Less than two weeks remain in Major League Baseball's 2023 season, and it has objectively been a great year. Surprising teams. Unexpected collapses. Incredible individual performances. And arguments aplenty over deserving award winners.
As wonderful as the MVP and Cy Young and Rookie of the Year awards are, there seemed to be plenty of room for a complementary set. Some, like the Shohei Ohtani Award for Best Player, didn't work, because Shohei Ohtani getting the Shohei Ohtani Award would be weird. But plenty of others stuck, and thus we are proud to present the First Annual Passan Awards. They'll serve as your guide through the 2023 season and cover all the important stories to catch you up before the postseason starts Oct. 3.
And they begin with a twist on the quarrel that has dominated baseball rhetoric for the past month.
Best Duo
Acuña or Mookie. Mookie or Acuña. The National League MVP race has taken a Braves-Dodgers rivalry that's already heated and doused it in lighter fluid. So rather than get burned trying to adjudicate whether Atlanta's Ronald Acuña Jr. or Los Angeles' Mookie Betts deserves the award, let's try something different.
Who's having a better season: Acuña and Matt Olson or Betts and Freddie Freeman?
It's a fantastic question because as difficult as it is to differentiate between Acuña and Betts, doing so between the duos might be even harder. The tale of the tape is quite simple: The four best players in the NL this season play for two teams. In fact, the Batman of each plays right field, and his Robin is a left-handed-hitting first baseman. It's almost impossible to find two better duos to compare to one another.
Just look at weighted on-base average, the metric widely seen as most representative of offensive production:
Acuña: .425
Betts: .423
Freeman: .413
Olson: .413
So, yeah. That's pretty close. Let's try a wider breadth of numbers.
Not just pretty close. Incredibly so. And here begins an argument that in a race this tight carries weight: The Braves' duo is outhomering the Dodgers' by 24 and has twice as many stolen bases. And, yes, stolen bases aren't everything in terms of baserunning, and when one factors in the 13 times Acuña has been caught on the basepaths, the advantage certainly tightens. But an advantage it remains. Similarly, Betts' elite defense must be given weight, particularly when Acuña's play in right field has left something to be desired.
Next come the narrative considerations -- and while I don't allow them to get in the way of regular award voting, they are absolutely welcome here. Acuña potentially hitting 40 home runs and swiping 70 bases? Rad. Betts not only playing a lockdown right field but filling in more than admirably for injured players at second base and shortstop? Huge. Olson setting a Braves franchise record for 52 home runs? Fun. Freeman chasing the first 60-double season since World War II with his perfect-as-can-be inside-out swing? Yes.
Before declaring a winner, I want to make an important point: There is no bad choice here. There are great arguments for Betts and Freeman. There are great arguments for Acuña and Olson. It is the same in the MVP race. Even though Betts leads in all versions of wins above replacement, going with Acuña is not just defensible. It's understandable.
I understand it because I'm going with the Braves. I like home runs. I like stolen bases. I like dudes who hit the snot out of the ball -- and Acuña and Olson have the two highest hard-hit-ball totals in the NL as well as the two highest single-swing exit velocities. I also like their stories, and as someone who's about to spend thousands of words telling stories about why an award belongs to a person or a team, I might as well start the practice early.
Most Electrifying Player
National League Rookie of the Year voting should include a vast array of players behind Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder Corbin Carroll, the clear top choice. New York Mets starter Kodai Senga. Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder James Outman. A couple of promising catchers (Patrick Bailey and Francisco Alvarez), a couple of bat-first players who can add value defensively (Matt McLain and Nolan Jones) and a 20-year-old pitcher who showed why he is destined for years of dominance ahead in Eury Perez.
You'll notice nowhere on that list is Elly De La Cruz. And that's fine. Because this is not the reward for best rookie. Excellence and electricity are not always the same thing.
Here's the truth about Cruz, the Cincinnati Reds' 6-foot-5, 200-pound, switch-hitting, slugging, fastest-runner-in-baseball shortstop: His production this year has been only OK. Among Reds rookies, McLain, Spencer Steer, pitchers Andrew Abbott and Brandon Williamson and even part-time outfielder Will Benson all have more WAR than De La Cruz.
Did any of them hit for a cycle? No. But Elly did.
Did any of them swipe second and third base, only to straight steal home before anyone could catch their breath? No. But Elly did.
Did anyone uncork a 100 mph relay throw to nail Carroll burning through the bases at full speed? No. But Elly did.
