MLB after one quarter: Can Shohei Ohtani and others maintain historic paces?
It’s almost hard to believe, but on Wednesday, the San Diego Padres passed the 40-game mark, putting roughly a quarter of their season in the books. Almost every major league team will cross that threshold this weekend, even as the season still feels relatively new.
With that in mind, it’s certainly not too early to dope out what’s real, what’s fake and what’s sustainable among the wild and wonderful early season paces. Check back in October and see if these spring sprints turned into autumn actuality:
Shohei Ohtani: 46 homers, 108 extra-base hits
Hey, where else to start this exercise?
Ohtani has astounded his Dodgers teammates, who saw plenty of his act when he was down the road in Anaheim yet did not fully grasp his capabilities – even as a one-way player – until he was decapitating baseballs from every square of the strike zone.
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Even after going homerless in his first eight games as a Dodger and remaining tied for five games with Dave Roberts for an arcane piece of Dodger history, Ohtani remains on pace to equal his career high of 46 homers, set in his first AL MVP season of 2021.
That mark is in jeopardy: The weather will only get warmer, Ohtani’s comfort level with his new team will grow and he’ll be further removed from the most distracting moments of a gambling/fraud scandal perpetrated by his former interpreter, which disrupted the start of his season.
But the extra-base total is astounding. Babe Ruth holds the record with 119 in 1921, when he played 152 games. There have been just 13 seasons of 100 extra-base hits, and eight of those came in 1937 or earlier. The only five since 1948 came in the heart of the offense-fueled steroid era.
Ohtani’s pace would put him third all time, behind Ruth and Lou Gehrig, and break Barry Bonds’ National League record of 107, set in his 73-homer season of 2001.
Come October: A 50-100 season – home runs, extra-base hits – is within reach.
100-win teams: Phillies, Dodgers, Orioles, Yankees, Guardians, Braves
Sound almost impossible? Sure. In fact, it challenges mathematic possibility that six teams could win 100 games in a season.
But there’s no projecting the arc of a season and right now, 2024 looks like a pair of sizable clumps at the top and bottom and a thick middle. As recently as 2022 and 2019, four teams won at least 100 games and last year, three teams won 100 and another 99.
The scary thing about most of this year’s sextet tracking toward a hundo is almost all their foundations are deep and dominant starting pitching.
Take the Phillies. An uncharacteristically blazing start gives them a majors-best 26-12 record. They merely need to play .598 ball to hit 100 wins – and with a starting rotation so good that Spencer Turnbull and his 1.57 ERA get relegated to the bullpen, it’s extremely challenging to win a series from these guys.
Tyler Glasnow and Yoshinobu Yamamoto are exceeding the Dodgers’ expectations, and soon they’ll add Clayton Kershaw’s return on the heels of Walker Buehler’s debut. Orioles starters just tossed 22 consecutive scoreless innings, and now roll six deep. Gerrit Cole is ramping up for the Yankees.
Get the idea?
Come October: At least four of these clubs will pass 100 wins. And that’s partly because ….
100-loss teams: White Sox, Rockies, Marlins, Astros, Angels
See, every reaction has an equal, opposite and occasionally noxious reaction. And there’s truly some terrible baseball being played in every time zone.
It’s startling to think the White Sox (9-28), Rockies (8-28) and Marlins (10-29) are this bad before selling off parts at the trade deadline – to the extent that they have pieces to sell now that Luis Arraez is a Padre. It’s safe to assume these teams’ personnel will get worse and the depth even thinner.
And that makes it awfully hard to imagine the White Sox morphing from a .243 team to the .437 squad they need to be to avoid 100 losses.
Go ahead and chalk up 100 Ls for the Rockies and Marlins, too.
Meanwhile, the Astros haven’t lost 100 games since 2013. The Angels never have.
Come October: The Astros recover from their .343 pace – but too late to keep their dynasty going. The Angels also avoid 100 but find themselves dueling with Oakland, of all teams, for fourth place.
Elly De La Cruz: 30-90 Club
Might as well get used to it: MLB’s liberal – heck, even leftist – stolen base rules will produce wild seasons that look like statistical anomalies. Ronald Acuña Jr. tested the plateaus last season, when, to great fanfare, he became the first member of baseball’s 30-homer, 60-steal club.
And then the first member of the 30-70 club. And also the charter member of the 40-70 club. And then…
You get the idea.
So long as there are five-tool marvels brightening the baseball landscape, we’ll continue witnessing unprecedented statistical permutations. This year, it’s Elly De La Cruz’s turn.
The Cincinnati Reds shortstop entered the baseball zeitgeist with a fabulous start to his career in 2023, before tailing off as many 21-year-olds do. He’s charting a similar course this season, with six homers and 14 steals in his first 19 games, and two and 11 in the 17 games since.
Yet that still puts De La Cruz on a 37-homer, 95-steal pace, which would be the most bags since Vince Coleman swiped 107 in 1987. Sure, he wouldn’t match Acuña's 41 homers last year, but it would still carve out a slice of Something That’s Never Been Done Before.
Come October: 30-80 looks realistic, perhaps likely, but De La Cruz is still growing as a player, and any bid at 40-80 would be threatened by even a brief power outage.
Marcell Ozuna: 181 RBIs
Sure, the run batted in doesn’t have nearly the cachet it once did, scorned as a product of opportunity.
Well, you got us there.
See, Marcell Ozuna bats fifth for the Atlanta Braves, and is asked only to serve as designated hitter, and simply waving bat at ball is likely to send a few of his teammates toward home plate.
The Braves remain in their prime and have been largely healthy, which means Ozuna comes to the plate after Acuña, Ozzie Albies, Austin Riley and Matt Olson precede him. That’s 11 All-Star appearances and nine Silver Sluggers filling the basepaths.
Ozuna has responded in kind, with a major league-leading 38 RBIs in just 34 games. His projected 181 RBIs would rank fourth all time – just 10 shy of Hack Wilson's 94-year-old record – and make him the first to drive in at least 150 runs since Alex Rodriguez in 2007. Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm has been nearly as hot, with 32 in 38 games, a 136-RBI pace.
Hardly a surprise: Bohm has batted fourth or fifth for the similarly potent Phillies.
Come October: Ozuna cracks the 150-RBI club – and the Braves and Phillies engage in another playoff showdown.
Leaguewide batting average: .239
Thought you were done with these conversations?
No, commissioner Rob Manfred did not solve the hitting problem with a ban on shifts last season, not when Year 2 of this ostensibly enhanced-offense era has seen a .239 league batting average. That marks a drastic reduction from a .248 mark to begin the no-shift era; it would equal the second-worst average in the modern era, and the worst since 1968, when a .237 average in the Year of The Pitcher kick-started five decades of hitter-friendly adjustments, starting with a lower mound.
So, what gives, and what now?
Well, strikeouts remain a scourge, with the 8.43 per game the sixth-worst rate of all time (although down 2% from 2023’s 8.61). The population is also hitting the ball a tad less hard as last year – an exit velocity of 88.8 mph and 39% hard-hit percentage, compared to 89 and 39.4% last year.
These blips might hint at pitchers exhibiting better command and eliciting slightly less hard contact, at the expense of a handful fewer strikeouts. But they are blips, really, although warmer weather and reduced pitcher performance and attrition – as workloads and, sadly, injuries stack up – might aid the lads with the lumber.
Come October: Hitters would do well to claw back to .243, equaling the 2022 mark in the final year of the shift.
