Votto's legacy, Triple Crown watch(es) among most fascinating storylines

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 Zack 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. Goodnight, sweet Votto
It seems hard to believe now, but there was a time, toward the beginning of Joey Votto’s rise as one of the best baseball players over the past nearly two decades, when he was heavily criticized, often by his own team’s announcers, for not getting enough RBIs. Votto, the claim went, was not aggressive enough, that he was too willing to take a walk rather than, I don’t know, press the “three-run homer” button on the handle on his bat or something. The Reds were near-annual underachievers for Votto’s entire career, and, because of what I call The LeBron James Fallacy, Votto often took the hit for it. (This theory posits that when a team falls short, observers and fans tend, irrationally, to blame their best player rather than all the other, lesser players dragging them down.)

Votto’s brilliant, almost supernatural understanding of the strike zone led to him leading his league in walks and OBP nearly every season. But he did that, at first, at the very end of the era when mainstream broadcasters and analysts didn’t appreciate it. It led to him being underappreciated, and even sometimes openly lambasted.

It turned out we all just needed to catch up with where Votto already was. When Votto announced his retirement on Wednesday night, the news was greeted with love and plaudits all around. But why wouldn’t it be? Votto has been such a beloved player for so long now that no one even remembers he was once considered polarizing. It’s not just the rest of us waking up to what made him so great; he ended up meeting us where we were, too. Votto was considered quiet, even a little shy at the beginning of his career, but it’s fair to say he ultimately opened up to the world a bit.

The world of baseball is undeniably lessened by not having Votto -- a very likely Hall of Famer -- in it. Yet one suspects, with a personality like his, he’s not going to be out of the game long. Frankly, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see him on a telecast as soon as this October. Happy trails, Joey. We’re sorry it took the rest of us so long to appreciate you.

2. Two teams with a chance to end losing skids
The record, dubious as it is, for most consecutive losing seasons in baseball history belongs to the Pittsburgh Pirates. After the Sid Bream Game in 1992, the Bucs didn’t have a winning record for the next 20 seasons until 2013, when they won 94 games. That’s a record that seems pretty safe for a while. The three teams currently with the most sub-.500 seasons in a row are the Angels (eight), Royals (eight) and Tigers (seven). Those three teams have endured some rough years, and they’re still not even halfway there.

The Angels will have to go 27-8 to avoid running their streak to nine, which seems, uh, unlikely. The Royals are well on their way to snapping theirs: They just have to win 10 more games to clinch at least a .500 season. But don’t look past the possibility of the Tigers pulling it off as well. They’re only four games under .500 and have one of the easiest remaining schedules in baseball, including seven more games against the White Sox. That would be a very positive step for a franchise that has more young talent than is perhaps widely recognized. Either way: Sorry, Pirates, no one’s catching you for a long, long time.

3. Are we actually going to get a Triple Crown?
We haven’t had a Triple Crown winner since Miguel Cabrera in 2012, and he was the only one we’ve had since 1967. But we’ve got two, maybe even three, hitters who have a chance to do it this year.

Aaron Judge is the most high-profile possibility; he’s blowing everybody away in the AL in homers and RBIs, but he’s still 18 points behind Bobby Witt Jr. in batting average. He’ll need Witt to go into a big slump to have a chance ... and does Witt look like a guy who’s about to go into a slump to you? If you squint, you can also make a case for Shohei Ohtani in the NL, though he should probably get his average above .300 first.

The best chance may belong to, of all people, Marcell Ozuna. He’s two homers behind Ohtani, he’s six RBIs up on Ohtani, and he’s seven points up on Luis Arraez in batting average. That’s really close. It’s certainly time to start taking the possibility seriously. If he pulls it off, he’ll be a particular historical anomaly. Assuming Cabrera is elected to the Hall of Fame when he’s eligible on the 2029 ballot, Ozuna, who has only made three All-Star teams and has only finished in the top 10 of MVP voting once in his career, would become the first player to win a Triple Crown who (likely) won't end up in the Hall of Fame.

4. The most underrated Shohei Ohtani skill
Even if Ozuna ends up winning the Triple Crown, it’s possible, maybe even likely, that Ohtani ends up winning the NL MVP anyway, which is particularly amazing considering he isn’t even pitching yet. Ohtani currently leads the NL in homers, SLG and OPS and is fourth in OBP; he also remains in first place in everyone-stop-what-you’re-doing-when-he-comes-to-the-plate. (I’m trying to get the ESWYDWHCTTP acronym to catch on.) But don’t forget the other thing he’s elite at: Stealing bases.

Ohtani is second in the NL (behind Elly De La Cruz, of course) in stolen bases with 39, which is also the exact number of homers he has. You may notice that means he’s one short of each for a 40-40 season, an achievement that might feel more common -- because Ronald Acuña Jr. did it last year -- than it really is. Before Acuña, it hadn’t happened since Alfonso Soriano back in 2006, and before him, Alex Rodriguez in 1998. Of the five players to have done it, none of them have reached the mark by the end of August, and none of them ever made it to 45-45, which Ohtani looks well on his way toward. And remember: He’s not even pitching yet. Fun fact: Ohtani actually passed Babe Ruth in career steals this week. Can he play shortstop? He probably can.

5. The return of the divisional races
For most of this season, the Wild Card races have seemed like the likeliest sources for madness down the stretch, with a smattering of teams bunched together and, thus, many possibilities for chaos. But the Wild Cards are starting to settle: Only the Mets are within fewer than three games of the final spot in the NL, and the Red Sox have fallen a full 3 1/2 games behind the Twins for the last slot in the AL. Those races could still tighten over the last month or so, but it does appear a sorting has happened.

Fortunately, divisional races are picking up the slack. The NL Central and the NL East are mostly set, but otherwise, there’s going to be scoreboard watching in every division down the stretch. The Astros have separated slightly in the AL West with a five-game lead on the Mariners, but it’s a three-team race in both the NL West (with the D-backs and Padres sneaking up on the Dodgers) and, especially, the AL Central, where both the Royals and the Twins are two games back of the Guardians. And, of course, the AL East is a fight between the Yankees and the Orioles, not just for the top spot in the division but also atop the whole American League. Much of this may end up just being about postseason seeding, but winning your division is about more than that: As they say, flags fly forever.

Fun Series of the Weekend: Astros at Orioles
Baltimore's front office is full of former Astros employees, and you can certainly see the DNA of those Houston teams (and, really, this current one) in these O's. But even though the Orioles have the better record right now, they’re not the ones with seven straight ALCS appearances: That would be the Astros. (The Orioles haven’t won a game in the ALCS since 1997.) This makes their weekend series even more fascinating than it already is: Heck, it’s not out of the question that this is the next ALCS matchup.