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. Don’t sweat the Phillies
The Phillies are in first place, they’ve got the second-best record in the National League, and they entered Thursday with a 98.7 percent chance of making the playoffs, per FanGraphs. There aren’t many teams who wouldn’t switch places with them in half a second. But you know things are getting a little hairy in Philly when they’re having team meetings. That happened Wednesday, on the heels of a four-game losing streak, which they snapped that night against the Marlins. It’s an understandable reaction for a team that began Thursday tied for the NL’s worst record since the All-Star break (8-16). This is a group that isn’t exactly rolling into the postseason.

So how worried should we be? I’d argue not all that worried. They’re coming off a brutal road trip against the Mariners, Dodgers and red-hot D-backs, and key members of their rotation have missed some starts. Now they’re back home against the Nationals, and Ranger Suárez is on the verge of joining Taijuan Walker back in the rotation (though you’d sure like to get Cristopher Sánchez back to his old self, too.)

The schedule doesn’t get that much easier -- they’re about to head to Atlanta and Kansas City -- but this is still a veteran team that has seen all of this many times before. You don’t construct a team like this if you don’t think it can handle a few ups and downs -- even downs as rough as this August has been.

The Braves and Mets haven’t been able to make up all that much ground on them, and it’s not like the guys in the lineup are looking particularly old or anything. (Have you noticed that Kyle Schwarber might be having the best season of his career? I think he is!) All the reasons we’ve all been so excited about the Phillies will still be there come October: Veteran hitters, established aces, a deep and experienced team that has been there before and sure feels like it has some unfinished business.

Teams wobble sometimes in the dog days of summer: Most of the Phillies’ NL rivals have done just that, too. They’ll be fine. Don’t worry. Though if they run into the D-backs in the postseason, you can forgive Phillies fans for having some unpleasant flashbacks.

2. The NL Wild Card race is sorting itself out
It wasn’t long ago that it looked like we might have a … nine- or 10-team battle for the last two NL Wild Card slots. With the Braves faltering, it even seemed like we might have all three spots up for grabs. We had visions of all those teams, or least half of those teams, all within a game or two of each other heading into the final weekend. It felt like potential madness.

It’s not looking like that anymore. The Nationals (the theoretical 10th team in the battle) bowed out a couple of weeks ago, and there has since been a race of teams plummeting toward them -- and out of the race entirely. The Pirates’ 10-game losing streak essentially eliminated them (and may put Paul Skenes on the shelf at some point), which would make them lonely in the NL Central if the Cardinals and Cubs weren’t coming apart at the seams as well. (Heading into Thursday, the Brewers were the only team in the NL Central above .500.)

The Giants didn't do themselves any favors either, losing their fourth in a row on Wednesday, and just like that: The nine-team free-for-all may have turned into a modest four-team affair. The red-hot D-backs and Padres have firmly ensconced themselves in the top two slots, with the Mets and Braves battling it out for the third one. It’s still possible that the Giants, Reds, Cardinals or Cubs go on a run to crawl their way back in, though none of them seem to have a roster built for such a thing. What’s most likely is that we’ll be watching the Mets and Braves fight for the last slot, and the Padres and D-backs fight for the NL’s No. 4 seed. What could have been madness now looks like a stripped down, totally normal pennant chase. Bummer.

3. What’s today’s Bonds-Maddux matchup?
I cannot stop watching this truly incredible clip, from the upcoming MLB Network documentary “One of a Kind,” about Hall of Famer Greg Maddux.