And that's why this award exists. Because what De La Cruz did this season is best told without numbers. Not because they don't back up the hype, but because they don't properly illustrate the ceiling at which he performed. De La Cruz at his apex -- hitting the ball consistently hard, throwing it undeniably fast and running like a sprinter -- is up there with Shohei Ohtani in terms of the awe his play creates on the field. Now comes the fun part for Cincinnati: figuring out how to coax it out of De La Cruz more and more frequently.
Breakout Player
These are Bobby Witt Jr.'s numbers, by the half:
Yes, the 23-year-old shortstop is about to join three 25-year-olds in the 30/50 club: Acuña this season, Barry Bonds in 1990 and Eric Davis three years before that. Beyond that, though, Witt's leap forward in the second half is remarkable. Especially that last on-base percentage jump.
Players don't cut their strikeout rate by more than 7% overnight like he has. It speaks to his skill. Perhaps he doesn't have elite plate discipline, but that is far less important when a player puts the ball in play consistently and can hit it harder than all but a few of his peers.
Between the increased contact and the elite range at shortstop, Witt made himself into the best non-Corey Seager shortstop in baseball this year. Like Carroll in Arizona, like Julio Rodriguez in Seattle, Witt is the unequivocal face of the franchise in Kansas City.
Play of the Year
A wire-to-wire winner in a Play of the Year contest takes some kind of candidate. Well, look at what Hunter Renfroe did on Opening Day and convince me there's been a better play this season.
Over-the-wall, home run-robbing catches? Seen 'em. Incredible diving plays? Mid. Rocket throws? Meh.
A no-look catch?
Yeah. You don't see those. And yet there was Renfroe, in the fifth inning of the Los Angeles Angels' Opening Day game against Oakland. Jace Peterson smacked a ball off Ohtani into right field, and Renfroe's read -- in a step, oh no, OhMyGodOhMyGodOhMyGod -- left something to be desired. And then right before the ball is about to land, Renfroe completely turns his back to it, floats his glove into the air over his left shoulder and feels it pop.
It was, objectively speaking, an absolutely horrendous play. Terrible read. Substandard recovery. Saved by pure, raw fortune. And that's what makes it the Play of the Year. It's a reminder that even when baseball makes absolutely no sense, sometimes a little luck can go a long way.
Nastiest Pitch
I'll admit I spent more time on this category than any of the others. There have been more than 660,000 pitches thrown this season, and narrowing it down to one is a damn-near-impossible task. I enlisted the help of pitch guru Alex Fast as well as the input of colleagues, players and even my teenage son, a pitcher and connoisseur of the art. And what did I find?
No one agrees on anything.
Which is, I suppose, the beauty of analyzing modern pitching. For all of the objective data available to tell us precisely why a particular pitch is better than another, the eye test wins the day. Because, objectively speaking, all of these absurd pitches that are sweeping and running and diving and ghosting 2 feet are gross, obscene, rude, flagrant and any other number of adjectives one might apply.
Alex sent along a wide variety of his favorite pitches: sweepers and splitters and heaters and sinkers and curves. I distributed them to the various participants, and here were the general favorites:
Mitch Keller: This sweeper moved 26 inches, starting off the outside corner and ending up inside the left-handed batter's box. Keller's average is 19 inches. The average starting pitcher gets 14 inches.
Mitch Keller, RIDICULOUS 83mph Sweeper. 😳
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 11, 2023
24 inches (yes, 2 feet) of horizontal break. pic.twitter.com/wWsgIkpvwu
Matt Brash: The crown prince of nasty in 2023, Brash combines elite velocity and preposterous movement. He's got a dozen worthy candidates, including this curveball in which he nutmegs poor Willi Castro.
Matt Brash, Ridiculous 88mph Knuckle Curve. 😲 pic.twitter.com/KFiwrOVN52
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) July 26, 2023
Dustin May: My son insisted this is the winner. It's 99 mph with 21 inches of armside run. And more than that: Look at what the pitch does to Juan Soto, who's got the best eye in baseball. He jumps out of the way, as if the pitch is a threat to hit him, and it winds up bisecting the plate.
