The All-Star break is the unofficial halfway point in the major league baseball season.
When the season began, I wouldn’t have believed my Detroit Tigers, of the American League Central Division, would start the second half of the season with the best record in the big leagues. The Tigers won 59 games despite losing the last four prior to the break.
The Toronto Blue Jays of the A.L. East led their division with 55 victories, two wins better than the Yankees and the Red Sox. The BoSox, however, had two more losses than the Yanks. The Houston Astros, five wins better than the good-hitting Seattle Mariners, led the A.L. West with 56 wins.
In the National League, the Chicago Cubs led the Central Division with 57 wins. The Philadelphia Phillies and the Mets were tied with 55 wins in the N.L. East, but the Mets were ranked second because they had one more loss. The Los Angeles Dodgers with 58 victories, had a big lead over the San Diego Padres in the Western Division.
It should be interesting to follow the Yankees and Red Sox the rest of the way. Boston had to play without star third baseman Alex Bregman who missed more than a month due to an injury but came back to the lineup just before the break. We’ll see if he can maintain or better his .298 batting average and if the Red Sox, who had a 10-game winning streak before the break, maintain a high level of play.
Can Aaron Judge, who was batting .355 with 35 home runs and 81 RBI at the break maintain that super high level of play? Can Max Fried, 11-3, and a low ERA of 2.43 match those numbers in the second half? Can Tarik Skubal, the best pitcher in baseball last year, match his first half record of ten wins and three losses and an ERA of 2.23 in the second half? Skubal, who was the starting pitcher for the American League in the All-Star Game, was a very big reason for the success of the Tigers this year.
Cal Raleigh, the 28-year-old home run hitting catcher of the Seattle Mariners, didn’t get that much publicity outside of Seattle. The 6’2″, 235-pounder went into the break with the amazing stats of 38 home runs and 82 runs batted in. That’s one more RBI and three more homers than the amazing Aaron Judge. Raleigh put on quite a show by winning the Home Run Derby and doing it by hitting the ball farther than anyone else.
I’ll be following the second half of the season closely to see if the Tigers continue to have the most wins of the 30 major league teams.
