Vibes in Queens, Tatis' electric return 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. How are we supposed to feel about these Mets?
Holy cow, the Mets are fun right now. They’ve won seven in a row, they’re a half-game out of the last NL Wild Card spot (behind the Braves, no less) and Francisco Lindor is being serenaded with MVP chants every time he steps to the plate. When was the last time the vibes were this good in Queens? Has it been since the Dark Knight Matt Harvey days?

For a franchise (and a fanbase) as well-acquainted with pain as the Mets are, though, it does beg the question: Has this been so much fun that, if the Mets do happen to fall short of the postseason (and they are only at 38 percent odds of making it, according to FanGraphs), will it feel like a crushing disappointment? On the surface, that doesn’t seem even slightly fair. This Mets team wasn’t expected to be a serious contender, particularly after the nightmare of 2023, and the success they’ve had is not only surprising, but even a year or two early. This is a team, with all the young talent it has on hand (and coming), that may be ahead of schedule. The future seems bright. If the Braves hold them off, does that dampen the vibes? Or wet the whistle for 2025?

The Mets have a lot of questions for next season, including: 1) Will they go after Juan Soto? 2) Is Pete Alonso sticking around? 3) Who in the heck is going to be in the rotation? So it’s hardly a lock that they’re going to zoom to the top of the NL East, particularly if the Braves get healthy again and the Phillies are still the Phillies. (Not to mention all the young talent in Washington.) But they will be good next year, and even better in 2026. Is all this 2024 fun just a springboard to that? Or is it something they should maximize now, particularly with Lindor at his peak? One hopes Mets fans will be chill if this giddy surprise of a team ends up not quite sneaking into the postseason.

2. What does the Matt Chapman news say about the Giants right now?
Whatever your ultimate takeaway is from the Giants signing Chapman to a six-year, $151 million extension, it’s hard to argue it wasn’t a surprise. The contract itself isn’t the biggest shock as much as the timing, coming as it does with the Giants four games under .500 and fading out of the NL Wild Card chase -- not to mention the increased pressure that Farhan Zaidi and his front office have been under of late. There are San Francisco fans who are ready for a new regime. Instead, they woke up to that very regime locking a guy up through 2030.

It's fair to say that last offseason’s big spending spree, meant to bolster the roster for 2024, hasn’t gone well. Chapman has been good (and has now been rewarded), but Jung Hoo Lee and Jordan Hicks have been injured, and Blake Snell struggled early before recovering just in time for him to likely opt out and test free agency again this offseason. And the roster around them has been a disappointment, with a withering pitching staff and depth issues that have plagued them all year.

Tyler Fitzgerald and Heliot Ramos have been positives, guys you can probably count on moving forward, but Michael Conforto will hit free agency, making this lineup likely worse. Will the Giants be as aggressive this offseason as they were last offseason? Even though it didn’t work last time, you’d think they’d have to be, right? You don’t extend Chapman like that if you don’t plan on contending every year he’s on the team. The Giants -- and, clearly, Chapman -- think this year is an aberration, and that they’re set up to contend for the next half-decade. You have to wonder if the fanbase is as certain.

3. Which Tatis is back?
It has been quite a journey for Fernando Tatis Jr. the past few years. He looked like a slam-dunk, inner-circle superstar heading into the 2021 season, which is why the Padres gave him a nearly unprecedented 14-year, $340 million contract. He hit an NL-high 42 homers that year before disaster struck, first with surgery for a fractured scaphoid bone (that might have come from a motorcycle accident) and then a shocking PED suspension just before he was supposed to return. After missing the first 20 games of 2023, Tatis moved to a new position, right field, and won the NL Platinum Glove Award, but his offensive numbers were down considerably. This year, he came out of the gates strong, albeit with above-average numbers rather than the superstar numbers he put up before the suspension, but then got hurt again in June and missed more than two months.

He already has a giddy highlight, just two days after his return.

The hit was a reminder of just how electric of a player Tatis is, how hypnotic it can be to watch him and how, at his best, he has been a player who can carry a team. Considering he’s signed through the 2034 season, it behooves the Padres to figure out which player Tatis is: The superstar, the unavailable and injured guy, or something in between? It sure looks like he’s going to make his first postseason since he was playing in front of empty crowds in 2020 (and still somehow lighting up the building), and he may be ready to make his star turn again. It has been a while since we saw this Tatis. It’s nice to have him back.

4. Bash brothers!
I wouldn’t exactly expect Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaffer to play them in a Netflix special any time soon, but the A’s are now featuring the closest thing to a Bash Brothers redux as they’ve had in many years. And they’re two guys no one could have possibly seen coming.

Well, maybe Brent Rooker, I guess, considering he made an All-Star team last year, but he has taken a huge step forward this year. Since July 1, he has a .345/.419/.670 slash line with 47 RBIs in 52 games. He currently has a 169 OPS+, which would be the highest by an A’s hitter since Jason Giambi way back in 2001. And he’s not even the hottest hitter on the team right now.

That would be Lawrence Butler who, after a slow start last year and an even slower start this season -- which got him sent down to Triple A -- has been absolutely incredible. He had a nine-game extra-base hit streak, which was the longest streak in A’s history, and he just won his second AL Player of the Week Award. He has 19 homers over his past 54 games dating back to July 1. (Only Aaron Judge has more in that time.) Also, he has an awesome T-shirt.

Also, while the team may be moving, these guys aren’t going anywhere. Butler, 24, is still a couple years away from even reaching arbitration, and Rooker won’t hit free agency until after the 2027 season. There isn’t a team in baseball who wouldn’t want two guys in their lineup to build around like that. Though, honestly, I don’t think Andy Samberg looks like either one of them.

5. Is there only one real playoff chase left?
There are some fun division races happening, namely in the AL East, but have you noticed that we already have a pretty good idea of who 11 of the 12 playoff teams are going to be? Nine teams -- the Yankees, Orioles, Guardians, Twins, Royals, Astros, Phillies, Brewers, Dodgers, Padres and D-backs -- have at least 84% odds of making the playoffs. The last spot, the final NL Wild Card berth, is the only real one up for grabs, between the Braves and Mets. This was emphasized most clearly by Wednesday night, when every team in at least shouting distance of that NL Wild Card won, freezing the race in place.

That’s kind of a bummer, right? Braves-Mets is fun, but it’d be nice to have a little more uncertainty tossed into the system. Can anyone provide it? (We’ve seen plenty of late-season surges before, after all.) The Cubs and Cardinals have been playing better in the NL, but they haven’t gained much ground, and the Mariners have only recently crawled back to .500. Can any of those teams get hot? The Red Sox? The Tigers? Or are we just watching Braves-Mets the rest of the way? (Which would be fine, all told. We’re just still gonna get greedy.)

Fun Series of the Weekend: Guardians at Dodgers
That Twins-Royals series should be fun, but the problem is that no team has stepped up to seriously challenge either of them for that final AL Wild Card spot. So let’s go with two teams who are both still fighting, potentially each other, for the top overall seed in the postseason (and home-field advantage all the way through the World Series). The Guardians are four games behind the Dodgers overall but only a half-game behind the Orioles (and tied with the Yankees) in the AL. While they’ve struggled a bit of late, they at least know who the heck is in their rotation right now, unlike the Dodgers. But that rotation has to deal with the Ohtani/Betts/Freeman triumvirate, which is rolling right now. We love us a possible World Series preview.