Clippings Friday, September 25, 2020 Braves.com

What to watch for in the Braves' final series

By Mark Bowman

ATLANTA -- Now that the regular season’s final weekend has arrived, it’s time to look at exactly what the Braves could still accomplish before making their third consecutive postseason appearance.

With a 4-2 loss to the Marlins on Thursday night at Truist Park, the Braves’ magic number for clinching the ’s No. 2 postseason seed remained at one. If they secure this spot, they would play the No. 7 seed, which means they likely won’t know their opponent until the still crowded NL playoff race ends on Sunday or Monday (if the Cardinals need to make up at least one game).

One thing the Braves know is they will play the entirety of next week’s Wild Card Series in Atlanta. That has proven to be a good thing, as the team has spent the past couple months constructing an 18-9 home record, which ties them with the Dodgers for the NL’s best mark.

Here are a few other things to keep an eye on:

Get the kids ready Thursday began in encouraging fashion when Braves manager Brian Snitker announced Max Fried’s sore left ankle will not prevent him from starting Game 1 of the Wild Card Series. The day got even better as Ian Anderson held the Marlins scoreless through the first five innings, but he encountered some bad luck while allowing three unearned runs in the sixth.

Now, the Braves will hope Kyle Wright also impresses as he makes his final regular-season start against the Red Sox on Friday. Wright has started to show his promise by providing at least six strong innings in each of his past two starts. Anderson has pitched into the sixth inning in four of his first six career starts.

Anderson’s bid to get through the sixth of Thursday’s start was blemished after a broken bat distracted third baseman Adeiny Hechavarría while he tried to catch Brian Anderson’s soft liner to begin the inning. followed with a single that had just a 66.8 mph exit velocity.

After striking out the next two batters, Anderson ended his night by allowing a single and a Jon Berti double to make the score 3-0. This wasn’t the ending the 22-year-old wanted, but having produced a 1.95 ERA this season, he has created confidence about what he might do when he likely makes his postseason debut in Game 2 of the Wild Card Series.

MVP race Freddie Freeman was hurt by a late-season slump in 2018, and his elbow frustrated him over the final month of a great ‘19 season. But the Braves’ first baseman is heading into the final weekend surging. He entered Thursday leading the NL with a 1.246 OPS in September.

Freeman also entered the day leading the NL with a 3.1 fWAR (Fangraphs’ WAR Model) and ranking second with 185 Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+). After going 0-for-3 in this series finale against the Marlins, he owned a 1.084 OPS, which ranks second in the Majors.

The Braves haven’t had an NL MVP Award winner since Chipper Jones captured the trophy in 1999.

Speaking of the Joneses The Braves also haven’t had a champion since Andruw Jones a franchise-record 51 in 2005. Marcell Ozuna would like to change that. His NL-leading 17 homers equate to a 48-homer pace over a 162-game season.

Eddie Mathews (1959) and Wally Berger (1930) share the franchise record for the most home runs (22) hit through the team’s first 60 games. Ozuna might not reach that mark. But with a good weekend, he could join Andres Galarraga (21 in 1998), Hank Aaron (20 in 1966) and Ryan Klesko (20 in 1996) as the only players of the Atlanta Era to hit at least 20 homers within the same span.

Team HR marks With 99 home runs through their first 57 games, the Braves need to hit just one more to match their total in 2015’s 162-game season; this year’s pace would equate to 281 home runs over that same stretch. Last year’s club hit a franchise record 249 homers. The 2019 team also set a monthly franchise record by hitting 56 home runs in June. The Braves need just five more homers over the final three games to match this record.

Snitker: Fried will be ready for Game 1 of WC

By Mark Bowman

ATLANTA -- Braves manager Brian Snitker expects Max Fried to be ready to start Game 1 of next week’s National League Wild Card Series.

“I think everybody thinks that is a realistic possibility,” Snitker said.

Fried’s availability became uncertain when he turned his left ankle and exited after the first inning of Wednesday night’s win over the Marlins. But the Braves were encouraged by the evaluations that were performed after the game, and when the lefty returned to Truist Park on Thursday.

“He’s moving around OK,” Snitker said. “He’s a little sore. But all the tests were negative and he’ll just continue to get treatment and take it day-to- day. I think with everything they have going on in that training room, he’ll be good to go.”

Fried established himself as an NL Cy Young Award candidate this year, but these past few weeks have been rough. Lower back spasms forced him to spend two weeks on the injured list this month. He was activated Friday, with the thought he’d have time to make two starts before the postseason began.

But if Fried does start Game 1 on Wednesday, he will do so having totaled just six innings dating back to Sept. 5, when his back began to bother him. His 22-pitch outing on Wednesday night was tarnished by the back-to-back solo homers he surrendered to Jesús Aguilar and Brian Anderson. He had faced 220 batters this year without allowing a home run before Aguilar hit his solo shot.

“He’ll be fine,” Snitker said. “It is what it is. There’s nothing wrong with his arm. It’s just one of those situations we’re going to have to play around with.”

MLB, Braves unveil 2021 All-Star Game logo

By Mark Bowman

ATLANTA -- Hank Aaron added to the excitement about what next summer will bring when he appeared on Thursday night's FOX Sports South broadcast and said, “I can’t wait for the 2021 All-Star Game here in Atlanta. Here we go.”

Just before the start of Thursday’s game against the Marlins, Aaron helped the Braves and MLB unveil the 2021 All-Star logo. The iconic Hall of Famer has stood as one of Atlanta’s greatest ambassadors since being part of the city’s first Braves team in 1966.

