5 fascinating storylines in baseball right now

There’s always something fascinating going on in the world of baseball -- and there’s always something new. Every Friday morning throughout the season, heading into the weekend, inspired by Zach Lowe’s terrific “10 Things I Like” NBA column for ESPN, we present the Five Fascinations, five fun things going on in the baseball world. Also, we’d like to shout out the always excellent Ben Clemens at FanGraphs, another progenitor of a similar format. Submit your personal fascinations to will.leitch@mlb.com, or just yell at me about mine.

The White Sox have some work to do

Of all the corporate euphemisms for “person getting fired,” my favorite is “relieved of their duties.” That makes it sound so nice! Don’t worry about those duties anymore! We’ll take care of them! Go have a nap, don’t sweat it. But in the case of White Sox manager Pedro Grifol, who was “relieved of his duties" on Thursday with the team sitting at 28-89, it's possible this phrasing was applicable for once.

White Sox coach Grady Sizemore is the interim manager, though he’s not considered that serious of a candidate for the full-time, long-term job and thus essentially has the job to make everyone who remembers him as a fresh-faced rookie with Cleveland feel extremely old. (Like me.)

Whoever takes the job for next season, obviously, is going to need some patience, as the White Sox have quite the steep climb back to contention. If they are looking to stock up on prospects, there’s no better way to do that than trade ace Garrett Crochet in the offseason, when there will be less uncertainty about his pitch count and/or postseason eligibility.

Other than those two, there isn’t much left on the books, other than Andrew Benintendi’s hefty contract -- he’s signed through 2027 -- which means this sure looks like a project that you can reconstruct from the studs up. That’s a good idea for them but probably not a lot of, well, relief for the next manager.

Is it time to worry about the Braves and Guardians?

The Braves were considered one of the best teams in baseball heading into the season, and the Guardians have been atop the AL Central standings all season. But suddenly, there’s a whole lot of reason to be concerned about both.

Atlanta is in more immediate peril. After getting crunched by the Brewers on Thursday, their fifth straight loss, the Braves are outside of a playoff spot for the first time since June of 2022. The injuries to Ronald Acuña Jr. and Spencer Strider, among of course many, many others, have made this feel like a season to forget for them despite what the standings have said, but you still felt, with as much talent as they still have hanging around, they’d at least sneak into a playoff spot. But it should be said that even some of the healthy players have taken big steps back.

Matt Olson and Austin Riley have come on lately, but they are still below their career norms. Charlie Morton is finally looking 40. Jorge Soler and Whit Merrifield have done nothing since coming over at the Trade Deadline. There are some guys coming back, including Michael Harris II (a player whose team is always better when he’s on the field), but this is a club that looks, frankly, rather dazed right now. You could call this a lost season, but they called 2021 a lost season at one point, too, and … it wasn’t. But are we sure this team is better than the Mets, D-backs or Padres moving forward? I’m sure not.

The Guardians had the best record in the sport just a couple of weeks ago, but five ugly losses to the Orioles and D-backs sent them plummeting. They’ve still got a 3 1/2-game lead over the Twins and a four-game lead over the Royals in the AL Central, so it might seem strange to have them as a questionable playoff team.

But noted baseball writer Joe Sheehan made the case this week in his newsletter that the Guardians are far from guaranteed a spot. The team is starting to look a little like we thought it would heading into the year: Like it just doesn’t have enough hitting to offset a rare down year for its starting pitching. The rotation’s thinness has now spread all the way to the bullpen, which is starting to fray at exactly the wrong time.

Cleveland, beginning on Friday, is slated to play 22 games in 22 days, including three doubleheaders. It’s a team that looks, increasingly, very wobbly, with the Twins (who were dinged for not doing much at the Deadline but look well-positioned) and the Royals (who have Bobby Witt Jr., albeit with a tough schedule themselves) not far behind them. It’s going to be a serious grind coming up, and I’m not sure they’re fortified enough to withstand it. The Guardians’ playoff odds, per FanGraphs, were still at 90% as of Thursday. I dunno, but … that seems high. Keep an eye out on this one.

