It is down to the wire for the NL MVP with Acuna and Betts battling it out. Offensively, the Rockies are at home this week which could portend big finishes. Xander keeps on hitting while Witt and Ruiz chase history. On the bump, there is some good, but also some concern for guys like Eovaldi, Glasnow, Ryan and Kikuchi.
NL MVP?
There’s a lot of back and forth, so here are my quick thoughts as to the NL MVP Race with a week left between Ronald Acuna and Mookie Betts.
| AVG | HR | RBI | RUNS | SB | wOBA | WAR* | |
| R. Acuna | .336 | 40 | 101 | 143 | 68 | .426 | 7.8 |
| M. Betts | .309 | 39 | 105 | 125 | 13 | .421 | 8.2 |
Acuna has history with a historic 40/60 season that could become 40/70.
Betts has a better WAR amd he played OF 105 times, second base 65 times and shortstop 16 times. Is that versatility enough to put Betts over the top? I’m thinking the vote will go Acuna… what say you?
HITTING
Wilyer Abreu has slashed .362/.431/.552 over 65 PA for the socks in an excellent abbreviated campaign with the Red Sox. He only has six at-bats against lefties, but he owns a 1.054 OPS against RHP. According to Rob Povia’s excellent weekly article, the Sox are set to face five rightis this week.
Xander Bogaerts’ September has been magical. Right after I said, solid but his normal work on a podcast, he’s become one of the hottest hitters in baseball and, all of a sudden, he’s damn near the same fantasy performer as he’s ever been pushing his line to .282-19-55-80-18 (the running really helps to offset the loss of 20 RBI and .020 batting average points). In September he’s gone .427-4-10-22-5, with a .508 wOBA, over 20 games. Goodness gracious.
Jake Burger has been excellent with the Marlins and damned if he ain’t pushed his effort up to .251-34-79-71 in an effor that makes him look a lot like Eugenio Suarez. By the way, Suarez rebounded from a horrible start, though his .233-21-92-66 effort is still disapointing (he went .236-31-87-67 last year).
Kris Bryant is batting .174 in 12 games since his return and he’s 1-for-21 the last week. He gets seven games at Coors this week. Something has to give.
Luis Campusano keeps hitting. He’s batting .478 during a six game hitting streak which has pushed his August slash line way up to .359/.388/.500 in what has been an excellent final month.
Luis Garcia of the Nationals has hit .301/.339/.518 in September. The last 12 games he’s been scintilating at .381-3-5-11-1 with a 1.089 OPS. Only five games this week though…
Paul Goldschmidt has crapped out. He’s still playing every day, but the average is down to .268 and his OPS is .809 as he went 2-for-23 last week to give him a .223 average the last month with a .745 OPS.
Ryan Jeffers has a borderline elite, for a catcher, slash of .274/.367/.474. That .841 OPS dwarfs the .597 mark of Christian Vazquez yet the Twins continue to rotate their playinmg time which is shocking. CV has 335 PA while Jeffers is at .317. Oh, and before you think it is a platoon thing for Jeffers let me plainly state it is not. Jeffers has a .878 OPS against LHP this season and the mark is .828 against RHP. Over his last 159 games he’s gone deep 19 rime with 68 RBI and 68 runs scored. Played this man Twins.
Nolan Jones has a huge week and he could go 20/20 in less than 110 games played. He’s currently at 18/17 and he gets a full week at Coors. The last month he’s gone deep five times and he’s run like a basestealer with nine thefets in 27 games (four last week in six).
Luis Robert tweaked his knee while swiping his 20th base, and with nothing to play for it is unclear how much he will play this week. Given the fact that he’s also gone 35-80-90-20, all nice and pretty numbers… he is two homers from 40, so perhaps that will spur him on.
Eustery Ruiz has either stolen two bases and scored two runs each of the last three games (four steals, four RBI and two runs in the three games). He’s actually swiped two bases in three of six gamse and is up to 65 theft putting him just three behind Acuna. Ruiz has racked up 480 plate appearances on the year while Acuna has… 714.
Since his last day off, Jack Suwinski has two homers, two steals, seven RBI and nine runs in 12 games played. He’s also slashed an impressive .316/.417/.500.
Leody Taveras is batting .355 with a .978 OPS his last 11 games while he has crossed home plate 11 times.
It’s not the the level of Acuna but… Bobby Witt needs a homer and two steals this week to end the year as a member of the 30/50 club.