Dustin May, Ridiculous 99mph Two Seamers. 😳
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) May 7, 2023
21 inches and 23 inches of run. pic.twitter.com/uDHGfac84n
Other entries included Harold Ramirez swinging at an Aaron Bummer slider that hit him in the foot and Kodai Senga ghost-forking Dansby Swanson to the shadow realm and Zack Wheeler making Alan Trejo fall down with a sinker and Dauri Moreta's reverse slider, which he throws with a slider grip and release but moves like a screwball or changeup. I kept coming back to one pitch from a 32-year-old who entered the season with 18.1 big league innings to his name.
Justin Topa is a right-handed reliever for Seattle. And on July 22, he unleashed a slider against poor Whit Merrifield that started on the outer edge of the plate and just kept moving. By the time it hit Cal Raleigh's mitt, the pitch was 2.85 feet off the plate. And Merrifield still swung. It was one of those disaster swings that the best pitches induce. A no-no-no-no-yes-but-nooooo -- butt out, arms fully extended, total nightmare.
Farthest outside*:
— Alex Fast (@AlexFast8) September 12, 2023
Justin Topa gets Whit Merrifield on a slider 2.85" off the plate (technically Ryan Jeffers has one at 2.87 but it was a check swing that I think could've gone either way) pic.twitter.com/91uoXHdCNU
I'm not exactly sure why it was my favorite. In fact, after I'd settled on it, I asked the king of nasty, Rob Friedman -- aka The Pitching Ninja -- for his favorite ... and he proceeded to send me three pitches I hadn't even considered. And as much as I was second-guessing myself, I stuck with Topa for this award because no pitch elicited the same immediate response that can best be summarized with a GIF.
Game of the Year
On a Friday night in late June, the stands at Great American Ball Park filled up in anticipation of the Cincinnati Reds' biggest series. The Atlanta Braves, the juggernaut of MLB, were coming to town. And the Reds were ready to show that they had arrived.
What happened that night was one of those special moments where everything happens at once. A gut punch. A defibrillation. Hits from heroes old and new. A comeback. Salvation. The final score was Reds 11, Braves 10. It took 3 hours, 13 minutes, an eternity in the pitch-clock era. And nobody cared.
From the start, the cruelty of baseball set about to blindside the Reds fans who had spent the past decade being broadsided by an organization stuck in neutral. The Reds were habitually terrible, and then suddenly came Elly De La Cruz and Matt McLain and Spencer Steer, all talented rookies, and Joey Votto, their longtime star and future Hall of Famer, was back from injury, and maybe this was different.
And then Atlanta sent nine batters to the plate and scored five runs in the first inning.
Cincinnati chipped away. A two-run homer from Jake Fraley in the second. Another two-run shot from De La Cruz in the third. A monster game-tying home run to center from Votto in the fourth. Olson homered to snap the tie, because of course he did, but an RBI single from De La Cruz and another Votto homer, a three-run blast, gave Cincinnati the lead in the fifth. An inning later, De La Cruz, who had already singled, doubled and homered, laced a ball to right-center field and started running. When he dove headfirst into third and slapped the bag, he had completed a cycle in his 15th career big league game, putting the Reds ahead 11-7, a lead they carried into the eighth.
There, the Braves faced Lucas Sims, their 2012 first-round pick who had grown into a stalwart Cincinnati reliever. In 112 batters faced this year, Sims had not allowed a home run. Ronald Acuna Jr. changed that with one out. Austin Riley hit a titanic shot with two outs. Olson went back-to-back with him. Six batters, three home runs. In the 121 he has faced since, Sims has allowed two home runs.
Still up 11-10, Cincinnati turned to Alexis Diaz in the ninth, and when he walked Eddie Rosario, the tension multiplied. Up stepped Orlando Arcia, who two weeks later would be named NL All-Star starter at shortstop. He jumped on a first fastball and rolled into a game-ending double play. The first-place Reds had beaten the first-place Braves.
Incredible games have dotted the calendar this season. Astros 12, Rangers 11 in early July. Diamondbacks 16, Braves 13 in mid-July. Both are great, worthy even. But the stakes for the city of Cincinnati, in the baseball doldrums for so long, were high. And that game more than delivered.
Best Individual Performance
On April 22, Texas Rangers outfielder Adolis Garcia entered the team's 19th game batting .208/.253/.389. Less than three hours later, he was hitting .260/.306/.571. What happened that day was one of the greatest one-man shows at the plate in decades.
Garcia came to bat six times. In the first, he hit a two-run homer. The next inning he got hit by a pitch. He homered again in his third and fourth times up. He finished with a double to right-center and another down the left-field line. His final tally: 5-for-5 with 3 homers, 2 doubles, 16 total bases, 8 RBIs and 5 runs.
