The 2024 MLB season has had a bit of a strange ebb and flow to it. On June 15, at about the 70-game mark, four teams were on a 105-win pace: The New York Yankees, Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Guardians and Philadelphia Phillies, while the Los Angeles Dodgers were just under a 100-win pace. That's been typical in recent years; in each full season since 2017, at least three teams have won 100 games.
However, since mid-June, the records for those five teams have dropped off quite a bit, with only one playing above .500 baseball:
Dodgers: 26-20
Orioles: 24-25
Guardians: 25-25
Phillies: 22-26
Yankees: 20-26
All five clubs remain in strong playoff position, but none are on pace for 100 wins anymore. The last season without a 100-win team was 2015. And the four best teams since June 15 have been the Arizona Diamondbacks, San Diego Padres, Houston Astros and New York Mets.
It all sets up for a frenetic finish: Who are the real powerhouses? Who are the pretenders? And which teams are just trying to sneak into the playoffs, where anything can happen?
Let's check in on some of the key storylines to watch for the rest of the season.
Division races have tightened up
Some of them, anyway. The American League East has been a battle all season between the Orioles and Yankees, and it still looks likely to go down to the final weekend. The Milwaukee Brewers have held the National League Central lead since May 9 and have extended what was a 3.5-game lead on July 13 to a 7.5-game lead over the St. Louis Cardinals. The Phillies have had as much as a 10-game lead over the Atlanta Braves and 17.5 over the Mets, but those margins now sit at 7.5 over the Braves and eight over the Mets. The Phillies are still comfortable, but it's close enough that they need to find some of that early season mojo.
But look at what has happened in the other three divisions:
AL Central
Cleveland Guardians' biggest lead: nine games on June 25
Now: 3.5 over the Minnesota Twins, four over the Kansas City Royals
The Guardians snapped a seven-game skid on Saturday with a critical 2-1 win over the Twins and followed that up with another win on Sunday. The bullpen has remained stellar, but the starting pitching has been inconsistent -- and particularly bad over the past week until Gavin Williams' strong effort to beat Minnesota. The Guardians have relied heavily all season on timely hitting, but that has predictably slipped a little bit of late. The bullpen will have to carry them. The Twins score runs and have one of the hottest starters in the game in Bailey Ober, who has a 1.76 ERA over his past nine starts (although they just lost Joe Ryan for perhaps the rest of the season). The Royals have made it an exciting three-team race and will need the bullpen to step up. (Lucas Erceg, acquired at the trade deadline, has looked strong with six scoreless innings since joining the Royals.)
AL West
Seattle Mariners' biggest lead: 10 games over the Astros and Texas Rangers on June 18
Now: tied with the Astros atop the division
The defending champion Rangers had clawed to 2.5 games back on July 25, but they've gone 4-11 since then and now sit 7.5 games out of first -- not impossible to overcome, but they look like they're fading away, making this a two-team race. Texas manager Bruce Bochy's magic touch seems to work better in October than it does in the regular season.
This division race could come down to whichever team gets the most from its currently key injured players: Julio Rodriguez and J.P. Crawford for the Mariners and Kyle Tucker and Justin Verlander for the Astros. J-Rod had been out with an ankle sprain but was activated off the injured list prior to the Mariners' Sunday night game against the Mets, while Crawford is out until September with a broken finger. Tucker has been out since June 3 with a bone bruise and the Astros still haven't given any timetable for his return. Verlander made his first rehab start on Saturday with the goal of returning to the rotation before the end of the month.
NL West
Dodgers' biggest lead: nine games on June 20 (and 8.5 as recently as July 23)
Now: 3.5 over the Diamondbacks and Padres
Since owning that safe lead a couple of weeks ago, the Dodgers have gone 8-8, the Padres have gone 13-3 and the Diamondbacks have gone 14-3. It hasn't been so much a Dodgers collapse -- even though that's how the narrative will go if they blow it -- as San Diego and Arizona turning up the heat. Both teams have been extremely impressive during those runs, with the Padres owning a plus-43 run differential and the Diamondbacks at plus-48 (both are averaging around seven runs a game in that span).
