The first half of the MLB baseball season was thrilling. Luis Arraez of the Miami Marlins has flirted with hitting .400, and he may not even be the NL MVP frontrunner because Ronald Acuña Jr. of the Atlanta Braves is within shouting distance of a 40-40 season.
The Arizona Diamondbacks and Cincinnati Reds have been surprise teams holding at least a share of the division lead at the All-Star break, while the Texas Rangers were expected to have improved in 2023, but they’re also sitting atop of the AL West ahead of the Houston Astros. The New York Yankees are not currently in playoff position, and without Aaron Judge they have a hard time locking down a wild card spot.
To get ready for the second part of the baseball season, let’s take a look at a pair of surging rookies, some struggling aces, the battle for worst, and try to predict who actually wants to win the AL Central.
Related: MLB standings, wild card picture and more
Electric Elly De La Cruz or Calm, Cool, Collected Corbin Carroll?
Everyone in the baseball world has been talking about Elly De La Cruz since he arrived on the scene in Cincinnati on June 6. The team has gone from six games under .500 to nine games over since he arrived, and they’re now leading the NL Central.
He’s hit .325 with a .363 on-base percentage (OBP), four home runs and 16 stolen bases. The 21-year-old is a menace on the bases and a threat to go at any time. In the span of two pitches, he stole second, third, and then home right before the break. That’s the kind of stuff baseball fans will be talking about in 50 years.
Corbin Carroll has been the best rookie in baseball all season with 3.8 wins above replacement (WAR), per FanGraphs. The second-best rookie in WAR is Josh Jung of the Texas Rangers with 2.8 WAR. Carroll has been steady, batting .289 with a .366 OBP, 18 homers, and 26 stolen bases.
You could attack this matchup one of two ways: Which player will have the better second half, or which player will win the NL Rookie of the Year? It’s more fun to see if De La Cruz can catch Carroll, so let’s skew that way.
Elly De La Cruz ranks 17th in WAR among all rookies and 8th in the NL with 1.2 wins above replacement. While a player’s WAR total may not seem like a big deal, the voting body does take it into consideration and it’s a useful shorthand for this exercise.
If you take the WAR they have accumulated on a per-game basis, Carroll has still outperformed De La Cruz by a slim margin, and if both players remain healthy and productive, Carroll should finish as close to a seven-win player this season, while Elly De La Cruz would be roughly a four-win player.
If the math didn’t convince you, Carroll also walks more, strikes out less, and has a larger sample size to draw from to think that he’ll be able to sustain his level of production. He also leads in wRC+ with a 144 to De La Cruz’s 131.
Elly De La Cruz has been electric, exciting, and arguably the most must-see tv player outside of Shohei Ohtani. But Corbin Carroll may still be better this season, no matter which half of the season you’re taking.
Who’s Going to the Postseason: New York Yankees or Toronto Blue Jays?
If you look at the American League wild card race, you’ll see the Baltimore Orioles with the number one seed and a five-game lead for that spot, with the Houston Astros and Toronto Blue Jays currently slotted second and third. That leaves the Yankees one game back of a playoff spot, while the Boston Red Sox are two games back.
With Houston getting some pieces back soon that should help it collect some wins, and the Texas Rangers looking like a playoff team as well, one of those clubs will end up winning the AL West with the other likely laying claim to one of the three wild-card spots. That would also leave just two more spots for three (or four) remaining AL East hopefuls.
As things stand right now, before the deadline, the Blue Jays look like the more complete team with a top-10 offense and a top-10 pitching staff. The Yankees offense ranks 27th with a wRC+ of 85 (100 is league average) since Aaron Judge went on the IL. During the All-Star break, the Bronx Bombers added a new hitting coach in Sean Casey. That could have an impact. But how big and how immediate are two looming questions without answers.
The Yankees’ pitching has been slightly better with a cumulative 3.80 ERA to the Jays’ 3.85, putting New York seventh in baseball and Toronto ninth. One determining factor in this matchup could be whose reinforcement is better, with the birds bringing back Alek Manoah right before the break and the Bombers getting their first look at off-season signee Carlos Rodón.
When both are at the top of their game, they’re two of the best in the league. Which pitcher comes closest to their peak in the final months could determine which team squeaks into the playoffs.
Right now, it looks like the Blue Jays will be that team, given that they aren’t missing a piece as integral to their club as Judge is to the Yankees, but New York could make a splash at the trade deadline and flip that outlook in the coming weeks.
Related: Updated MLB trade rumors leading up to Aug. 1 deadline
Which .500 team will win the AL Central? Guardians and Twins battling it out
The Cleveland Guardians (45-45) lead the AL Central by a half-game over the Minnesota Twins (45-46) heading into the second half. Even the Detroit Tigers at eleven games under .500 are still just 5.5 games back in the division. This one will really come down to which team can go on a run.
Last season we saw the Guardians take out the Tampa Bay Rays in the first round of the playoffs, then push their series with the Yankees to five games. They’re a good club, and one that could be dangerous in a short series.
They have a pitching staff that ranks eighth in baseball with a 3.81 ERA, but Andrés Giménez hasn’t quite been the player he was last year, currently sitting with 1.7 WAR and a 97 wRC+ after being a 6.1-win player in 2022 and being 40% above league average with the bat (140 wRC+).
The Twins are the team to pick, however. They had the better staff in the first half, ranking third in ERA (3.68), and they also have a better offense as a team with a 98 wRC+, compared to Cleveland’s 91. Plus, the player that’s struggling for them is Carlos Correa, who has a much longer track record of being an elite baseball player, so if you’re picking one struggling star to turn things around, it’s got to be Correa. Byron Buxton hasn’t quite been himself either, so if one or both of those guys gets going, the Twins could end up with a top-10 or so offense in the second half.
Plus, the Twins have a +27 run differential to Cleveland’s -7, which is typically an indicator of how good or bad a team is. Finally, the Twins have the easiest strength of schedule remaining with their opponents holding a collective .466 winning percentage this season, while Cleveland will be facing teams that are just above .500 on average. Minnesota heads to Oakland to start things off this weekend.
Oakland Athletics and Kansas City Royals also battling it out
The Oakland Athletics (25-67) and Kansas City Royals (26-65) have the two worst records in baseball. Unsurprisingly, they also have the worst run differentials too, as two of just three teams with a negative run differential in the triple digits along with the Colorado Rockies.
For Oakland, a lot of that damage was done early on in the season when they were losing games by large margins fairly consistently, leading to a current -248 run differential. During a recent eight-game losing streak which included losses to Tampa Bay, Philadelphia, and Cleveland, five of the eight losses were by one run, so even though the losses were piling up, they were still playing well against an array of average to great teams.
The Royals have a slightly better offense than Oakland, but they’ll be without one of their best bats, Vinnie Pasquantino, who’s out for the season after undergoing shoulder surgery. Since the beginning of May, the A’s and Royals have eerily similar ERAs at 5.27 and 5.17, with Oakland ranking 29th in baseball and Kansas City 28th.
This could be a coin flip decision (like which one of them ends up with the higher draft pick in MLB’s new lottery system), but with K.C. missing a big piece of their offense, the A’s calling up two of their top prospects to begin the second half, and Oakland taking two of three when the two teams met up in May, the slight edge goes to the green and gold.
The trade deadline is looming, however, and the A’s roster has a few talented bats that could be of service to a contending team. Even then, they’d end up giving some young guys looking to prove themselves an opportunity the rest of the way, and that could still end up favoring them.
Jason Burke covers Major League Baseball for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.