Can Sale win the Cy? 5 Fascinations around the baseball world

There’s always something fascinating going on in the world of baseball, and there’s always something new. Every Friday morning throughout the season, 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.

1. Maybe this is Chris Sale’s Cy season

You could forgive Sale if he had given up on ever winning that long-elusive Cy Young Award. Sale is rather high up on the list of great starting pitchers who never grabbed one, despite his brilliant run from 2012-18 in which he finished in the top six in Cy Young voting for seven consecutive years without making it to No. 1.

Since '18, when he recorded the final out of the Red Sox's championship run, Sale’s career has been derailed by injuries. The man who once reached 226 2/3 innings in a season threw 48 1/3 over three. When the Braves traded for Sale this offseason, he was seen as a luxury item, a Fabergé egg who would probably end up getting hurt, but who would hopefully be healthy for the Braves' inevitable postseason appearance.

Well, now look who’s back to his old self. Sale has been magnificent this year, putting up an 8-1 record with a 2.12 ERA in 10 starts. He’s averaging more than six innings per outing -- he’s top 15 in the National League in innings, which is remarkable considering his past half-decade -- and has been a savior for a Braves rotation that has been beset by injuries.

Key to Sale's success: The lowest walk rate of his career, down to 3.6 percent, and the second-highest ground-ball rate, at 48.1 percent. If you were to vote for NL Cy Young right now, you’d basically be choosing between Shota Imanaga, Ranger Suárez, Zack Wheeler and Sale. Wouldn’t it be incredible if, at the age of 35, after years in the wilderness, Sale somehow won the award in 2024?

2. A silver lining for the Mets?

I visited Citi Field with my son last week, and we watched some more Mets misery. We were at the game where the club blew a four-run lead (which one, you ask?) and were walked off by Giants third baseman Matt Chapman’s incredible barehanded play to throw out Mark Vientos.

It looked like the low point of an increasingly dire season, but as it turned out, there was more to come. On Wednesday, Mets reliever Jorge López was ejected and threw his glove into the stands. On Thursday, the team designated him for assignment. (Meanwhile, Edwin Díaz was placed on the injured list, and Pete Alonso left the game with a hand injury.)

So allow me to beam in a little sunshine? OK, so this season looks lost, but, hey, after last year’s disappointment, it was widely assumed that the Mets weren’t going all-in for this year anyway. (Max Scherzer certainly didn’t think they were.)

This skid clarifies the issue: 2025 and '26 are the focus. And there’s every reason to think that’s a smart plan.

Vientos, in limited action so far, looks like the real deal -- he has the highest OPS on the team. Brett Baty has struggled, but in a season that looks lost, that’s a reason to give him more at-bats, not fewer. Francisco Alvarez -- another young player to whom the Mets need to give every at-bat they can -- started his rehab assignment this week, and he should be back in a couple of weeks.

Plus, the biggest question of the moment (should they give Alonso a long-term contract?) is being cleared up not just by Alonso’s injury, but also his fine -- but hardly spectacular -- year at the plate so far. Christian Scott is up and in the rotation; Luisangel Acuña should be up soon; there’s a ton of money coming off the books in the next couple of years (and the Mets have a guy in charge clearly willing to spend). They also could get real trade value for J.D. Martinez, Luis Severino or even Harrison Bader.

The Mets were not going to win the NL East this year. Sure, they could have been more competitive, but now no one is lying to themselves. We saw at Citi Field on Friday that even a struggling Mets team has a roaring, loyal, desperate fanbase cheering for them on every pitch. They’re closer than it might seem to having a team worthy of that.

3. An increasingly rare breed of hitter

You are reading the words of someone who does not freak out about strikeouts. They happen! You've gotta live with them! When you have guys trying to hit homers, or at least swing hard, you’re going to have some strikeouts -- they can be a byproduct of success rather than something that actively thwarts success.

That said, I know that there are many old-school fans who are driven a bit mad by strikeouts. You see that “Tony Gwynn struck out less in his entire career than Kyle Schwarber strikes out in three seasons” stat pop up a lot.

If you’re bothered by strikeouts, you’ll definitely be bothered by the vanishing number of hitters who walk more than they strike out. That was once a normal signal of having a perfectly decent season and is now something you almost never see.