The Dodgers get Mookie Betts back this week and announced he'll move back to right field with Miguel Rojas remaining the regular at shortstop. That makes sense: Jason Heyward has scuffled of late, and while Betts held his own at short, Rojas is the better defender and has hit well enough to keep him in the lineup. Still, we'll see whether the Dodgers -- carrying all the pressure of their star power and mega-payroll -- can regain momentum. They have four games left against Arizona and three against San Diego, while the Diamondbacks and Padres have three games against each other (the final series of the season).
Will the Braves miss the playoffs?
The Braves have won six straight NL East titles and last missed the playoffs in 2017, but that streak is in jeopardy. A recent six-game losing skid, including back-to-back shutout losses (one of which was to the Miami Marlins) and a 16-7 loss to the Brewers, cut heavily into what was a solid lead atop the NL wild-card teams for most of the season. Atlanta now holds a slim half-game lead over the Mets for the third wild-card spot in the crowded race.
In the end, the season-ending injuries to Spencer Strider and Ronald Acuna Jr. have been the biggest blow -- along with the continuing struggles of the offense. Since Acuna went down on May 27, Braves right fielders have hit just .225/.269/.394 (although deadline acquisition Jorge Soler has helped a bit there). Strider's loss has been less acute as the rotation and bullpen have remained strong (at least until blowing an 8-2 lead in the eighth inning in Sunday's 9-8 loss to the Rockies).
Of course, all they have to do is get in. The Braves' 2021 World Series championship squad had the worst winning percentage among the division title teams that year. The Rangers in 2023 and the Washington Nationals in 2019 were recent World Series winners that came out of the wild-card series, while the Phillies (2022) and Diamondbacks (2023) reached the Fall Classic despite sub-90-win seasons. Get Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris II healthy for October, get Matt Olson and Austin Riley locked in, let the bullpen repeat its 2021 run, and this is still a team that could win it all.
Six key players to keep an eye on down the stretch
1. Tyler Glasnow, Los Angeles Dodgers
The Dodgers did give Glasnow an 18-day rest around the All-Star break, but he has already surpassed his career high in innings pitched. But since they're now in that heated race in the NL West, they can't afford to back off him down the stretch. He has also been a little more hittable of late, allowing a 6.00 ERA over his past five starts -- and if you want to go back further, a 4.37 ERA over his past 12 outings. That doesn't quite sound like a guy who lines up as a No. 1 starter for the postseason, and the Dodgers need Glasnow to be that guy.
2. Jackson Chourio, Milwaukee Brewers
The 20-year-old rookie, signed to that eight-year, $82 million contract in the offseason before he had played a major league game, looked overmatched the first two months, hitting .206 in April (with 34 strikeouts in 27 games) and .215 in May. But the Brewers stuck with the youngster -- perhaps understanding that he had improved throughout the season when jumping levels in the minors. He hit .315 in June and has been scorching hot since the All-Star break with a .358 average and five home runs in 19 games. In his first 50 games, he had a 47% strikeout rate; in his next 50, it was 16.5%. He has been a huge key to a Milwaukee offense that continues to score runs even without the injured Christian Yelich.
3. Jackson Holliday, Baltimore Orioles
Talk about overmatched. We all remember how poorly his initial 10-game stint in April went: .059 (2-for-34, 18 strikeouts). Sent back to Triple-A Norfolk, he showed a propensity for getting on base (.431 OBP), although he was still whiffing quite a bit (77 strikeouts in 73 games). He was called back up on July 31, however, and has been dominant, hitting .250 with five home runs and 12 RBIs in 11 games, with his strikeout rate at an acceptable 27.3%. The Orioles have scuffled along as a .500 team since the middle of June, but a hot Holliday could help turn a very good offense into a great one.