“ is eager for the return of the All-Star Game and for the opportunity to put one of the game’s great new ballparks on a worldwide stage,” Commissioner said. “Tonight marks the start of an exciting journey for the Braves’ organization and its fans as our sport prepares for a thrilling postseason and for a successful All-Star Week next summer.”

The Midsummer Classic will be played at Truist Park on July 13, 2021. It marks the third time Atlanta has hosted this jewel event. Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium hosted the 1972 All-Star Game, which was highlighted by a home run by Aaron. Chipper Jones experienced the same thrill when he homered in front of the hometown fans when the 2000 ASG was held at Turner Field.

In addition, MLB announced that the 2021 Draft will be held in Atlanta during All-Star Week for the first time. The 2021 MLB Draft will be planned for July 11-13, and for the first time since the inception of the Draft in 1965, the event will be scheduled outside the month of June. The Draft will feature a minimum of 20 rounds across the three days, beginning with the opening night of the Draft on Sunday, July 11, following the 2021 SiriusXM All-Star Futures Game, part of All-Star Sunday at Truist Park. Since 2009, the first night of the Draft has been held live at MLB Network in Secaucus, N.J. Further details regarding the 2021 Draft will be announced in the coming months.

“Today marks a day where we can be optimistic and look towards next July and all the exciting festivities that come along with All-Star Week,” Braves chairman Terry McGuirk said. “We are delighted to also be a part of the first MLB Draft happening in conjunction of All-Star Week and can’t wait to have the spotlight shine on Cobb County, the City of Atlanta, The Battery Atlanta and of course Truist Park.”

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Playoff Watch: Braves’ opponent hinges on weekend games

By Tim Tucker, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Heading into the last weekend of the regular season, six teams are battling neck and neck for the final four spots in the National League playoffs. The Braves will face one of those teams in a best-of-three opening-round series at Truist Park next week.

An update through Thursday’s games:

Braves closing in on No. 2 seed: The NL East champion Braves need one more win or one more loss to clinch the NL’s No. 2 seed. The NL West champion Dodgers (39-17) have wrapped up the No. 1 seed. The Braves (34-23) play three games against the at Truist Park this weekend, while the NL Central-leading Cubs (32-25), who lost a third consecutive game to last-place Pittsburgh on Thursday, play three games at the White Sox. If the Braves and Cubs finish with the same record, the Braves hold the tiebreaker for the No. 2 seed based on a better intra- division record.

How significant is the No. 2 seed? Because so many teams are so closely bunched for the final four spots, all at least within one game of a playoff berth, it’s impossible to know whether the No. 2 or No. 3 seed would yield a more favorable first-round matchup. But here’s a valuable aspect of the No. 2 seed: If the Braves and Cubs win their opening-round series and meet in the neutral-site Division Series, the team with the higher seed would get the last at-bat in three of a possible five games.

Potential opponents if the Braves clinch the No. 2 seed (likely): They’d open the playoffs against the No. 7 seed, which will be the team with the better record of the two wild cards. Through Thursday’s games, that would be … the , whose starting pitching could make them a daunting first-round opponent. The Reds play three games at Minnesota this weekend and could move up or down in the seeds. Five other teams – the St. Louis Cardinals, , , and – could wind up as the Braves' opponent with the No. 7 seed. The Cardinals and Brewers have four games against each other over the next three days, including a Friday doubleheader. The Giants play four vs. San Diego. The Marlins play three at the Yankees and the Phillies three at Tampa Bay.

(A review of how the seeding works for this year’s expanded playoffs: The three division champs will be the top three seeds in order of record. The second-place finishers in the three divisions will be the Nos. 4-6 seeds in order of record. And the two wild-card teams will be the Nos. 7-8 seeds in order of record. The top four seeds will be the home teams throughout the first-round series, dubbed the Wild Card Series by MLB.)

If the Braves slip to the No. 3 seed (unlikely at this point): They’d open the playoffs against the No. 6 seed, which will be the second-place team with the worst record. That could be the runner-up in the NL East (the second-place Marlins are one game ahead of the Phillies) or the NL Central (the second-place Cardinals are one-half game ahead of the Reds).

Ian Anderson solid but Braves commit 4 errors in loss to Marlins

By Gabriel Burns, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

If Ian Anderson’s performance Thursday was a postseason indicator, the Braves will happily take it.

In a rain-delayed, rain-drenched affair, Anderson pitched 5-2/3 innings, allowing three runs – but none earned – in the Braves' 4-2 loss to the Marlins at Truist Park. The Braves took three of four from Miami, which is battling for a spot in the playoffs.

The Braves would’ve clinched the National League’s No. 2 seed with a victory. Instead, they’re one win or a Cubs' loss away from securing the second spot.

A 7:10 p.m. start was delayed until 8:45 p.m. due to rain, and during Anderson’s first inning of work, it appeared the game might be in jeopardy. The rain grew so vicious that Ronald Acuna almost missed a fly ball in center field for the second out.

But the game continued, and the rain calmed down as Anderson completed a scoreless first. Anderson pitched around baserunners in every inning, though some of it will be attributed to an off night for the Braves defense. They committed four errors; third baseman Adeiny Hechavarria (twice), shortstop and second baseman Ozzie Albies all committed errors with Anderson on the mound.

The baserunners didn’t haunt him until the sixth. Brian Anderson began the inning by reaching on Hechavarria’s second error, which made it five consecutive innings a Marlins lead-off man reached – and third time it occurred because of an error.

Garrett Cooper followed with a single that moved Anderson to third. The Braves' Anderson responded confidently, striking out Matt Joyce and , again positioning himself to escape an inning. But Chad Wallach drove a middle-fastball to right field to score the game’s first run. Jon Berti, who was 2-for-2 entering the at-bat, doubled off an elevated change-up. It scored a pair of runs while Berti took third on Albies' throwing error. Anderson was lifted at 104 pitches – a good number considering he won’t pitch again for a week – and A.J. Minter finished the frame by striking out Corey Dickerson.