PITCHING
Edward Cabrera has been terrific since his recall allowing four runs over 19 innings with 22 punchouts. Allowing only a single homer has helped, and there’s just 11 hits on the ledger, but the pesky walks have continued. He’s walked an unhealthy 11 batters in 22 innings leaving him with a 14.1 K-BB% which is barely average. Some oddity there to as he’s gotten ahead 0-1 on 64.1 percent of the time to batters. Until he harnesses the wildness, there is always more risk than there should be with his stuff.
Mike Clevinger thre six innings of two run ball in Fenway over the weekend, and that is darn good. Oddly, he didn’t strike out a single batter after 3-straight with seven. He’s in a nice groove heading into his final start of the eason having tossed 4-straight quality starts while allowing a total of five runs. By the by, he’s not issued a sine walk in 5-straight starts.
Nathan Eovaldi is set to take the hill one last time against the Mariners this week. Since his return to action he’s made five starts throwing just 17 innings. He’s allowed five homers, 11 walks and 14 runs as he’s stunk. Clearly he’s not right physically, so he’s just trying to gut it out. As you can see from the graph, the velocity on everything is down.
He’s down 2.3 mph on his fastball from May, 2.2 mph down on his cutter, 1.3 mph down on his splitter, the slider is down 2.4 mph and his curve is down 1.7 mph. I wouldn’t be starting him unless I was desperate in his final outing.
Kyle Gibson has a 4.86 ERA over 187 innings with a 1.31 WHIP and 12.6 K-BB%. He’s been a below league average peformer but he’s still gone 15-9. We gotta move on from wins folks.
Tyler Glasnow has seen his performance dip a bit of late allowing 14 runs in 15.1 innings after allowing 14 runs the previous seven outings. Yeah, that’s not great. Seems like he’s struggling a bit with his slider at the moment. Easy to forget if it has neve been pointed out, but he only thre 13.2 innings last season and he’s at 115.0 this season. By the way, he’s never thrown more innings in the Majors in a season and has only hit 90-innings in the bigs once (111.2 back in 2018).
Yusei Kikuchi is falling apart in September. In five outints he’s failed to go more than 5.0 innings in any outing and the ERA is 4.94 with a 1.48 WHIP. The batted ball data is damning as well as guys are seemingly putting some pretty good swings on him with a 50.0 hard-hit rate and 92.5 exit velocity. He’s set to face the Rays again this week after holding them to three runs over four innings in his outing Sunday (no walks, seven strikeouts). In three meetings this season, the Rays have demolished him with a .333/.364/.524 slash leading to a 5.40 ERA and 1.60 WHIP.
Since his return, Joe Ryan has gone 2-2 over six starts with 39 punchouts and eight walks over 30.2 innings. Batters have a 90.9 exit velocity and 10.3 percent barrel rate against him which are pretty significant numbers for a fella who has a 46 percent fly ball rate in that time. He’s a risky start this week given that he’s set to face the Rockies in Colorado. On the year he has a 49.9 fly ball rate and he’s homer prone as a result. Colorado is not a place that anyone with a 1.67 HR/9 rate should feel comfortable.
J.P. Sears is not an awful pivot to this week as he’s set to face the Angels. In September, the Angels are 29th in batting average, 29th in OBP, 24th in SLG, 29th in wOBA and they are the easiest team in baseball to strike out someone. With Sears, he’s made five starts in September with a terrible 6.7 K-BB% rate, but he also has a 2.93 ERA and has gone five innings in each outing while allowing a single home run while allowing a hard-hit rate of just 31.7 percent with an 84.8 exit velocity.
SAVES LEADERS IN SEPTEMBER…
8 – David Bednar
7 – Tanner Scott
6 – Pete Fairbanks, Alex Lange, Emmanuel Clase
5 – Trevor May, Clay Holmes, Paul Sewald, Jordan Romano, Ryan Helsley
4 – Adam Ottavvino, Ryan Helsley, Devin Williams, Jose Alvarado, Tyler Kinley, Johan Duran
Emannuel Clase is now up to 12 blown saves and nine loses which is astoundingly horrific. One other name. James McArthur has seemingly finally settled the end of the game for the Royals. He has a win and three saves in nine appearances on the month without a walk or homer allowed as he’s posted an ERA of zero in 10 outings with an insane 0.23 WHIP.