Only twice before in MLB history has a player hit three homers and two doubles in a game -- and neither of the other two, Matt Carpenter and Kris Bryant, drove in or scored as many runs as Garcia. Just 25 players ever had at least 16 total bases.
Adolis Garcia's game on a Saturday night in April against the lowly A's wasn't the most memorable of the season, but this was an all-time-great showing that deserves its flowers -- particularly according to an ESPN formula that tracks individual-game performance. The metric gives batters a point for hits, runs, RBIs and total bases; a quarter-point for stolen bases, hit-by-pitches, walks and sacrifice flies/bunts; and dings a quarter-point for outs, strikeouts and caught stealing. Garcia's score is the best since 2017. And dating back to the beginning of ESPN's tracking in 1993, it's behind only five individual games, achieved by quite the cast of characters: Anthony Rendon, Scooter Gennett, Josh Hamilton, Shawn Green and Hard-Hittin' Mark Whiten.
Best Award Race
With all due respect to the NL MVP race, it's just two guys battling for the honor. The NL Cy Young, on the other hand, has six guys with legitimate cases, each with at least one exceptional pitch, all run through the prism of an existential question that cuts to the heart of modern player evaluation.
The dirty half-dozen: Arizona right-hander Zac Gallen, San Diego Padres left-hander Blake Snell, Chicago Cubs left-hander Justin Steele, Atlanta Braves right-hander Spencer Strider, San Francisco Giants right-hander Logan Webb and Philadelphia Phillies right-hander Zack Wheeler.
By FanGraphs WAR, which is rooted in strikeouts, walks and home runs allowed, Wheeler is the clear leader.
Wheeler: 5.4
Strider: 5.1
Gallen: 4.6
Steele: 4.5
Webb: 4.4
Snell: 3.6
By Baseball-Reference WAR, which is runs-allowed-based, it's almost flipped.
Snell: 5.3
Webb: 5.1
Wheeler: 4.3
Steele: 4.1
Gallen: 4.0
Strider: 3.3
If this doesn't make any sense, don't worry. It's that existential question. What matters more: actual results or what we believe we can attribute to the pitcher?
FanGraphs leans on the notion that with the exception of home runs, once the ball is in play, it's unfair to penalize (or reward) a pitcher for his defense's inability (or ability) to turn that batted ball into an out. Pitchers can control strikeouts, walks and home runs, so that's what they should be graded on. And it's why Wheeler, with a 3.63 ERA, and Strider, at 3.73, are FanGraphs' two best pitchers in the NL.
Voters tend to align more with Baseball-Reference's pitcher evaluation. ERA remains the best indicator of Cy Young viability, and while Strider will get votes because of his positively outlandish strikeout numbers -- the only pitcher with a higher rate than Strider's 13.79 K/9 over a full season is Gerrit Cole in 2019 -- he will not win unless Snell or Steele blow up over the next week and a half. Snell's ERA of 2.43 is a quarter-run better than anyone else's and makes him the favorite, with only his unsightly league-high walk rate of 5.01 standing in the way of him becoming only the seventh pitcher to win the award in both leagues.
The Ohtaniest Thing of the Year
After Ohtani got touched up for five runs in each of his first two starts following the All-Star break and saw his ERA balloon to 3.71, he set a goal. He wanted to finish the year with a sub-3.00 ERA. However unlikely, there was one important thing working in his favor: He is Shohei Ohtani.
His next start came July 27, the first game of a doubleheader against Detroit. He retired the first 12 batters he faced, allowed a single to lead off the fifth inning and then secured the final 15 outs without allowing a hit. The first complete game of Ohtani's major league career was a one-hit shutout.
A little more than an hour later, in the top of the second inning in Game 2, Ohtani homered. And less than an hour after that, he did it again, a titanic shot: 117 mph off the bat, 435 feet into the right-center-field seats at Comerica Park, one of the deepest power alleys in MLB.
So, to recap: On the same day he threw a one-hit shoutout, he had a two-homer game. The only time a player had allowed one or fewer hits in a shutout and homered twice was Philadelphia's Rick Wise on June 23, 1971, when he had arguably the greatest game in major league history: a no-hitter on the mound and a pair of home runs at the plate.
