Pushing for the Cy, wondering about the Yanks, and striking out (a lot)

The race for the American League’s Cy Young Award appears to be settled, though the National League’s contest is still wide open.

Tarik Skubal went 16-4 for the Detroit Tigers in 27 starts through the end of August. I know we’re not supposed to care about win-loss records anymore, but 16-4 is definitely eye-catching. And so is Skubal’s earned run average of 2.51 and his opponents’ batting average of .201.

Let’s give him the Cy.

It just so happens that Skubal also led all AL pitchers in overall base value (OBV) through the first five months of the season. OBV compares a given pitcher against a big-league counterpart of average ability. Skubal’s OBV of plus-104 indicates that he surrendered 104 fewer bases (through hits, walks, hit batters, stolen bases, and sacrifices) that the typical pitcher would have yielded in the same circumstances.

The National League’s OBV race is a virtual dead heat between Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler (plus-79) and Atlanta’s Chris Sale (plus-77). If Paul Skenes had started the season with Pittsburgh — instead of being forced to wait until May 11 for his debut — he might have made it a three-man race. His OBV for his partial season is plus-62.

Here are the top 10 pitchers in each league at the five-month mark:

• 1. Tarik Skubal, Tigers, OBV 104

• 2. Logan Gilbert, Mariners, OBV 91

• 3. Bryan Woo, Mariners, OBV 72

• 4. Emmanuel Clase, Guardians, OBV 68

• 4. Framber Valdez, Astros, OBV 68

• 6. Bryce Miller, Mariners, OBV 63

• 7. Seth Lugo, Royals, OBV 61

• 8. Tanner Houck, Red Sox, OBV 60

• 9. Tyler Holton, Tigers, OBV 58

• 10. Griffin Jax, Twins, OBV 50

• 1. Zack Wheeler, Phillies, OBV 79

• 2. Chris Sale, Braves, OBV 77

• 3. Paul Skenes, Pirates, OBV 62

• 3. Logan Webb, Giants, OBV 62

• 5. Raisel Iglesias, Braves, OBV 60

• 6. Tyler Glasnow, Dodgers, OBV 58

• 7. Max Fried, Braves, OBV 53

• 8. Dylan Cease, Padres, OBV 52

• 9. Justin Steele, Cubs, OBV 50

• 10. Ranger Suarez, Phillies, OBV 49

I’ve suggested in the past that the inverse of the Cy Young Award should be the Milt Gaston Award, named after the pitcher with the worst career win-loss record (among those with at least 250 decisions).

The frontrunners for this year’s Milts are Logan Allen of the Cleveland Guardians (OBV of minus-66) in the American League and Roddery Munoz of the Miami Marlins (minus-75) in the National.

I see no reason to belabor these unhappy stats, though I do find it interesting that the Guardians appear to be playoff-bound despite having three of the five AL pitchers with the worst base values.

Here are the OBV tailenders in both leagues:

• 1. Logan Allen, Guardians, OBV -66

• 2. Chris Flexen, White Sox, OBV -45

• 3. Kenta Maeda, Tigers, OBV -43

• 3. Triston McKenzie, Guardians, OBV -43

• 5. Carlos Carrasco, Guardians, OBV -42

• 1. Roddery Munoz, Marlins, OBV -75

• 2. Patrick Corbin, Nationals, OBV -67

• 3. Jordan Montgomery, Diamondbacks, OBV -57

• 4. Taijuan Walker, Phillies, OBV -56

• 5. Ty Blach, Rockies, OBV -52

So what do you think? Can the Yankees finally do it this year?

Baseball’s dominant franchise has won 27 world championships — easily the highest total for any club — yet it hasn’t been triumphant since 2009. That’s 15 seasons and counting.

The current drought isn’t the longest in the team’s history. The Yanks went 18 seasons between their world titles in 1978 and 1996. (And, of course, they didn’t win anything in their first two decades of operation, but that’s ancient history.)

This week’s graph shows the distribution of the Yanks’ world championships by 10-year periods since the 1920s. The headiest period, as you can see, was Casey Stengel’s heyday in the 1950s.

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A swing and a miss. The strikeout has always been part of baseball, of course, though never more so than in recent seasons.