Yeah, that’s just baseball right there: That mental battle between two of the best players I have ever seen is absolute catnip for hardcore fans. Now, I’m of the age that I got to follow Maddux and Barry Bonds their entire careers, so that clip is specifically engineered for me. But it got me wondering: What’s the current matchup equivalent? It’s harder, because while there are many great hitters today (albeit perhaps not quite to Bonds’ caliber), there aren’t a lot of starting pitchers putting together sustained careers like Maddux’s. Hitters and pitchers just don’t get that sort of familiarity with each other anymore. That said, the best-versus-the-best matchup is irresistible. So what are the matchups we could fall in love with today -- and perhaps be reminiscing about in 20 or 30 years? Here are my top three:

• Paul Skenes vs. Aaron Judge: Peak stuff vs. peak power. Just two guys who can do things no one else can. The first inning of the 2024 All-Star Game just left us wanting more.
• Corbin Burnes vs. Juan Soto: Two smart players at the top of their games, with the added bonus of a pennant chase between their teams. (So far, Soto is 2-for-3 with a double and a walk off Burnes in his career, including 1-for-2 with a walk this season.)
• Shohei Ohtani vs. Shohei Ohtani: I guess we can only have this one in video games and our dreams.

4. Who is the Tigers’ top young hitting star?
The Tigers are once again struggling offensively this season, and it’s the primary reason they’re almost certainly going to miss the playoffs for the 10th straight reason. This has to be particularly frustrating for Tigers fans, who have been waiting for young players like Riley Greene, Spencer Torkelson and Colt Keith, among others, to break through for years, with varying degrees of success. But this week was a reminder: Their best hitter is the one no one really saw coming.

After missing nearly three months of the season with a lumbar spine stress fracture (ouch), Kerry Carpenter returned this week and immediately started mashing, hitting three homers in his first two games, both victories over the Mariners. The Tigers scored 15 runs in his first game; they’d scored 14 in the last game he played against the Blue Jays back on May 26. Carpenter has indeed been the best Tigers hitter when he has been healthy, putting up a .287/.341/.611 slash line, and while this has been his best season, he has hit with consistency and authority since entering the Majors in 2022.

The 19th-round Draft pick from 2019 will turn 27 on Sept. 2, so he’s a little older than the other Tigers young guns, but he’s under team control through 2028, which means he’s a guy they can absolutely build around. Detroit has needed competent hitters in its lineup to lift its floor while the phenoms figure it out. Carpenter sure looks like one the club can count on for a while.

Also, according to his Baseball-Reference page, his nickname is “Kerry Bonds.” I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone actually refer to him by that name, but the way he’s going, I’m willing to start.

5. Another season without a repeat champion?
The Rangers’ season, to be clear, is not over. But FanGraphs has them at a 1 percent chance of making the playoffs as of Thursday, which, well, doesn’t make you feel optimistic. (It would help if the Astros would stop winning every game.) 2024 has been disappointing to Rangers fans, but then again, if they’re feeling too low, they can watch all those 2023 World Series highlight videos if they’d like: That will almost certainly cheer them up.

That the Rangers are so unlikely to return to the postseason makes it look like this century will continue without a repeat champion. The last team to repeat was the 1998-2000 New York Yankees, and with the Rangers (likely) out of it, that streak keeps rolling on. Repeat winners obviously are far more common in other sports.

The NFL and the WNBA are currently in the midst of back-to-back winners with the Kansas City Chiefs and the Las Vegas Aces. The Tampa Bay Lightning did it in 2020-21 in the NHL, and the Golden State Warriors won the NBA’s Larry O’Brien Trophy in 2017-18. Heck, it even happens in college sports: The Georgia Bulldogs in football did it two years ago, and the Connecticut Huskies did in women’s basketball in 2015-16 and in men’s basketball just this past year. (In college baseball, South Carolina did it in 2010-11.) Maybe the Rangers will make a wild run. But in all probability, the new-winner-every-year streak in Major League Baseball will continue.

Fun Series of the Weekend: Guardians-Brewers
This native Midwesterner is always happy to remind everyone how often most people in baseball overlook the Central divisions. That’s more difficult to do this year, however. The Guardians had baseball’s best record coming into Thursday, and the Brewers are running away with the NL Central and are closer to the Phillies and Dodgers for the NL’s top seed that most people realize. They kick off a sneaky-fun series at American Family Field on Friday, with both teams hot and seemingly cruising into the postseason. Is this a stealth World Series preview?