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 [email protected], or just yell at me about mine.

1. The NL Wild Card race is a free-for-all!
Several National League teams came into the season with legitimate postseason hopes but are off to rather disappointing starts so far. The Cubs thought they were NL Central favorites; they’re bobbing around .500. The Giants signed a bunch of notable free agents; they’ve hit the skids lately after a hot stretch in late May. The D-backs went to the World Series last year; they’re under .500, too. The Padres, the Cardinals, the Reds – these are all teams whose fans fully expected a playoff run coming into the year. And they’re all underachieving.

So that’s the bad news. The good news is: They’re all still very much in the thick of the NL Wild Card race, a battle that is extremely forgiving this season. The Braves (or whoever doesn’t win the NL East between them and the Phillies) seem locked into the first Wild Card spot. But entering Thursday, there were nine other teams – all within four games of each other – battling for the other two spots. Only the Rockies and Marlins are far enough away that you’d consider them out of it. This race, such as it is, has given everybody involved a ton of time to figure themselves out, and, perhaps more importantly, given them a reason not to start selling as we approach Trade Deadline season. All it takes is one hot streak, and you can take control of this race.

2. Luis Gil Mania has arrived
All right, so technically Luis Gil isn’t that new; he did pitch six games for the Yankees in 2021 and one game in 2022 before missing most of 2023 after Tommy John surgery. (He made two rehab starts for Single-A Tampa.) But certainly it was a surprising decision, one made out of injury-provoked desperation, when he was named to the Opening Day rotation. Despite his debut coming three seasons ago, Gil retains rookie status, so we’re going to go ahead and make the comparison to the greatest rookie pitcher ever (and greatest rookie sensation, no question), Fernando Valenzuela. (Valenzuela, after all, had appeared in games for the Dodgers before his incredible rookie season in 1981.)

After 12 starts (excluding Gil’s seven starts before 2024), here are their numbers:

Valenzuela: 9-2, 1.90 ERA
Gil: 8-1, 1.82 ERA

It’s also worth noting their teams were both 10-2 in those 12 starts. To be fair, Valenzuela had nine complete games in those first 12 starts. Baseball is very different now.

The point is, Gil, who has basically turned into Gerrit Cole in Cole’s absence, is doing Fernando-esque things … and increasingly getting Fernando-esque hype. Gil (pronounced “Heel,” by the way) was never all that heralded by the Yankees or the Twins, the team that traded a 19-year-old Gil to New York in March 2018, for outfielder Jake Cave. But Gil is now doing things almost no Yankee has ever done, including giving up just one hit in six scoreless innings three days after winning the AL Pitcher and Rookie of the Month Awards. We all wondered how the Yankees would handle losing their ace for the first half of the season. By the time Cole comes back, the Yankees will have two – one that they landed with a huge free-agent deal, and one that they apparently created out of thin air.

3. What makes a knuckleballer a knuckleballer?
If you see the great 2012 documentary Knuckleball! – do not confuse it with the very terrible horror film of the same name from 2018 – it will make you forever fall in love with the pitch and anyone who throws it. It is one of the endless charms of baseball that, every few years, someone breaks through throwing a weird pitch that seems to defy the laws of physics and is nearly impossible to pull off correctly. There’s a reason, after all, knuckleballers are so rare: We hadn’t had one pitch regularly in the Majors since Steven Wright in 2017. It’s really hard.

So, welcome, Matt Waldron, who is unique in knuckleballing history in that he throws an incredible knuckleball – but not that often. This season, the Padres right-hander has thrown the pitch only 37.4% of the time, also mixing in a healthy dose of four-seam fastballs (which average 90.9 mph), sweepers and sinkers, along with an occasional cutter. But he has shown an ability to increase his knuckler frequency, throwing it a career-high 55.3% of the time while tossing seven scoreless innings against the Marlins on May 28. When you get a look at what the pitch can do, it’s not difficult to see why.

The question arises, though: Is Waldron really a knuckleballer? His usage seems too low to classify him as one, although that 55% rate would be closer. (Compare Waldron to R.A. Dickey, who threw roughly 85% knuckleballs on his way to the 2012 NL Cy Young Award.) But maybe this was the trick all along, what will give us more knuckleballers in the future: Mixing it in, rather than relying on it. You can see why Waldron is throwing more knucklers, though; his fastball velocity sits at around 91 mph, ranking in just the 8th percentile of MLB pitchers. However you classify a “knuckleballer,” it sure looks like he’s on his way to becoming a full-time one. Baseball is better, goofier, more fun now that we have one again.

4. Are Phillies fans … nice now?
One of the most common myths in sports is that Philadelphia sports fans once threw snowballs at Santa Claus. I am sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but this story has never been exactly true. (Short version: They were angry with team ownership, not Santa.) But anyone who has ever gone into Philly as an opposing player – or, as I can vouch, as an opposing fan – knows that it is a passionate and unique baseball environment. That can make things difficult for opponents – and sometimes the Phillies themselves. (Even Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt got booed there.)

But I dunno … it sure looks like Phillies fans are getting awfully cuddly. Over the last two seasons, they have embraced both struggling current players and beloved former players in a way they never seemed to in the past. There was the collective ovation for Alec Bohm after he was caught cursing the fans under his breath on a telecast, for which Bohm was so grateful that he thanked the fans and became one of the team’s best players. There was all the love for the slumping free-agent signee Trea Turner during his slow start last year, love that became even stronger after he turned his season around. And now even players who leave – which used to get you hammered in Philly, ask Scott Rolen – are feeling the warmth. When longtime Phillie Rhys Hoskins took his first at-bat at Citizens Bank Park as a Brewer, the ovation he received was one of the most touching moments of the season.

Sure, it helps when you have the best record in baseball. But it sure is something to see this from Phillies fans. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to put on this Mets hat and head into Citizens Bank Park …

5. It’s London Series weekend!
Another reason to enjoy the new chillness of these Phillies fans: They’re about to go international! The Mets and Phillies have arrived in the U.K. for MLB’s third London Series, after Yankees-Red Sox back in 2019 and Cardinals-Cubs last year. I went with my parents and sister last year, our first trip to England, because the only way I was getting two septuagenarian Midwesterners to get their first passport was by telling them there would be baseball involved.

• The 10 best moments in London Series history

We had a fantastic time: I cannot recommend the trip enough. For any fans who may be going, three recommendations:

1. Get to London Stadium early, walk every nook and cranny of it and soak it all in. I’d never been to a baseball game where I met so many different people from so many parts of the world, all of whom were downright desperate to talk baseball.
2. Go walk along the canals just about half a mile from the stadium. It’s charming, relaxed and loaded with great food, not something London is necessarily known for. (You can even eat on a boat.)
3. Wear your favorite team’s hat everywhere. We took a day to see the Churchill War Rooms and ended up talking for an hour with a guy from Scotland about Mike Trout.

It’s a trip every baseball fan should take at some point. I can’t recommend it enough.

Fun Series of the Weekend: Dodgers at Yankees
No offense to the London Series, but this was, uh, not a difficult pick. The Yankees are the hottest team in baseball, and the Dodgers are the Dodgers, the only team stacked with more stars and future Hall of Famers than the Yanks are. Seriously, there’s so much star power concentrated in The Bronx this weekend: Shohei, Mookie and Freddie vs. Soto, Judge and Stanton. And it all builds up to a scorcher on Sunday night featuring perhaps your current Cy Young Award front-runners in each league: Luis Gil for the Yankees and Tyler Glasnow for the Dodgers. It’s going to be a blast.