Young Nats, five 100-win teams (!?) among top 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. The young Nats are coming together

The big story this week was the debut of James Wood, the massively talented (and also quite massive) Nationals prospect who singled in his first at-bat and showed off his top-shelf speed on the bases. He sure looks the part of a future superstar, which is yet another reminder that the Juan Soto trade has turned out just about as well as the Nationals ever could have imagined.

Let’s go over the players the Padres gave up for a year and a half of Soto (before they traded him to the Yankees, of course):

• Wood: MLB Pipeline’s No. 2 prospect
• CJ Abrams: Having a breakout season at the age of 23, with four more years of club control.
• MacKenzie Gore: Taking another step forward as the best young starter on the Nats, with a 3.47 ERA in 17 starts. He still has three years of club control, too.
• Robert Hassell III: Hasn’t quite panned out the way the Nats had hoped, but then again, he’s only 22 and currently has a .369 OBP for Double-A Harrisburg.
• Jarlin Susana: Seriously struggling in Single-A Fredericksburg, but he’s only 20.
• Luke Voit: Playing for Olmecas de Tabasco of the Mexican League.

That’s three regulars on the big league roster, including two possible stars, and there’s still time for both Hassell and Susana. Meanwhile, Soto is leading the Yankees to the playoffs. It may be impossible to “win” a trade in which you deal away Soto, but the Nats may have come as close as a team possibly could.

2. The best player on the Rangers this season has not been anyone you would have expected.

The Rangers were the rare defending World Series champions who many felt would be even better the year they defended their crown. They had a star-studded rotation, young players ready to take big steps forward and a revamped bullpen. It also looked like a season in which Corey Seager might just win that MVP Award. Could the Rangers do this twice in a row?

It sure isn’t looking that way. The Rangers are now nine games under .500 and have less than a 10% chance of making the postseason, according to FanGraphs playoff odds. There have been a lot of reasons it hasn’t worked out, mostly involving injuries and those young players taking a little longer to get it going than the Rangers would have liked. (Though Wyatt Langford seems to have recently figured it out.)

But a positive breakout for the Rangers this year may also be a symptom of the issue. According to both FanGraphs and Baseball Reference WAR, the best player on the Rangers this year hasn’t been Seager or Marcus Semien or Adolis García: It has been third baseman Josh Smith. Smith, who will turn 27 next month, hit .197 in 73 games in 2022 and .185 in 90 last year, and it’s not like he was hitting the ball for much power or getting on base either. But this year, he has launched forward, hitting .290, with a .384 OBP and seven homers in his first 82 games. His .834 OPS is the highest on the team: He has been better than Seager in every category but homers and RBIs. This is good for Josh Smith! But that Josh Smith has been the best player on the Rangers is maybe not a sign that things have gone well for the Rangers this year.

3. How many 100-win teams will we get?

From 2006-14, nine big league seasons, there were exactly three teams that won more than 100 games: The 2008 Angels, the 2009 Yankees and the 2011 Phillies. (Only one of those teams would end up winning even one playoff series: The 2009 Yankees, who won the World Series.) Since then, though, we’ve had at least one in every full season. And since 2017, we’ve had, if you can believe it, at least three every season. In the history of baseball, we’ve had four 100-win teams twice, and they each happened in the past five years: 2019 (Astros, Dodgers, Yankees and Twins) and 2022 (Dodgers, Astros, Braves and Mets). And check it out: It may just happen again.

There are currently four teams on pace for 100 wins this season: the Phillies, Guardians, Yankees and Orioles. That doesn’t include the Dodgers (on pace for 99) or Brewers (96) either, which means -- at least theoretically -- we could reach a record five this year. Suffice it to say, this flies in the face of the increasingly popular notion that the expanded playoffs somehow disincentivized teams to build up their rosters as much as possible.

On the other hand, it’s also true that four teams (the Marlins, A’s, Rockies and White Sox) are on pace to lose more than 100 games. While there are a bunch of teams crowded in the middle of the standings, teams at the extremes are further away from each other more than ever.

4. How strength of schedule could affect races

It’s important to remember that the standings themselves are a living, breathing document, one that can only tell you what a team has done, not what they will do in the future. It lets you know what teams’ records are maybe a little better than they should be … and what gravity might await them in the coming months. That’s all because of strength of schedule. Two tied teams shouldn't necessarily be considered equal if one has played all the best teams in the league and the other has played all the worst.

So, as we handicap all the races in the second half, one has to ask: Who has the toughest and easiest schedules moving forward? There are different ways to tackle that question, but in terms of futures opponents’ combined winning percentage to this point, one team that stands out is the Mariners. They’re helped immensely by 24 games against the teams in their division who aren’t the Astros, including 10 against the Angels. Other contending teams with easy schedules: The Mets (who have 19 games against the A’s, Rockies, White Sox and Marlins, the four worst teams in baseball), the Reds (who have a far easier schedule than anyone else in the NL Central) and the Padres.

On the end of the spectrum? The Rays stand out here, as they have 23 games against the Yankees, Guardians, Phillies and Orioles in front of them. Considering their gruesome run differential, there are a lot of reasons to maintain a healthy skepticism of the Rays moving forward.

5. An ode to Tim Anderson

On Tuesday, the Marlins designated shortstop Anderson for assignment. It wasn’t that difficult to see why. Anderson has been absolutely miserable at the plate this year, hitting .214 and slugging .226. In 241 plate appearances, he had only three extra-base hits, all doubles. It follows an almost-as-difficult final season with the White Sox in 2023, in which he hit .245 and had just one home run in 524 plate appearances. It is possible we have seen the last of Anderson in the Major Leagues.

And that is a shame. Anderson, for several years, was one of the most exciting, charismatic players in baseball, a perpetual ball of energy and cool for some fun White Sox teams. He was the leader of those teams, too -- remember, it was his endorsement that Tony La Russa sought (and received) when he managed the team. Anderson led the Majors in batting average at .335 in 2019, and led the AL in runs during the truncated 2020 season. He made two All-Star teams and once finished seventh in the AL MVP voting. He played for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic just last year. He’s also a terrific guy off the field, including his Anderson’s League of Leaders charity, which works to help youth who have been affected by violence (inspired by the death of one of Anderson’s best friends in 2017). And, of course, he hit one of the most memorable homers of the last decade, the walk-off homer at the Field of Dreams.

Hopefully another team picks up Anderson -- hey, maybe the Dodgers can turn him around? -- but if not, we’ll miss him. For a few years there, there weren’t many players more fun to watch than Anderson.

Fun Series of the Weekend: Phillies at Braves

There is a sense that the NL East race is already over. Ronald Acuña Jr. is out for the year. The Phillies have one of the best records in baseball. The Braves are still trying to rediscover their past offensive glory. But you never know: A three-game sweep by the Braves at Truist Park this weekend, and that could change real fast. The Braves are facing the Phillies at a time when they are without Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber, and it’s not as if Atlanta is struggling all that much: The club has a nearly 92% chance to make the playoffs, according to FanGraphs. Can the Braves make a second-half run to win their seventh straight NL East title? If so, they need to start that run this weekend.