Over his next three starts, Ohtani didn't allow an earned run. His ERA was at 3.14, on its way to under 3.00, like he hoped. Then his elbow gave out, and now he's headed for Tommy John surgery. He'll pitch again. Whether he'll ever have a day like July 27, 2023, again won't be known until at least 2025.
The AL MVP Runner-Up
Generally speaking, runners-up get no love, but this is an exception. Corey Seager, the Rangers' 29-year-old shortstop, has brute-forced his way into the conversation. In an MVP race that is generally separated into Ohtani and everyone who isn't Ohtani, Seager shouldn't be lumped in with the rest.
His .334 batting average is best in the AL. His .396 OBP is 16 points behind Ohtani's. He's got the second-highest slugging percentage in the big leagues at .645 behind, you guessed it, Ohtani. He leads everyone in wOBA and wRC+. Even if Seager didn't miss five weeks in April and May with a strained hamstring and another 10 days in August with a thumb injury, he still wouldn't be more productive than Ohtani. But that slash line with 31 homers, 92 RBIs and an AL-leading 41 doubles is exceptional. It's what you dream of when you sign a guy for 10 years and $325 million, and, if Texas makes the postseason, it'll do so with the 2020 World Series MVP looking better than ever.
Best Player You Probably Still Haven't Heard Of
Tanner Bibee was a fifth-round pick in 2021 out of Cal State Fullerton who spent 28 starts in the minor leagues and debuted for Cleveland on April 26. Since that date, here are the ERA leaders in MLB:
Blake Snell: 1.94
Kodai Senga: 2.75
Kyle Bradish: 2.90
Tanner Bibee: 2.98
Beyond Bibee's individual excellence -- recording 141 strikeouts in 142 innings with an opponent slash of .230/.295/.353, he should be right there with Gunnar Henderson in AL Rookie of the Year voting -- he is part of a historically good group of Guardians rookie starters. Right-hander Gavin Williams and left-hander Logan Allen have also distinguished themselves as well-above-average rotation arms.
The last time a team had three rookie starters who threw at least 80 innings with an ERA+ of 115 or better -- that's 15%-plus over league-average -- was the 1884 St. Louis Maroons. Who, incidentally, you'll hear more about later.
Player Scouts Can't Stop Talking About
Around the All-Star break, a scout asked a very interesting question: "Is Patrick Bailey redefining catching?"
The scout explained that the catching position might be the least receptive to evolution of all -- that something as simple as going to one knee to catch was frowned upon for so long that it took either a headstrong catcher or a keen instructor to allow it. To see Bailey doing what he's doing for the Giants as a rookie, then, boggled the scout's mind, because Bailey is the furthest thing from a cookie cutter -- and he's already the best defensive player in baseball.
Bailey does everything exceptionally well. He calls such a good game that veteran pitchers throw whatever he says. He frames with the expertise of someone who works at Michael's. The throwing, though. That's what really distinguishes him. Bailey doesn't have a specific arm slot. Sidearm. Three-quarters. Over the top. Doesn't matter nearly as much as the result: 24 runners caught stealing, the most in the NL.
"I hate to say who I think he's like," said the scout, so I'll say it for him: Yadier Molina. The scout's brethren agree: Bailey can be so good that comparing him to arguably the greatest defensive catcher ever to don the tools doesn't feel far-fetched.
Biggest Surprise
You know, I wanted to say the Cubs and highlight the resurgence of Cody Bellinger, who's going to be the best non-Ohtani free agent bat available this winter, and suggest they're poised to make a grand leap forward as Jordan Wicks and Pete Crow-Armstrong enter their first full seasons next year. And then they lost five in a row and completely blew the nice advantage they'd carved out among the rest of the NL wild-card "contenders."
When it comes to surprise, then, how about this one: If the playoffs started today, the Miami Marlins would be in. And they would be in because despite a bullpen ERA of 4.19, good for 18th in the major leagues, they are inexplicably good in one-run games. They're 30-12 with a plus-18 run differential in those games, while they're 48-60 with a minus-55 run differential in all others.
Nothing about the Marlins makes sense. The offense remains wretched. They are one run scored away from having the worst offense in the NL. They're missing reigning NL Cy Young winner Sandy Alcantara with a partially torn UCL. And they just swept Atlanta, capping a 13-game stretch against the Dodgers, Phillies, Milwaukee Brewers and Braves in which they went 8-5.
Surprise? Yeah. That qualifies.