“I thought it was good,” Anderson said, assessing his outing. “I thought I stayed on the attack all night and pounded the zone, getting weak contact and some good results. I’m happy with how it went.”

Anderson excelled in his rookie season so much that he’s now a critical component of his team’s playoff hopes. The 22-year-old made six starts, earning a 1.95 ERA in 32-1/3 innings. He notably posted a 41:14 strikeout-to-walk ratio, giving the Braves a consistent strike-thrower at a time they were desperate.

The right-hander defeated Gerrit Cole and the Yankees in his first start. His encore was defeating the lowly Red Sox at Fenway Park. He exceeded five innings in four of his six outings, including his best start Sept. 12, when he held the Nationals to one hit over seven scoreless innings.

While most of the Braves' young pitchers have required patience, Anderson has not. He stepped into a situation where stability was urgently needed. Under pressure, without even the benefit of preparing with minor-league starts, Anderson proved major-league ready immediately.

“I feel real confident about him,” manager Brian Snitker said. “Just the way he’s handled all the different situations that have been put in front of him. I feel really good about him starting that second game.”

About that “second game” Snitker mentioned: Anderson’s next start will come in the best-of-three wild-card round, which will be played at Truist Park next week. He’ll follow ace Max Fried, who will pitch Game 1. That means Anderson’s next turn will be a game that either a) be a series- clincher, if the Braves took the first contest, or b) will be a must-win to force a winner-take-all Game 3.

Anderson has shown the maturity, consistency and mental strength to ease concerns about throwing an inexperienced rookie into the postseason fire.

“I have a week here to get ready for what’s next,” Anderson said. “I think we’ll have a good game plan going in. … It’s going to be super exciting. This is what you dream about, coming up here and making an impact and getting a chance to pitch in the postseason. I know everyone in the locker room has a ton of confidence going in. We’re inching to get out there and play some October baseball.”

Notes from Thursday:

- The Braves committed 28 errors in 56 games before Thursday. They were tied with the Indians and Cubs – also playoff-bound clubs – for the seventh fewest in the majors. Consider Thursday an anomaly; the wet, dirty conditions didn’t help either.

“A couple of them (were influenced by the conditions),” Snitker said. “That ball was hard to get ahold of. I know a couple guys, Ozzie did one and Dansby was just off the mark a little bit. Coming off that grass, it was pretty slick. It was a tough night, especially early on. It was wet. Both teams did a good job not letting it get to them. They handled the situation and played a decent ballgame.”

- Marlins starter Pablo Lopez was annihilated in his last start against the Braves, charged with seven runs in 1-2/3 innings. The Braves would go on to post a modern NL-record 29 runs that night.

Thursday was a different story. Lopez allowed two hits over five scoreless innings. Acuna led off the first with a single, stole second but didn’t advance. had a one-out single in the second but likewise wasn’t advanced.

Freddie Freeman was hit by a pitch and Marcell Ozuna walked with two outs in the third, but Lopez drew a shallow pop out from Travis d’Arnaud. Only one more Brave reached base in the next two innings against Lopez.

- Like the defense, it was an rare night for the historically great Braves offense. Swanson’s bases-loaded single in the eighth scored their only two runs.

- Freeman was 4-for-13 in the series entering Thursday, but the MVP candidate went 0-for-3 with a walk in the finale. Freeman has three more games to pad his resume.

- Before the game, the Braves and MLB unveiled the 2021 All-Star Game logo. The next Midsummer Classic will be held in Atlanta for the first time since 2000 and third time overall.

“I can’t wait for the 2021 All-Star game here in Atlanta,” said Hall of Famer and Atlanta icon Hank Aaron. Read details about the 2021 All-Star Game here.

- The Braves will host the Red Sox for the final three games of the regular season. Kyle Wright will have his final tune-up Friday, when he’ll try to build on his recent success since returning from the alternate training site.

Aaron, Manfred introduce logo for 2021 All-Star game at Truist Park

By Tim Tucker, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Braves legend Hank Aaron and baseball commissioner Rob Manfred on Thursday night helped unveil the official logo of next season’s MLB All-Star game, which will be played at Truist Park.

The reveal came in a digital ceremony televised on Fox Sports Southeast just prior to the start of the Braves' rain-delayed game against the Miami Marlins.

“I can’t wait for the 2021 All-Star game here in Atlanta,” Aaron said. “And here we go...”

With that, the logo was revealed.

Next year’s event, scheduled for July 13, will mark the third time the Braves have hosted the All-Star game since moving to Atlanta in 1966. They hosted the game at Atlanta Stadium (later renamed Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium) in 1972 and at Turner Field in 2000.

“Major League Baseball is eager for the return of the All-Star game and for the opportunity to put one of the game’s great new ballparks on a worldwide stage,” Manfred said. “Tonight marks the start of an exciting journey for the Braves' organization and its fans as our sport prepares for a thrilling postseason and for a successful All-Star week next summer.”

The 2020 All-Star game, scheduled for Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. The 2021 game was awarded to Truist Park last year. Dodger Stadium will host the 2022 game.

MLB officially announced Thursday night the previously reported news that the sport’s amateur draft, conducted during the month of June every year since its inception in 1965, will be moved to July 11-13 next year and will be held as part of the All-Star festivities in Atlanta.

The draft will have a minimum of 20 rounds across three days. It will start on July 11 following the All-Star Futures Game at Truist Park.

The first night of the draft has been held at MLB Network’s studios in Secaucus, N.J., since 2009.

