Ongoing Attempts, May 23: Great players always figure it out, right?
About Aaron Judge and the Yankees, more Paul Skenes, surprising divisions, and more.
Aaron Judge was always going to figure it out.
Great players figure it out. Great players will bounce back over the course of a long season. Judge was off to a woeful start, batting south of .200 into the second month of the season with little power to show for his efforts.
Judge is back on track now, and the Yankees are on fire as they sit atop the American League East. But as we see from the stories of two other great players, it might not have been as obvious as we thought that Judge was still great.
In today’s Ongoing Attempts:
- Taking it for granted that star players are still great
- Paul Skenes, a confident young man
- Being wrong about which divisions will be the bad divisions
- The Rockies crashing back to earth
On we go.
Stars always get back on track, until they don’t
The aesthetics of Judge struggling are jarring. He is larger than life and larger than most of his opponents, which is quite the feat in 2024. Judge dominating pitchers and smashing home runs matches the visual of him just walking onto the field. It likewise surprising, then, to see that player outdone over a long period of time.
Even if he wasn’t a physical force, Judge’s struggles would be outliers as compared with his long track record as a great player.
Great players figure it out. Aaron Judge appears to have figured it out. He’s up to a .268/.405/.585 slash line, good for a 177 OPS+. That was always going to happen, right? There were no signs before this season that a healthy Judge wouldn’t continue to produce at an elite level.
It felt inevitable, because great players don’t just suddenly stop being great. We expect a warning, a decline that happens over time that gives us a heads up that player isn’t what he used to be.
So, what is going on with Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt?
Both had long track records as great players. They were both 7-win players in 2022. Goldschmidt was National League MVP that season. Then, without warning, they both saw their production take a significant dive in 2023.
There’s certainly some natural decline that comes with aging that should be baked in for both guys. That’s particularly true for Goldschmidt, who is 36 this season. Arenado is more baffling.
Yes, Arenado is 33. But he’s just one year old than Judge.
Sometimes, great players don’t figure it out. So it is that, without much warning, the Cardinals went from perennial contenders to a middling team with two former stars who are currently hanging around the replacement level threshold.
Meanwhile, the Yankees are soaring and riding the superstar efforts of Judge in the process. Maybe we took it for granted that we would end up here, even as Judge struggled early on. Maybe we shouldn’t have.
Quote of the week
Baseball’s newest phenom isn’t light on confidence. Check out his message for hitters ahead of his third big league start, which is scheduled for Friday afternoon.
“I mean, go ahead and adjust. Good luck.”
- Paul Skenes, via The Athletic
Skenes followed up an exciting but unsteady debut with an incredible outing against the Cubs: 6 IP, 0 H, 1 BB, 11 K.
Just like that, the comparisons to Stephen Strasburg’s debut season feel apt. Now we know that Skenes has the confidence to back it up, presumably confidence that comes in two parts: part outstanding pitching talent, part outstanding mustache.
Paul Skenes strikes out SEVEN STRAIGHT batters to begin his second start for the Pirates!
Shohei Ohtani is a dominant hitter right now
The Los Angeles Dodgers are on a similar course to that of the New York Yankees so far in 2024: riding the outstanding seasons from their superstar players. Mookie Betts settled in as an early MVP candidate from the start. Freddie Freeman has a 142 wRC+. And even on a new team and amidst some turmoil, Shohei Ohtani is on another level.
So far this season, Ohtani is slashing .354/.422/.646 with 13 home runs. That’s good for a 202 wRC+. He’s even stolen 13 bases.
If all Ohtani ever does for the Dodgers is DH, he will be worth every penny of that $700 million contract with that level of offense. And if he is a good-to-great pitcher on top of that? That just goes to show that we’re watching a once-in-a-lifetime player.
Three questions
Sometimes it seems obvious which divisions will be good and which divisions will be weak for any given season. So far in 2024, things have been flipped on their head a little bit.
Is the AL Central a tough division now?
Any and all preseason predictions for teams in the AL Central offered the caveat: it’s wide open with how weak the division is overall. In that context, one might assume that the Minnesota Twins are sitting atop a bad division once again with their 26-23 record so far.
Not so. The Kansas City Royals are five games better with their 32-19 record. And they’re not even in first place. The Cleveland Guardians are holding that spot down with their 33-17 record. Both teams have won six straight.
Can either or both of these teams keep it up? That remains an open question, and maybe they will come back to earth and drag the AL Central back down with them. For now, it looks like it will be a surprisingly strong division.
Is the AL West a bad division now?
On the other side of surprises, the AL West looks like what we typically expect from the central divisions. The Seattle Mariners are in first place with a 27-23 record. Everyone else is below .500.
Here’s a fun way to look at it. The Oakland A’s are in last, yet they are as close to first place at 7.5 games back as second and third place teams like the Boston Red Sox and the San Diego Padres.
Can the Rangers and/or the Astros fire up and play like the elite teams we expected them to be? Certainly, especially in the case of the Rangers as they hope to get guys back from injury over the next few weeks and months. And if the AL West continues this way, it might just take a rise to the level of a pretty good team to contend.
Is the NL Central the same as ever?
While their counterpart in the AL surprises, the NL Central has settled into their typical level of mediocrity. That might sell the Brewers a little short, but I would be willing to bet that we end up with the same mediocrity here relative to the tops of the NL East and NL West.
Checking in with the Rockies
This team refuses to occupy the middle ground. Last week, they were in the middle of a seven-game winning streak. I was hoping it was the start of a turnaround that would at least push them out of the basement. I had no delusions that they would start contending. I was just hoping for some surprising mediocrity.
Entering their weekend series with the San Francisco Giants on that winning streak, the Rockies immediately went back to the other extreme. They were swept in San Francisco, and then they lost two out of three to the A’s.
When you think about it, the Rockies have always been prone to the extremes. Their moment of glory as a franchise involved a historic winning streak that even got a nickname. Outside of Rocktober, there are examples of extreme losing stretches abound.
Maybe one of the first steps to gaining any traction as a franchise will simply be finding a way to the middle. Especially when it comes to losing.
Speaking of their series this week, I fell asleep watching a weeknight showdown between the Rockies and the A’s. It’s hard to think of a sleepier game on the MLB schedule.
- Shota Imanaga continues to be outstanding. He’s now 5-0 with a 0.84 ERA. If the Cubs contend throughout the season, I would think his performance will continue to be a big story.
- In a season that continues to be a letdown for the Padres, Xander Bogaerts was placed on the IL with a shoulder fracture. In less than a year, that lineup went from one of the most exciting in baseball to pretty underwhelming.
- Speaking of Aaron Judge, Jorge Castillo has a piece about how he turned things around.
- Judge isn’t even the Yankee getting MVP chants. That would be his new teammate, Juan Soto.
- Speaking of those struggling St. Louis Cardinals, Dan Szymborksi wrote that they look cooked.
- Shameless owner alert: Hal Steinbrenner is headed for the poorhouse, so he says, unless he spends less money.
That’s it for this week. If you know someone who would enjoy this newsletter, please share it with them. If someone forwarded you this email, you can subscribe below.