4. Jackson Merrill, San Diego Padres
It's a good year to be a rookie named Jackson. Merrill continued his outstanding season -- which included a trip to the All-Star Game -- with a game-tying home run on Saturday in the eighth inning, a day after hitting a game-tying home run in the ninth. The Padres won both games in extra innings to run their win streak to seven games (before dropping one to the Marlins on Sunday). A couple of days before that, he went 4-for-5 with two home runs in another extra-inning win. Merrill has five game-tying or go-ahead home runs in the eighth inning or later, tied with Mel Ott for the second most in a season by a player 21 or younger (Frank Robinson had six in 1956). His second-half numbers: .347/.376/.693, five home runs and 18 RBIs in 20 games.
5. Blake Snell, San Francisco Giants
The Giants are lurking in the wild-card race, and with Snell healthy and dealing, they have a chance to get in -- and nobody would want to face the Giants and a hot Snell in a three-game series the way he's pitching right now. His first half was a mess: He signed late, got hammered on the mound and then went on the IL. Since returning on July 9, however, he has allowed five runs in 39 innings while holding batters to a .093 average. This is nothing new for him as he has had dominant second-half runs several times in his career (including last year in winning the Cy Young Award).
6. Gerrit Cole, New York Yankees
What does Cole have left in the tank? After serving up three home runs on July 24, he went 10 days between starts, skipping a turn because of "general fatigue." He allowed two runs in 5⅔ innings on Aug. 4 against the Toronto Blue Jays and then one run in 5⅓ innings against the Rangers on Saturday -- a start that included a season-high 10 strikeouts and season-high max velocity of 99.1 mph. Manager Aaron Boone remained careful with Cole's pitch count, taking him out after 91 pitches, but it was the best he has looked all season. The Yankees didn't add a starter at the deadline, but with Nestor Cortes (9.26 ERA over his past five starts) and Marcus Stroman (6.32 ERA since the beginning of June) both struggling, the Yankees need Cole to not only pitch well but carry some innings to help relieve some of the heavy workload the bullpen has had to shoulder.
The NL MVP race is closer than you might think
Don't give that MVP award to Shohei Ohtani just yet. He has been the season-long leader in the NL MVP race -- especially after Betts broke his left hand -- but as my colleague Brad Doolittle outlined in his recent Awards Watch, Ketel Marte has turned this into a legitimate two-person race. Marte has fueled the Diamondbacks' surge of late, raising his OPS from .792 at the end of May to .932 now. He hit .341 in June, .357 in July and mashed his sixth home run already of August on Saturday against the Phillies, giving him 30 on the season, just five behind Ohtani's 35. Marte left Saturday's game with an ankle injury, but it doesn't look like anything serious. He has even climbed ahead of Ohtani on the Baseball-Reference WAR leaderboard:
Marte: 6.1
Ohtani: 5.8
Ohtani has the edge at FanGraphs (5.6 to 5.4), but this race is far from settled. Marte isn't going to go 40/40 like Ohtani has a chance to do -- but Ohtani doesn't play a key position in the field like Marte (who has had an excellent defensive season at second base) and a full-time DH has never won the MVP award. The narrative still seems to rest with Ohtani -- he is Ohtani, after all -- but voters will pay a lot of attention to those WAR numbers. Marte has also hit better in high-leverage situations than Ohtani, which should count for something. Team records don't matter as much as they once did in MVP voting, but it could come down to the NL West race, especially if either player delivers a couple of memorable games in September.
(We'll skip Aaron Judge and the historic AL MVP race, as that was covered in detail in last week's Awards Watch.)
Will the NL batting champ even hit .300?
In 1968, Carl Yastrzemski led the AL with a .301 average -- good enough in that year of the pitcher to lead the league. Nobody else was even close to .300, and it even took a bit of a late flourish for Yaz to get there as he was at .289 on Sept. 8 before hitting .377 over his final 18 games.