“We are pleased to make our draft the newest part of 2021 All-Star Week festivities in Atlanta,” Manfred said. “The All-Star game is a celebration of baseball, and the draft will highlight the amateur levels of our great game and its future stars.”

Max Fried expected to make Game 1 postseason start

By Gabriel Burns, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Braves ace Max Fried is expected to make his next start, which will be Game 1 of next week’s wild-card round postseason series, after results on his tweaked left ankle came back negative.

Fried left his Wednesday start against the Marlins after one inning. He sustained the injury while fielding a bunt, hurting his plant foot while throwing to first for the second out. Fried stayed in and allowed three consecutive hits – including back-to-back homers, which were his first two allowed this season – before finishing the frame.

“All the tests were negative,” manager Brian Snitker said. “They’ll just treat him up the next few days. He’s moving around OK. He’s a little sore, I think. But all the tests were negative, and he’ll continue to get treatment and take it day-to-day.”

The Braves avoided a disaster scenario with their star left-hander. He’s expected to start Game 1 of a best-of-three wild-card round at Truist Park next week, which launches an expanded postseason that will transition to a Texas bubble for the remaining rounds.

“I think so,” Snitker said when asked if Fried would be ready for the start. “We’ll see going forward, but I think everybody feels that’s a realistic possibility.”

In an interview with MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM, general manager Alex Anthopoulos said Fried “will certainly be ready for Game 1.” He added that had Wednesday been a playoff game, Fried probably would’ve continued pitching.

“For the most part, he’s going to be fine,” Anthopoulos said. “The fact we had a week before Game 1 of the playoffs, just give him some rest, rehabilitation, we’ll come up with some kind of bullpen (session) or (simulated) game for him before Game 1. He’ll be good to go.”

In an ideal world, Fried would’ve logged a heavier workload in his final regular-season start. He’s pitched just six innings in two outings since returning from the injured list with a left-side muscle spasm in his lumbar spine that forced him to miss one start.

Fried has pitched 11 innings this month, and he’ll have pitched one inning in 11 days leading to Game 1. Notes from Thursday:

- Third baseman Austin Riley has rested the past two days with minor quadriceps discomfort. Adeiny Hechavarria has filled in at third.

“He’s had a little quad thing going on,” Snitker said. “We didn’t want to take a chance with him. We had an opportunity to get him treatment and give him a couple days. He came in today and told me he’s good to go if we needed him today, and we’ll get him back in there tomorrow.”

- Hechavarria has played in only 23 games and collected 50 plate appearances entering Thursday. Snitker wanted to get him more at-bats leading into the postseason.

“Hech is amazing,” Snitker said. “He can sit for two weeks and go up and have at-bats like he did yesterday. It’s a credit to him, his daily preparation and how he stays ready. That guy never misses a batting practice. He never doesn’t take ground balls. He plays all the positions. He’s a pro and takes his job seriously. When he gets an opportunity, he makes the best of it.”

- The Cubs lost to the Pirates again Thursday, trimming the Braves' magic number to secure the National League’s No. 2 seed to one. The Braves have clinched the tiebreaker over the Cubs, which is intradivision record since the teams haven’t played head-to-head.

If the Braves are the No. 2 seed, they’ll host the No. 7 seed in the best-of-three round. The second seed won’t provide many benefits after that because the NL will shift to a neutral Texas location to complete the postseason.

One certainty: The Braves will be either the No. 2 or No. 3 seed, meaning should they advance, they wouldn’t face Los Angeles or San Diego – the two other NL teams with 34 or more wins – until the NLCS.

- Right-hander Kyle Wright will make his final start of the regular season Friday. Wright’s endured an inconsistent season but he’s finishing strong. In his previous outing, he held the Mets to one hit over 6-1/3 scoreless innings.

“I’ve had an up-and-down season but I’m starting to get back to who I want to be as a pitcher,” Wright said. The Vanderbilt product is crucial to the Braves' postseason success. The rotation is counting on Fried, rookie Ian Anderson and Wright, whose recent breakthrough provides hope he can cover innings and give the potent offense a chance in October.

The Athletic

Ten players to watch this MLB postseason

By Marc Carig and Andy McCullough

We don’t know the precise seedings. We don’t know which of the also-rans in the National League will qualify for the 16-team tournament. We don’t know exactly what baseball’s wild-card round will look like next week. But we have a pretty good idea. And we already have a sense of the players worth tracking as the playoffs begin.

One of the delights of this abbreviated, ethically questionable, downright strange baseball season was watching a new crop of stars emerge. Rookies played like All-Stars. Supporting actors performed like leading men. And a few old stalwarts recaptured their former glory.

The expanded playoffs may boomerang and compromise the industry down the road. But they do mean that almost all the best players in the sport will get a crack at the October limelight. Outside of Jacob deGrom, Anthony Rendon and Mike Trout, all the great ones will be on the field next week.

Here is a look at the 10 players most worth following when the postseason opens on Tuesday:

Tim Anderson, SS, White Sox

Twelve years have passed since the White Sox last appeared in the playoffs. They will sail into the tournament this year with a riveting roster. Eloy Jiménez is living up to his promise. Luis Robert is holding his own as a rookie in center field. José Abreu has a case for MVP. And at the top of the lineup is Tim Anderson, who has built off his breakout campaign last season to hit even better in 2020.

Anderson won the batting title with a .335 average in 2019. He entered Thursday’s games with a .346 average and an .950 OPS, which was 85 points higher than the previous season. His offense is prodigious. So is his personality.

Consider how Anderson handled his first career homer off Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer, who has been very good this season and is also historically Very Online.