Batters (on both teams) are piling up an average of 16.90 strikeouts per game this season. That’s down a bit from 2019’s all-time record of 17.62 per game, though it’s still an awfully large number.

Today’s quiz pays homage to the almighty strikeout, with questions about batters and pitchers. Look to the bottom of this newsletter for the answers.

1. Who holds the single-season record for strikeouts by a batter?

2. Which hitter amassed the highest career number of strikeouts?

3. Who is the career leader in strikeouts among batters who are currently active?

4. Which pitcher holds the single-season record for strikeouts (since 1900)?

5. Who holds the career record for strikeouts by a pitcher?

Chris Sale’s recovery from four injury-plagued seasons has been one of 2024’s major stories.

Sale is once again a dominant force on the mound, becoming one of only two National League pitchers to register more than 200 strikeouts through September 13. (San Diego’s Dylan Cease was the other.)

Sale’s performance for the Atlanta Braves this year has been highlighted by six games with 10 or more strikeouts. He reached his peak with 12 K’s against the Giants on August 12.

His resurgence has pushed Sale into seventh place on the Modern Era’s list of pitchers with the highest number of games with double-digit strikeouts. (The era runs from 1961 to the present.) He now has 87 performances with 10 or more K’s — truly an outstanding total, yet still far behind the era’s leader, Nolan Ryan.

The following is a list of the 10 pitchers with the most games with 10-plus strikeouts since 1961 (including this season), as tabulated by Baseball Reference. The years in parentheses are the first and last in which the pitcher reached the 10-strikeout threshold:

• 1. Nolan Ryan (1968-1992), 215 games w/10+ SO

• 2. Randy Johnson (1988-2008), 212 games

• 3. Max Scherzer (2008-2023), 113 games

• 4. Roger Clemens (1984-2005), 110 games

• 5. Pedro Martínez (1994-2006), 108 games

• 6. Curt Schilling (1993-2007), 93 games

• 7. Chris Sale (2012-2024), 87 games

• 8. Steve Carlton (1967-1987), 84 games

• 9. Sandy Koufax (1961-1966), 77 games

• 10. Sam McDowell (1962-1971), 74 games

The week of September 10-16, 1984, was déjà vu for the Detroit Tigers. They began with a three-game set against the Baltimore Orioles, followed by a series of the same length versus the Toronto Blue Jays.

Detroit had followed the identical script the week before, winning one of three games with the Orioles and sweeping the Jays. The only difference was the ballparks. The second week was the reverse of the first, this time sending the Tigers to Baltimore, then home to face Toronto.

The outcome came close to duplication. The ’84 Tigers, who rank as the greatest team of baseball’s Modern Era, again went 1-2 against the Orioles, then again won their series with the Blue Jays, this time by a 2-1 margin.

Not that it mattered much. Detroit was coasting toward the American League East crown with a 95-54 record on the morning of September 17. The Tigers led the second-place Jays by 12 games.

The 1962 New York Mets, who (until this year) would rank as baseball’s losingest team, enjoyed a relatively quiet week from September 10-16. They played only four games, and they managed to win two of them.

Roger Craig, who had pitched in hard luck all season, picked up both of the victories. He pitched two-thirds of an inning in relief on September 14, benefiting from Choo-Choo Coleman’s walk-off homer for the Mets, which clinched a 10-9 win over Cincinnati in the bottom of the ninth inning. Craig then made his regular start two days later — things were different in those years — and pitched a complete-game 8-2 victory over Cincinnati.

Craig’s personal record improved to 9-23 after his flurry of activity. But the Mets were 37-111 as of September 17, 1962, precisely 60 games behind the National League leaders, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

1-C. (Reynolds piled up the superhuman number of 223 strikeouts for the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2009. He balanced it with 44 home runs.)

2-B. (Jackson struck out 2,597 times in his 21-year career. The only other batter to exceed 2,500 was Thome at 2,548. Both men are in the Hall of Fame.)

3-D. (Stanton had a total of 1,948 career strikeouts as of September 14.)

4-D. (Ryan whiffed 383 batters for the California Angels in 1973, edging past the previous record, Koufax’s 1965 total of 382 strikeouts.)

5-D. (It’s Ryan again. His career total of 5,714 strikeouts is far ahead of Johnson, the runner-up at 4,875.)