It remains the lowest average to win a batting title -- but there's a chance that we see our first ever sub-.300 batting champ and a very high likelihood we'll have the lowest average ever for an NL champ (currently Tony Gwynn's .313 average in 1988). Your current leaderboard:
Luis Arraez: .306
Marcell Ozuna: .301
Ketel Marte: .299
Shohei Ohtani: .298
Jurickson Profar: .297
Alec Bohm: .297
Trea Turner is also at .301 and a few games away from qualifying for the leaderboard, so throw him into the mix as well. It's a big enough group that one of them should finish over .300, but we'll see whether anyone gets hot enough to pass Gwynn's mark.
Will any pitcher win 20 games?
Even though starting pitchers are making fewer starts and pitching fewer innings, we usually manage to see at least one pitcher still reach the old standard of 20 victories. That was the case each of the past three seasons when Strider (2023), Kyle Wright (2022) and Julio Urias (2021) did it. The last full season without a 20-game winner was 2017, when four pitchers tied with 18. Before that, you have to go back to 2009, when four tied with 19.
But it's not looking good this season: Seth Lugo, Carlos Rodon, Grayson Rodriguez, Tarik Skubal and Chris Sale are tied with 13 victories (and Rodriguez is currently out with a shoulder strain). Lugo was 9-1 through the end of May but has tossed a couple of clunkers of late and is 3-4 with a 3.80 ERA over his past 10 starts. Skubal and Sale don't always get enough run support. Rodon has won four starts in a row, bolstered by a Yankees offense that scored at least eight runs in each game. We'll see whether anyone can even get to 18, the lowest MLB-leading total for a full season.
Will there be any more no-hitters?
As complete games continue their steady decline into oblivion, there has been speculation about the impending demise of the complete game no-hitter as well. Every year, however, we still get enough of them that the one-pitcher no-hitter remains alive and well. In 2024, we've had Ronel Blanco of the Astros on April 1, Dylan Cease of the Padres on July 25 and then Snell on Aug. 2. Framber Valdez just missed a second consecutive season with a no-hitter when he allowed a two-out home run in the ninth to Corey Seager last week.
We may not get to the seven non-combined no-hitters we had in 2021, but I'll predict at least one more. A name to keep an eye on: Cincinnati's Hunter Greene, who has also quietly climbed into the forefront of the Cy Young race with a 1.03 ERA over his past seven starts in which he held batters to a .136 average. Greene has recorded only one out in the eighth inning in his career (back in 2022), but Snell had also never completed eight innings until he threw his no-hitter. Greene just needs to have one of those games in which his efficiency improves and he eliminates the walks to get him through nine.
How many games will the Chicago White Sox lose?
Here's one of the wildest stories of the year. A year ago, former All-Star outfielder Grady Sizemore -- who was on a potential Hall of Fame path until injuries wrecked his career after a stellar four-year run in Cleveland -- worked as a $15-an-hour intern for the Diamondbacks. When Josh Barfield, a former teammate with Cleveland who hired him in Arizona, became assistant GM for the White Sox last offseason, he hired Sizemore for the coaching staff. And now, after the firing of Pedro Grifol, Sizemore will be the interim manager for the rest of the season.
While not expected to be a candidate to get the job for 2025, Sizemore has a thankless task these final 43 games: helping the Sox avoid the 1962 Mets' modern record of 120 losses in a season. Saturday's 3-1 loss to the Cubs was their 23rd in 24 games (they tied an AL record with 21 consecutive losses during this stretch) and puts them on pace for 124 losses. They'll have to go 15-28 (.349) to finish 43-119 -- that's a much better winning percentage than their current pace (.235). And they'll have to do it without Erick Fedde, who was traded to the Cardinals, and possibly sooner rather than later without Garrett Crochet, who is likely to be shut down at some point, especially after allowing four home runs on Friday.
Good luck, Grady.