“I told him to put that on his YouTube channel as well,” Anderson said. A couple days later, after the White Sox clinched a postseason berth, he was asked if the public is paying more attention to his club.

“They should,” he said.

Noted.

Shane Bieber, SP, Indians

The Indians offense might rank 16th among the playoff entrants. But they remain a formidable challenge for any opponent. Why? They can pitch. The roster overflows with talented arms: Zach Plesac and Carlos Carrasco and Triston McKenzie, Brad Hand and James Karinchak and Nick Wittgren, even 18-year veteran Oliver Pérez.

The tip of the spear, of course, will be Bieber. He is the consensus favorite for the American League Cy Young Award. After his outing Wednesday against the White Sox, he was leading the junior circuit in ERA (1.63), strikeouts (122) and batting average against (.167).

Bieber has lasted at least six innings in 10 of his 12 starts. Even more important, he has logged at least seven innings in five of them. The ability of starters to last deep into games will matter more this October, with no days off in the middle rounds. If Bieber can dominate during his appearances, he can permit Cleveland to keep some of their relief powder dry for later days, which makes this staff that much more formidable.

Brandon Lowe, 2B, Rays

It would be disingenuous to cast the Rays, the low-budget kings of the big-money , as a group of anonymous widgets on a Strat-O-Matic board. Blake Snell has rebounded from an off year in 2019 to resemble his 2018 Cy Young Award form. Tyler Glasnow strikes out batters at a higher rate than every other starter in baseball. Kevin Kiermaier might be the sport’s best center fielder. The roster is loaded with versatile hitters and talented arms.

The centerpiece of the group is Lowe, a 26-year-old second baseman. Batting from the No. 2 spot, Lowe has demonstrated increased power this year. Tampa Bay shuttles a lot of players in and out of its lineup, but Lowe is the constant.

Aaron Judge, OF, Yankees

The Yankees get it. The rewards for winning a division title are minimal. All that mattered, general manager Brian Cashman explained during an injury-ravaged summer, was getting their stars back for the postseason.

So the team did not feel compelled to rush Judge back to the diamond when he re-aggravated his strained calf in late August. Judge took three weeks to rehab before easing back into competition. He returned a day after Giancarlo Stanton came off the injured list, giving manager Aaron Boone a pair of titanic sluggers to aid his lineup.

In Judge’s absence, the trio of DJ LeMahieu, Luke Voit and Clint Frazier carried the Yankees offense. But Judge adds another dimension to the group, and heightens the group’s potential. Judge tends to get nicked up during the regular season, which may prevent him from ever collecting an MVP award. But when he is healthy, he is one of the most frightening, imposing hitters in the sport. He can wreak havoc in October. And after a middling 60-game stretch, Judge and the Yankees are rounding into form as the playoffs approach.

Jesús Luzardo, SP, A’s

The are a study in the value of competence. The team ended Houston’s reign atop the in 2020 despite regression from 2019 MVP candidate Marcus Semien, a season-ending injury to clubhouse leader Matt Chapman and a pair of mediocre campaigns from starters Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas. How? Because Oakland game-plans effectively, employs perhaps the sport’s most underrated manager in Bob Melvin and stockpiles quality players who can replace missing production in the aggregate.

Perhaps you’ve heard about this formula before. And perhaps you’ve heard how it works in the playoffs.

One way for the A’s to get over the hump in October is to roll out starting pitchers who can dominate. Which is where Luzardo, the 22-year-old left- hander comes in. Anchored by a mid-90s fastball, his three-pitch mix can overwhelm opposing hitters. He showed his mettle this month with a seven-inning, two-run outing against Houston and a six-inning, scoreless gem against San Francisco. Oakland has a good enough bullpen to make up for some deficiencies in the rotation. But they need some distance to keep their relievers fresh. Luzardo might be up to the task.

Yu Darvish, SP, Cubs

The last pitch Yu Darvish threw in the postseason was as a Dodger in Game 7 of the 2017 . It was a 95 mph fastball that drifted toward the inner half of the plate. The Astros’ George Springer unleashed a swing so forceful you’d think he knew what was coming. Or maybe Darvish — as had been the accepted narrative — had been tipping his pitches. Either way, it was the second time in that series that Darvish didn’t get through the second inning. “This pain,” he said that night, “is going to stay in me for a while.”

Arguably, it lingered into the second half of the 2019 season. That’s when the Cubs began seeing the pitcher they’d signed for six years and $126 million immediately after flopping in the World Series for the Dodgers. “If I didn’t have that World Series, I can’t pitch like last year in that second half,” Darvish said earlier this year. “That came from that thing; I was fired up. I have to take that the right way.” That Darvish is in the mix for the NL Cy Young Award is proof that he’s taken adversity the right way. He’s been precisely the kind of ace that the Cubs have needed. And this October provides redemption for a calamity that may not have been all his doing.

Fernando Tatis Jr., SS, Padres

Just before , Fernando Tatis Jr. appeared on a Zoom call. He wore a gray mask and neatly tied back his flowing hair as he delivered a mission statement. “We’re aiming for the big cake, man,” he said. “We’re aiming for everything. I think the boys are ready. I think we have a very good team out here … I think we’re just going to aim for the big cake and why not? Let’s go win a World Series.”

It hasn’t been a September to remember for Tatis. After spending most of the season as the frontrunner for the NL MVP award, he’s cooled off with a .650 OPS. It will help that Tatis isn’t the only one powering the Padres.

Manny Machado finds himself in the MVP mix thanks to a September surge. Wil Myers has come alive and Jurickson Profar has turned it on. And while ’s status for the playoffs is unknown, Dinelson Lamet has emerged as a clear No. 1 and the rotation remains formidable.

