 1,853 games for the Mets from 1962 to 1979.
1-A. (The four answers were indeed the first four sites of the All-Star Game, beginning with Comiskey Park on Chicago’s South Side in 1933.)
2-B. (Mays made 82 plate appearances in All-Star Games between 1954 and 1973.)
3-C. (Musial hit six home runs in All-Star Games from 1943 to 1963. Nobody else has had more than four All-Star homers.)
4-D. (Spahn pitched in 17 All-Star Games, running from 1947 to 1963.)
5-A. (Drysdale leads the all-time list with 19 strikeouts in All-Star Games. He pitched in nine between 1959 and 1968.)