Biggest Disappointment
With all due respect to the Mets and Padres, no team cratered this season quite like the St. Louis Cardinals. They have made the postseason nine of the past dozen years and won the NL Central last season. They are the Yankees of the NL in their consistency. They haven't had a losing season since 2007. They haven't finished in last place since 1990. At 66-83 this year, the former is guaranteed and the latter likely.
The Cardinals' problems are manifold -- early-season issues in the clubhouse, faltering in high-leverage situations at the plate, positional redundancy -- but the real issue is the pitching. And the following is about as damning an indictment of this current team as there can be: Since the beginning of the modern era in 1901, only one Cardinals team has a worse ERA than the 2023 version (4.80).
There is a path to a quick turnaround for the Cardinals. Nobody expects them to flop like this next year. But that doesn't lessen the sting any for a fan base that still is going to buy 3 million tickets this season.
Biggest Blunder
In the weeks leading up to the trade deadline, teams interested in Ohtani were told to be ready. If he was going to be traded -- and unanimously across the sport, whether they were interested in acquiring him or not, teams agreed he should be traded before he left as a free agent this winter -- then it would happen quickly, maybe at a moment's notice, so as not to give Angels owner Arte Moreno time to change his mind.
Teams readied their offers. Top 10-caliber prospects. Multiple top-100 types. Real deals to completely alter the trajectory of an Angels franchise that had taken the ultimate gift -- Mike Trout and Ohtani together -- and defiled it. Los Angeles had done the beginning and middle wrong. Here was a chance to at least nail the end. But these are the Angels.
Not only did Moreno insist they keep Ohtani, he decided to add to the 52-49 team around him. So on July 26, they traded their two best prospects to the Chicago White Sox for Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez. They went and got Randal Grichuk, C.J. Cron and Dominic Leone for good measure.
Then they lost seven consecutive games. They haven't been over .500 since. By the end of the month, they placed six players -- including Giolito, Lopez, Grichuk and Leone -- on waivers.
It's difficult to imagine a more pathetic one-month performance, and whether it's the baseball gods smiting Moreno for his hubris or a simpler explanation -- a not-good team plays not good -- is immaterial. What's pertinent is that the Angels' farm system is a disaster, their big league team isn't any better and if Ohtani leaves this winter, as the industry expects, they will receive a pick around No. 70 in next summer's MLB draft -- unless they stay over the luxury tax, which they're fighting to avoid, in which case it would be closer to pick No. 130.
All of it is a nightmare, every last bit, and with Ohtani out for the season, Angels fans don't even get to give him a proper send-off. The Ohtani era is likely to end with a whimper instead of a bang.
The Platinum Toilet Award
Given to the team that flushes the most money on a season, this award took on great resonance in 2023 when the teams with the three highest payrolls in MLB all imploded.
The New York Mets, with their record $353.5 million Opening Day payroll, were so bad they punted at the trade deadline and dealt two future Hall of Fame pitchers in Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander. The New York Yankees, with a $277 million roster, were nevertheless the worst offensive team in the big leagues during the seven weeks Aaron Judge missed and are fighting to avoid a below-.500 finish for the first time since 1992. The San Diego Padres, at $249 million, have significantly outscored opponents but are 0-11 in extra-inning games and 6-22 in one-run games, two of the ugliest numbers in the big leagues.
All in all, the Mets, Yankees and Padres committed $879.5 million for teams that today are a combined 217-232 and 64.5 games back of first place. Rather than pick one, let's shatter the budget and get platinum toilets for all three. Each deserves it.
Front Office Move of the Year
Corbin Carroll is 23 going on Methuselah, a wise-beyond-his-years soul who brings similar been-here energy to the field. When the Diamondbacks approached him about a contract extension ahead of the season, they weren't concerned that he had spent all of 38 days in the big leagues. The Diamondbacks were willing to bet this was their franchise player.
Six months later, the eight-year, $111 million contract Carroll signed looks even better for Arizona than the day he signed it. He is putting the finishing touches on a campaign in which he could become the first rookie ever to hit 25 home runs and steal 50 bases. He's one of the fastest players in the game. He plays a magical center field. He's going to win NL Rookie of the Year and net the Diamondbacks a first-round draft pick worth millions, adding to the return.
No one needs to feel for Carroll, even if delaying a deal could have doubled, tripled, maybe quadrupled his eventual earnings. He knew what he wanted to sign. Diamondbacks GM Mike Hazen constructed a deal that hit on those priorities, and with a ninth-year option, Carroll should be spearheading Arizona's ascent to relevancy in the coming years.