Nevertheless, Tatis remains the spark for the whole operation. He’s the most dynamic player on one of the most fun teams in baseball. If the Padres are going to have their cake, they’ll need Tatis to start hitting again. And with him, a torrid stretch never seems too far away.

Mookie Betts, RF, Dodgers

It takes some doing to improve a juggernaut, but that’s precisely what the Dodgers did upon acquiring Mookie Betts, a Most Valuable Player, World Series champion, and one the best all-around players in the entire sport. He’s looked the part in his first season with the Dodgers. Of course, it won’t matter unless it ends with a championship.

The Dodgers have won eight straight NL West crowns. But their October stretches have been pockmarked by the struggles of their best players. Pick a star. If they’re not named Justin Turner, they’ve faltered in the postseason. In this way, Betts isn’t much different. In 99 plate appearances in the playoffs, he’s hitting .227/.313/.341 with an OPS of .654. His only homer came in the 2018 World Series — against his current team.

Every October brings a new chance to reshape a legacy. Alex Rodriguez, another former MVP, had been a notorious playoff choker. Then 2009 arrived. The Yankees won a World Series. Like the Dodgers, that club was stacked from top-to-bottom with talent, but they wouldn’t have finished the job without A-Rod.

The Dodgers are the best team in baseball. On most days, it doesn’t look particularly close. But they’re going to need Betts to defy his own personal postseason history if they’re going to win the World Series for the first time since 1988.

Ronald Acuña Jr., CF, Braves

The baseball world must wait until 2021 to see if Acuña can crack the 40-40 club, as he nearly did in 2019. On a tighter schedule this season, he has still managed to level up as a hitter in a way that should frighten opposing pitchers. Acuña has doubled his walk rate while gaining more power. He entered Thursday’s games with a .425 weighted on-base average, the fifth-best in baseball.

Two of the four players ahead of Acuña on that list are his teammates, Freddie Freeman and Marcell Ozuna. The trio, along with Travis d’Arnaud, carried the Atlanta offense en route to a third-straight title. So why Acuña over his similarly productive teammates? He was, after all, part of MLB’s “Let The Kids Play” marketing blitz, a vibrant, charismatic presence who also sometimes manages to upset his elders, both in opposing dugouts and his own. He is never dull.

Trevor Bauer, SP, Reds

On Wednesday night, with his name featured prominently in the quagmire that is the race for the NL Cy Young Award, Trevor Bauer took the mound on three days’ rest. He did so for a team that has spent years ramping up for a run at the playoffs. They’re in the middle of the chase. On multiple levels, the stakes were high. Bauer responded by striking out 12 in eight brilliant innings.

Afterward, he was asked if he’d done enough to win the Cy Young Award. He answered in his blunt style that, depending on perspective, is either engaging or enraging. “I don’t know how you could see it any other way,” Bauer said.

The playoffs need that kind of energy.

Bauer draws plenty of attention for his comments, whether it’s blasting the commissioner or trolling the Astros. But he’s also long been the personification of baseball’s new growth mindset. No one can question his devotion to his craft. His latest gem lowered his ERA to 1.73, the best in the NL. His 100 strikeouts also set the pace.

Bauer is a free agent next season. He’s already set himself up for a healthy payday. A strong October would only bolster his rising stock.

Rosenthal: How should teams evaluate players after this strange, short season?

By Ken Rosenthal

Christian Yelich called it.

“This year is unique in the aspect of you just don’t know what you’re going to get from anybody,” the Brewers’ right fielder said on July 5, at the start of 2.0. “You’re going to see really good players have really bad years. It’s going to happen. Not only position player-wise, but pitcher-wise. You don’t have that large sample size for everything to even out, so if you get off to a tough start or a bad start, you’re really behind the eight ball.”

Little did Yelich know, he was forecasting his own disappointing season – he’s batting .205 with a .773 OPS, down 327 points from last season, with the ninth highest strikeout percentage in the majors. But it’s not just Yelich who struggled while playing through the COVID-19 pandemic in the unprecedented, abbreviated 2020 campaign.

Javier Báez has the second-lowest OPS in the majors, José Altuve the ninth-lowest. Carlos Santana, Josh Bell, Jorge Polanco, Carlos Santana, Yuli Gurriel and J.D. Martinez are among the other accomplished hitters in the bottom 25. The top of the OPS leaderboard mostly features names you would expect – Juan Soto, Freddie Freeman, Mike Trout, etc. But the high end of the performance scale also includes breakouts from players who spent time in the minors last season – Adam Duvall, Teoscar Hernández, Corbin Burnes – not to mention surprise teams such as the Marlins, Giants and Blue Jays.

What to make all of this? Would the outcomes be similar if the regular season consisted of the usual 162 games instead of 60? How should teams evaluate players in a year that, because of the unusual circumstances resulting from the pandemic, included new and unforeseen variables? The adjustments for players included everything from playing without fans to losing access to in-game video, living apart from families to being largely confined to hotel rooms on the road.

Executives are struggling with how to muffle the statistical noise and approach the offseason. Significant payroll cuts are likely for most if not all clubs, putting an even greater premium on shrewd decision-making. The cancelation of the minor-league season only will add to the difficulty in judging talent, since minor leaguers did not play in any games. Those who were part of teams’ 60-man player pools competed in glorified scrimmages, but that’s it.

By contrast, the competition in the majors generally appeared remarkably normal, considering no fans were in the stands. The final weekend of the regular season offers the usual races for postseason berths and scrambles for playoff seedings, only this time for an expanded 16-team field. But trying to determine whether a player’s performance in 2020 reflects his actual ability is a challenge executives dread.