Among qualified hitters last year, only three players struck out less than they walked: Juan Soto, Alex Bregman and Luis Arraez. This year, there are only two: Mookie Betts (who is way over, with 37 walks and only 24 strikeouts) and Kyle Tucker (whose increasingly disciplined approached has made him a serious AL MVP contender).

There are two players who are close, but who aren’t nearly as big names as Betts or Tucker: Nico Hoerner and Bryson Stott (who is actually much better than anyone outside of Philadelphia seems to realize).

There are only two players with more than 500 at-bats who have more walks than strikeouts in their career: Soto, who has three more strikeouts than walks this year but is still 60 above water for his career, and Arraez, who is in danger of losing that distinction: He has four more strikeouts than walks this year, putting him just three above for his career. In case you were wondering: Gwynn was 356 over for his career. Rickey Henderson was 496.

4. The unlikely team leaders

It’s always fun, when you visit a ballpark, to see which players that team’s promotional staff thought would be the big stars heading into that season -- the guys they plan all the bobbleheads around, the Best Player on the Team. Go to St. Louis and you’ll see Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado; to Seattle, Julio Rodríguez; to Miami … well, not Arraez anymore.

But who actually turns out as the best player on a team is a group of truly unlikely characters. You may be surprised to see who the best player on each of these teams, according to Baseball Reference WAR, have turned out to be so far:

Angels: LHP Tyler Anderson
Braves: LHP Chris Sale
Blue Jays: OF Daulton Varsho
Cardinals: SS Masyn Winn
Mariners: INF/OF Dylan Moore
Marlins: LHP Ryan Weathers
Mets: LHP Sean Manaea
Padres: LF Jurickson Profar
Pirates: LHP Bailey Falter
Red Sox: RHP Tanner Houck
Rockies: LHP Austin Gomber
Twins: C/DH Ryan Jeffers
White Sox: RHP Erick Fedde

5. What’s going on with the Cubs?

When you look over the rosters of every team in the NL Central, it’s difficult not to come away with the impression that the most well-rounded roster belongs to the Cubs.

They’ve got the best rotation, a terrific defense and a lineup with an intriguing mix of veterans and up-and-comers. Seven of their nine regular position players and three of their starting pitchers are under 30 (and one of the ones who isn’t, Imanaga, is a rookie). They also have the new manager, Craig Counsell, who is widely considered one of the best in the sport.

It’s not a perfect roster -- and the Cubs don’t really rank up there with the Phillies, Braves or Dodgers -- but in the NL Central? They look like the class of the division.

So what happened? The Cubs were in first place in the NL Central on May 8, then they won two out of three from the Pirates. Everything was in great shape. And then the bottom fell out.

They lost two out of three in Atlanta, three out of four at home to Pittsburgh and two out of three at home to the Braves. They were swept out of St. Louis in two games, and then during a miserable series in Milwaukee, where the team lost three out of four, Counsell was booed incessantly until the team left town in third place and one game under .500.

Since May 13, only the Mets and White Sox have been worse than the Cubs. The Cardinals have even passed them!

Some of this has been bad luck. In the past two weeks, the Cubs have lost four games in which their starting pitcher didn’t give up a run. But their stars are struggling.

Dansby Swanson is 1-for-his-last-19. Seiya Suzuki is not having the breakout year many were predicting. Neither is Christopher Morel and neither is Justin Steele. The bullpen has been inconsistent and injured.

The Cubs are also going through a tough stretch in the schedule -- they’ve had a ton of games against the Braves, Brewers and Paul Skenes (two of Skenes’ four starts have been against the Cubs). And they caught the Cardinals at just the wrong time.

But still: This is a sub-.500 team right now. The Cubs were supposed to be taking a leap this year. So far, they’re not.

Fun Series of the Weekend: Yankees at Giants

Apologies to that intriguing Padres-Royals tilt, but when these two teams play, you can almost imagine the throwback newsreel footage in your head.

The Giants have been playing much better lately, thanks in large part to their giddy comeback streak last week, but the Yankees are rolling over everyone, thanks to, uh, the monsters in their lineup. It’s also Aaron Judge’s first trip to San Francisco since the Giants came this close to signing him in December 2022.

It’s a historic weekend, too: It’s African American Heritage Day at the stadium on Friday -- you can get a Willie Mays Birmingham Black Barons bobblehead -- and Sunday is Lou Gehrig Day.