Most Frequently Watched on MLB.tv
Since early May, when I wrote about the Baltimore Orioles' leap to contender, they've been a consistent nighttime go-to on the full-league streaming package. Adley Rutschman's hair, hugs and hitting are elite. Gunnar Henderson is soon to be the American League Rookie of the Year. Kyle Bradish is the best pitcher you didn't know that you would love. The Austin Hays-Cedric Mullins-Anthony Santander outfield, comprised of players who came before this infusion of youth, is steadily excellent and excellently steady. And then there's the next generation: Jordan Westburg, Colton Cowser and Heston Kjerstad are already in the majors, with Jackson Holliday and Coby Mayo not far behind.
A few teams have worn out the remote this year: the Braves, Rays, Reds, Diamondbacks and Seattle Mariners. But if there was one team that made the clicking stop, it's the one that featured the Dong Bong.
Best 1884 St. Louis Maroons Impression
In their first 13 games this season, the Tampa Bay Rays went 13-0, outscored their opponents 101-30, outhomered them 32-6 and wrecked shop to the degree that even though their competition included Detroit, Washington, Oakland and Boston, it was abundantly clear to those watching that the Rays were very real.
The streak ended with a loss to Toronto, and the dreams of winning 20 in a row to start the season like the '84 Maroons dissipated. But the 13 wins tied a modern record, and they buttressed the Rays to weather Tommy John surgery to three frontline starting pitchers and the loss of their shortstop, Wander Franco, to allegations of improper contact with a minor. Either of those could have torpedoed a lesser team.
Regardless of whether they win the East and get a bye or face a very good second wild-card team, the Rays didn't take their special start for granted. They simply kept building upon it.
Quote of the Year
On June 13, fans in Oakland staged a "reverse boycott" to tell John Fisher, the A's owner who plans to move the team to Las Vegas, that it wasn't the awful team or condemnable stadium that was keeping them from coming to games. It was Fisher. He pursued Vegas. He carried minuscule payrolls. He was the problem. And together, overwhelmingly loud at times, the 27,759 fans who turned up that day yelled in unison.
"Sell the team!"
It kept going, this bite-sized nugget, a slogan so snackable that it still pops up at A's games in Oakland and sometimes even at A's games not in Oakland. It's a rallying cry, a battle hymn, a protest song. It is also, in some ways, a funeral dirge, because the end of major men's professional sports in Oakland might be near, unless Fisher accedes to the request.
There is no sign he plans to. So from now until the day the A's move, the quote of 2023 will live on and perhaps grow in size, scope, participation. It's not your typical, clever, off-the-cuff line from a player or manager who normally quips his way to this award. It's for every fan who refuses to lose a team without letting the world know exactly who's taking it from them.
The New Philly Special
What happened Aug. 4 in Philadelphia still doesn't make sense. After more than four months of abjectly mediocre baseball by a big free agent acquisition -- posting a .658 OPS, nearly four times as many strikeouts as walks and nothing close to the production expected of a $300 million player -- Phillies fans took the occasion to welcome shortstop Trea Turner to the game with a rousing standing ovation.
Did Phillies fans go soft? For that moment, absolutely. And that is no insult. It was, on the contrary, a brilliant illustration of the power of positive reinforcement. This is not to suggest what has happened since -- Turner turning into the game's best power hitter going on six weeks -- was necessarily caused by the cheers. But certainly Turner, who had spent months desperately trying to figure out why he was suddenly so bad, didn't need any reminders of his sucktitude from the Philly faithful.
Consider Turner before and after:
Over the 38 games since Philadelphia delivered its unexpected warm fuzzy, Turner's weighted on-base average is .480. That is the highest over any 38-game stretch in a career approaching its 1,000th game. A multiple-time All-Star, a World Series champion, a guy Philadelphia thought good enough to give an 11-year contract -- at his brotherly love best.