“I think it’s next to impossible. I don’t think we know what to do with this year. We’re going to make our best guess. I imagine different clubs are going to treat this year in different ways,” one executive said. “The human inclination is going to be to look at the guys who performed and count that as real, and then to look at the guys who under-performed or had bad years and say, ‘Oh, it’s an aberration because of all the craziness of 2020.’ That’s not the right way to do it. You probably should count all performance or not.”

Yet, “all performance” consists of only 60 games, and 60 games normally represents just 37 percent of the season. In 2018, Yelich’s MVP season, he had a 68-game stretch in the first half in which he batted .268 with a .790 OPS. He finished at .326 and 1.000. Who’s to say in a normal season he couldn’t match those numbers, especially when his average exit velocity remains in the top 1 percent of all players? Heck, even the ultra-consistent Trout is not immune from 60-game slides. His worst stretch of that length, featuring decent numbers for mere mortals (.250 BA, .783 OPS), occurred in 2014.

Assign too much weight to 60 games, and teams risk seeing patterns where there are no patterns, drawing conclusions from a statistical profile that in normal times would be less than half-complete. The temptation to form a narrative exists not only with players, but also with teams, an equally dangerous proposition. The 2019 Nationals started 19-31 before rallying to win the World Series. The 2018 Dodgers started 16-26 before losing to the Red Sox in the World Series. Those samples were not as large as 60 games, but recent baseball history provides more comparable reference points. The 2017 Indians, for example, started 31-31 and won 102 games.

Then there is 2020.

“This season is going to break so many analytical models,” one statistically inclined executive said. “There are so many weird things happening that are not really indicative of the player. But that’s all we have.”

The truth from players seeped out all season. J.D. Martinez talked about his frustration with the lack of access to in-game video, a 2020 prohibition stemming from concern that players would gather too closely around video terminals. Zack Britton spoke of the difficulty of being separated from four children ages 5 or under, and a wife who just gave birth to their youngest. Sean Doolittle, Harrison Bader and Michael Chavis are among those who mentioned the mental grind of adhering to the health and safety protocols and dealing with constant uncertainty and loneliness.

Players face the same real-life pressures as everyone else, but rarely make excuses publicly. We often do not know the extent of their injuries, much less whether they are dealing with an ailing parent, going through a divorce or managing some other life crisis. The 2020 season, and its disruption of the routines most major leaguers spend years developing, presented an entirely new set of challenges. Consider Báez, the Cubs’ shortstop nicknamed “El Mago,” The Magician. Báez, 27, is an entertainer, a player who seems to feed off the energy of the crowd. Coming off two seasons in which he averaged 32 homers and an .865 OPS, he also appeared to be a candidate for a $200 million extension. But this season, there were no fans. And at a time when the Cubs and other clubs are laying off employees and likely planning other cuts, there might not be an extension, or at least not one as lucrative as Báez may have envisioned.

Báez, like Martinez, vented about the lack of in-game video access, and he also has cited the strangeness of playing without fans. The impact of such factors on him and others, though, is impossible to measure. Some players might prefer the reduced stress of competing in empty parks and dealing with fewer games. A greater number were unsettled by the environment, starting with the shorter season.

“In talking to a lot of players, they have put more pressure on themselves, especially if they didn’t get off to a good start,” one executive said. “It’s not as easy to say, ‘OK, I’ve had a bad month.’ If you’ve had a bad month, you’ve had a bad half-season. You don’t get a chance to have a bad half- season usually in the major leagues unless you’re ultra-talented. You get sent out. You get released.”

The executive believes some players ultimately might benefit from taking a more active role in their development, doing more on their own. But Astros manager Dusty Baker and others note that players, by being essentially locked down both at home and on the road, were deprived of outlets to relieve their tension. A struggling hitter could not go to his favorite restaurant with teammates on the road to forget about that night’s 0- for-4. Those who chose to separate from their families were unable to unwind with them at home.

Many Americans face greater hardships while earning far less money than major leaguers. But baseball is a game of failure, and those failures play out publicly, testing players’ mental strength. The physical demands of this season, meanwhile, also were unlike any other.

Spring training began as it normally does in mid-February, but the sport shut down on March 12 because of concern over the virus. Some players cut back on their work during the hiatus, perhaps because they had limited access to facilities, perhaps because they doubted the season would take place. Once commissioner Rob Manfred announced he would impose the 60-game schedule on June 22, players had to ramp up for the start of a second training camp on July 1 and the season openers July 23 and 24. Outbreaks of the virus among the Marlins and Cardinals led to compressed schedules not just for those clubs, but also opponents and even opponents of opponents who had to make up postponements.

The physical strain created by the stop-and-start nature of the schedule is reflected in at least one measure: the number of pitching injuries. Through 60 days, pitchers made 180 non-COVID trips to the injury list, an average of three a day. The number at the same point last season was slightly more than 100. In 2016, it was 70.

So many elements. So many variables. The truth continues to seep out from players, but only in bits. In the days, months and even years ahead, they likely will speak more freely about their experiences in 2020. Only then will a fuller portrait emerge.

Teams in recent years increasingly have used data and video to evaluate players. The marginalization of traditional scouts was evident this season both at the club level, through staff reductions, and the league level, through MLB’s decision to prohibit scouts from attending games.

Yet, at least for 2020, the data might be less relevant, and certain judgments scouts form in the stands – on players’ work habits, for example – might have proven beneficial. For all the effort teams put into their internal projections, both for individuals and clubs, executives recognize the sample is too small and the circumstances too unusual to forecast anything in ’21 with confidence. As one exec put it, “We’ve had to change all of our models. There is far more noise and far more variance in a 60-game season than 162.”