Vlad Jr. is hitting like an MVP again

Much of the discussion about the Blue Jays potentially trading Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at the Deadline last month -- a move I made an argument in favor of -- revolved around the inherent difficulty of figuring out his value. Is he the superstar who would have won the AL MVP Award in 2021 if he hadn’t run into the Shohei Ohtani buzzsaw? Or is he the good, but not spectacular, hitter he has been since then? This confusion is also the reason the Blue Jays hadn’t extended him to this point: They needed a better idea of who, exactly, he was.

It looks like we might be getting a better idea. Over the last three weeks, Vlad Jr. hasn’t just hit like his 2021 MVP self: He’s been so, so much better. He's hit safely in 20 straight games, with a .507 (!) batting average, 22 extra-base hits and 22 RBIs over that stretch. His season numbers are now nearing that 2021 year: His OPS+ is 161, just behind that 167 in 2021 and way ahead of the measly 117 he put up last year.

Next season, quite famously, is the last year of Guerrero’s contract, and he, by all accounts, plans on testing free agency. The Jays think they’re going to compete, and if their star first baseman keeps hitting like this, they may have a chance. But if not? There’s going to be an MVP candidate on the market at the 2025 Deadline. This is the Vlad Jr. we were waiting for. (Again.)

Speaking of MVP candidates ...

Ketel Marte is the Kyle Tucker of the NL West: A player who is good every year, has been so for quite a while, and consistently does so with hardly anyone noticing. One would have thought his NLCS MVP performance last year might have changed that, but I dunno, I guess it’s difficult to keep track of what happens out there in the desert. It’s probably time to start paying attention.

As the D-backs have zoomed up the NL Wild Card standings -- and giving the Dodgers a little bit of a scare in the NL West, for that matter -- Marte has been not just key to everything they’re doing, he might just be making an MVP case for himself. Heading into Thursday, he had hit 10 homers in his last 15 games, and he now has a career-high 157 OPS+. Marte is now third in the NL in FanGraphs WAR at 5.3, behind only Ohtani (5.7) and Elly De La Cruz (5.6). Is it possible he catches up with Shohei? What if he catches up with Shohei and the D-backs catch the Dodgers, or at least come close to it?

You have to give Marte pretty serious consideration, no? He has only received MVP votes once in his career, when he finished fourth back in 2019. That’s about to change. We should be talking about Ketel Marte all the time. He’s the reason the D-backs are better right now than they were during that run to the World Series last year. He has always been fantastic. And he’s peaking right now.

A little more Tommy Pham love from me

I’m a longtime student of collective fan behavior at baseball stadiums. I love to try to figure out which players fans will get together and cheer for, and why, particularly when one of their former players returns to town. Some players obviously will get huge roars; If Anthony Rizzo is back in time to play at Wrigley Field next month, that place will boom. Some get the opposite; the nights J.D. Drew and Scott Rolen played their first games in Philadelphia, it got ugly. Some are even a little confused. Dylan Carlson played his first game as a visitor at Busch Stadium on Wednesday night for the Rays. This was a player fans weren’t unhappy to see leave St. Louis but also harbored no particular ill will toward. It led to a stilted, almost awkward pause, when Carlson stepped out of the box for an ovation that at first didn’t come and then did, almost out of obligation.

And sometimes it can surprise you. Tommy Pham hadn’t played for the Cardinals since 2018, when he returned to Busch Stadium last week, and, because he didn’t leave under the best of circumstances, you did wonder how he’d be welcomed. To his shock and delight, the crowd gave him a standing ovation; he would hit a grand slam just a few pitches later. Pham has played for eight teams over his 11-year career, never staying anywhere all that long; he’s not the kind of guy who sticks around long enough to get many ovations. So, when Busch went nuts for him, it was one of the few times in his career that has ever happened -- maybe even the first. He has said he was moved by it, and how could he not be? Sometimes people don’t realize how loved they are until you show them.

Fun Series of the Weekend: Guardians at Twins

Yeah, about that Guardians’ lead in the AL Central? It could be erased as soon as Sunday. Cleveland and Minnesota will play four at Target Field this weekend, including a doubleheader on Friday. The Royals, the team right behind these two teams, will be doing a lot of watching: They have a two-game series at home against the Cardinals and otherwise will just get to witness these two beating on each other. If the Twins sweep this series, they’ll be in first place. If the Guardians sweep … well, forget that paragraph I wrote up top about Cleveland being in more postseason trouble than people think.