Biggest Flirt
Luis Arraez, the 26-year-old maestro who wields a bat like a wizard does his wand, last went into a game batting over .400 on June 25. It's been nearly three months, and yet there's something about hitting .400 that just enraptures baseball fans -- the combination of seeming achievability, practical unlikelihood, a nice round number and decades upon decades without anyone achieving the feat
Maybe down the road Arraez will be heir to the title Ted Williams has held since 1941: last man to hit .400. But he knows the difficulty of the pace. Arraez lasted 72 games. In the 69 since, he isn't even hitting .300. He certainly has been a decent player -- his immunity to striking out is remarkable, an outlier quality, and 19 punchouts in his past 292 plate appearances suggests as much -- but his second-half numbers historically are worse. His .353 average should win him a second consecutive batting title after taking the AL crown in Minnesota last year. And it will serve as another reminder that the most prolific pure hitter of his generation will renew his bid for .400 again next spring.
Best Innovation
The pitch clock has shaved 24 minutes off the average game time in MLB this season. Over the course of a 162-game season, that is a total of 64 hours, 48 minutes. If you are a hard-core baseball fan who watches every minute of every game every season, the clock, and the clock alone, freed you of more than 2½ days spent watching grown men stand around doing nothing. It's difficult to imagine a sport giving its most loyal devotees a greater gift.
Questions about the clock will percolate in perpetuity. There will be holdouts in the same way that five decades later some still lament the existence of the designated hitter. And though it might be impossible to prove causation, the spike in pitching injuries this year is, at very least, an ugly bit of correlation.
Coolest Revival Act
The single greatest play in baseball is a straight steal of home -- an outta-nowhere mad dash for home, Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez-style. No double steal. No running after a pickoff throw to first. No botched squeeze. Just go and get it.
Straight steals take speed, sure -- Daniel Vogelbach won't be ripping home anytime soon -- but more than that it's gumption, daring, attention to detail, processing and decisiveness. And whether it's the new restriction on disengagements from the pitching rubber, the larger bases or just coincidence, there were four straight home steals this year, a massive number for a single season.
Three of them had what is typically a prerequisite: a left-handed pitcher on the mound, his back to third base. Fernando Tatis Jr. caught Baltimore reliever Cionel Perez so asleep he didn't even attempt a throw home. Isiah Kiner-Falefa spooked the Mets' Brooks Raley into throwing the ball away. Jose Ramirez's was the most elegant, timely and intelligent. It was the 10th inning of a tie game. Aroldis Chapman had Andres Gimenez in an 0-2 count with two outs. Trying to salvage something, Ramirez ran, unleashed one of the sweetest inside-the-bag tags you'll ever see and got a replay review to overturn the original out call at the plate.
In this year of straight-steal revival, the best belongs to, who else, Elly De La Cruz. He had just ripped third base without a throw from catcher William Contreras, who tossed the ball to Milwaukee right-hander Elvis Peguero, who seemed to forget the most electrifying man in the game was 90 feet from home. De La Cruz took off his batting helmet, casually whipped his hair back, re-helmeted, started walking toward home and took off. Brewers third baseman Brian Anderson and shortstop Willy Adames pointed toward home, exasperated, and Peguero's throw was too late. It was glorious.
The Thing We'll Still Be Talking About In 50 Years
The story of 2023 ends where it began. Technically, the World Baseball Classic is not part of the Major League Baseball season. It is an exhibition, held every four years, to determine international baseball supremacy.
Anyone who watched this WBC immediately understood the allure. For the first time, it felt like the sort of event that will be around 50 years from now. The boisterous crowds in Miami, the intensity in players' faces typically reserved for October revealing itself in March. For extending the calendar's relevancy by a month, the baseball gods rewarded the WBC with the perfect ending.
Two outs. One-run game. Bottom of the ninth. The best player in the world on the mound in an unfamiliar closer role. His teammate at the plate. Shohei Ohtani vs. Mike Trout. And the count goes full, because anything else would have been dissatisfactory for the moment.
Ohtani won. He unleashed a sweeper that belongs on the nastiest pitch list above. He captained his country, in which half of the 125 million people were watching, to the title. He capped a tournament of indelible moments with the most indelible of what could be the final year of his partnership with Trout.
Truth is, half a century from now, people who weren't alive might look back on '23 in the same way as the world does 1973. Not as the year of Nolan Ryan striking out a modern-record 383 or Pete Rose winning his only MVP but as the first year of the designated hitter.
And that's fair. The pitch clock changed the game, and for the better. Baseball's technocratic leaps forward, it seems, are on a half-century-long schedule. Everyone else can have the pitch clock, though. If you know, you know. And if you know, you know that nothing, not even a revolution in the game, beats Ohtani vs. Trout, the perfect distillation of what baseball can be.