For people who don't watch baseball
Everything happening in the sport right now, explained from scratch — and then last night's games. Read it in five minutes and hold your own in the conversation.
The standing stories. Read these first — last night's scores don't mean much without them.
Six divisions, and the winner of each goes to the playoffs. Of the 30 clubs, the Brewers have won the most: 88-55. The two tightest races right now: AL Central: White Sox (74-68) lead the Guardians by 2.5; AL West: Astros (73-70) lead the Rangers by 3.
Say this “The Brewers have more wins than any of the other 29 clubs and it’s barely being discussed.”
Jacob Misiorowski throws a baseball harder than anyone else alive. Of the 25 fastest pitches thrown in the major leagues this season, 20 are his. He topped out at 105.5 mph, and the fastest pitch by anybody else all year was 104.5. He has reached that shelf in 7 different games. There is one nuance worth having: Mason Miller averages more (101.5 mph) — but he is a RELIEVER, throwing 454 pitches all season, one inning at a time. Misiorowski is a starter who averages 100.6 mph across 1486 pitches. Holding that for six innings is the harder thing by a distance. And he is not merely wild: 227 strikeouts against only 39 walks, with a 1.97 ERA against a league average near 4.00.
Say this “The thing about Misiorowski isn’t the 105.5 — it’s that he’s a starter holding 100.6 average over 1486 pitches. Relievers do that for one inning.”
Thirty home runs and thirty stolen bases in the same season is called 30/30. It is rare for a simple reason: the players with enough power to hit thirty are usually too big to steal thirty, and the players fast enough to steal thirty usually cannot hit thirty. Pete Crow-Armstrong sits at 39 and 33 — he is already there. He plays for the Chicago Cubs.
Say this “Crow-Armstrong’s about to go 30/30 and nobody’s talking about it.”
Jacob Misiorowski has allowed 84 hits all season, which is very few. Of those, 14 were home runs — 17%, against 13% for starters generally, so an unusually large share. That matters because it tells you HOW he loses: when he is beaten it tends to be one swing rather than a rally, which is the profile of a pitcher nobody strings hits together against.
Say this “What gets him isn’t rallies — 14 of the 84 hits he’s allowed left the park.”
A rookie is a player in his first full season. Most are finding their feet; a few are already putting up numbers that would be a good season for anyone, and those are the names to have. Sal Stewart (Cincinnati Reds) — 31 home runs, 106 RBI; Kazuma Okamoto (Toronto Blue Jays) — 28 home runs, 81 RBI; Carter Jensen (Kansas City Royals) — 22 home runs, 67 RBI; Nolan McLean (New York Mets) — 179 strikeouts, 3.06 ERA; Parker Messick (Cleveland Guardians) — 173 strikeouts, 2.53 ERA.
Say this “There’s a rookie in Reds with 106 RBI. Nobody outside that city has heard of him.”
Kyle Schwarber has struck out 199 times, which is on pace to be among the most in any season on record. A strikeout is the one out a hitter has no say in — he makes it without putting the ball in play at all, so nothing good can happen by accident.
Careful: Do not turn this into a verdict on him as a hitter. League-wide strikeout rates have roughly doubled since 1980, so every modern hitter strikes out more than his grandfather did. The game changed, not the man — and he hits a lot of home runs, which is the trade the strikeouts pay for.
Say this “Sure, but you can’t compare strikeout totals across eras — the whole league’s rate has roughly doubled since 1980. It’s a record, it’s just not an indictment.”
Baseball is played nearly every day, so form swings hard and fast. Right now the Blue Jays have won 4 in a row, the Orioles have lost 5 straight and Lawrence Butler has got a hit in 14 consecutive games (the record is 56, set in 1941, and is considered unbreakable).
Say this “Blue Jays are the hottest team in baseball right now.”
6 results worth knowing, and the individual performances people will mention.
Both are genuinely open — that's what makes them good questions rather than a quiz.
Only the terms this page actually leaned on tonight. The list changes with the news.