Another executive said, “It probably will reduce confidence in the projections. We’re going to have to essentially weigh the data less heavily, since we have less of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if teams were less aggressive making moves this winter due to decreased confidence in player evaluation tools compounding with likely retraction in payrolls.”

Similar concerns existed prior to the Aug. 31 trade deadline, but teams still completed 36 deals in the final 10 days of August, including 17 on deadline day. Some general managers – take your bows, Jerry Dipoto and A.J. Preller – simply cannot refrain from activity. The off-season landscape, though, also includes free agency and salary arbitration. Owners who already were expected to clamp down on payrolls might cite the uncertainty about 2020 performances as another reason not to spend.

Potential free agents such as DJ LeMahieu, J.T. Realmuto, Nelson Cruz and Trevor Bauer reinforced their values by performing to career levels or beyond. But is Marcus Semien the player who had an .892 OPS last season or the one who has a .685 OPS this season? And what to make of Marcus Stroman, who opted out of the season and did not pitch at all?

Similar questions will arise in arbitration, which might unfold differently than in the past; players and owners, in the March agreement outlining the framework for the 2020 season, pledged in good faith to discuss the possibility of an alternative system or methodology to determine arbitration salaries for ’21. Whatever the system, will Duvall argue that by virtue of his 16 homers and .878 he is now a star? Will the Cubs harp on Báez’s 266- point drop in OPS if they continue going year-to-year with him rather than sign him to an extension, and say, “Sorry, we’re not sure you’re the player we thought you were?”

One executive cited another problem as even more confounding.

“At least at the major-league level, we have some assessments to make. The bigger question is, what do you make of minor leaguers? We have nothing. And as we sit here today, I don’t know the path to minor-league baseball next year,” the executive said. “The only way the economics of minor-league baseball work is if we have fans in the stands. If there aren’t going to be fans in the stands, owners effectively will have to subsidize minor-league baseball, pay for all these expenses. Which by definition would mean they would have to take expenses away from the major-league team. I don’t know where we’re going to end up on that.”

Losing one minor-league season is damaging enough to the development of young players. Losing two would potentially hurt the product, not to mention the players, going forward. For now, only one thing appears certain: The lack of information on minor leaguers, even among teams that participated in a data-sharing program enabling them to learn more on players at alternate sites, likely will reduce the number of prospects traded.

For major leaguers, it’s not as if their statistics will prove utterly meaningless, even if – in another quirk of 2020 – each club played opponents in only two divisions. Some team-wide trends, in particular, lasted long enough for club officials to form opinions about why they occurred. The Diamondbacks, for example, started 13-11, then lost 20 of 24 because their hitters became too aggressive and prone to streaks. The Angels’ rotation and Phillies’ bullpen were expected to be bad, and were bad.

“You can’t just pretend the year didn’t happen and age everybody a year. You do have 60 games. But at the same time, are they 60 real games?” one executive said. “How do you evaluate rookies when there is nobody in the stands? With so much of the technology we have, a lot of people will say, ‘We can evaluate players in less than 60 games in a normal season, so why is this one any different.’ But with everything everyone is dealing with, everything off the field, I don’t know. It’s a hard question. I don’t have a good answer for it.”

No one in baseball does.

The Athletic’s state of baseball survey results: Following up as season closes

By Jayson Jenks

As this one-of-a-kind season winds down, The Athletic wanted to circle back to see how fans felt about some of baseball’s changes and new rules.

Nearly 7,000 people responded. Let’s get to the results.

This has gone up from our survey before the season when just 66 percent of respondents said a World Series would be legitimate.

This one was really interesting. A total of 76 percent of fans of American League teams are in favor of the universal DH; the exact same percentage from our survey before the season.

NL-centric fans have pretty significantly changed their feelings. Before the season, 56 percent of fans of NL teams were against the universal DH. But after watching the DH in action, that number dropped to 43 percent. Before the season, a whopping 80 percent of Cardinals fans were against the DH; in this most recent survey, that total dropped to 58 percent. They were one of five teams whose fans were against the DH (Nationals, Cardinals, Pirates, Diamondbacks).

In the AL, White Sox fans were really in favor of the universal DH (85 percent) after watching their team rake this year. Two other AL fans crossed the 80-percent threshold, and neither should be surprising: the Yankees (81 percent) and the Twins (80 percent).

One fan had a particularly interesting comment: “Before this crazy season, I was adamantly opposed to the universal DH. Now, although I still don’t love it, I could live with it.”

Full disclosure: I hated this rule when I first heard about it. Absolutely hated it. But when I watched it … I liked it. If nothing else, it induced drama right away.

Several fans said that while they enjoyed the rule, they think it should start in the 11th or 12th inning. “Let them have an inning or two the normal way,” one person wrote. That seems like a sensible compromise to me.

One fan who liked it wrote, “The extra inning rule has added an excitement not just to extra innings but also adds even more importance to finishing a game off in the ninth.” Another added, “The extra-inning rule has been surprisingly good. I’m here for a good time, not a long time.”

But those people were in the minority. Wrote one fan, “The extra inning rule does the most violence to the fabric of the game and fixes a nonexistent problem.” Another person compared it to college football’s overtime rules. While still another said it felt like the rule was intended just to “get it over with.”

One person who was against the minimum made this point: “I don’t care for the three-batter minimum because I don’t think it helps make things any faster, making it pointless.” Our Cliff Corcoran did the math earlier this year and figured that the minimum would save … 34 seconds per game.

Here are some other reactions:

“I like the three-batter rule if only because it allows the pitcher to show he’s more than a one-trick pony.”

“It means a bullpen has to be filled with capable pitchers, not just specialists.”

“Absolutely loathe the three-batter rule. LOATHE. Kills the strategy and excitement of those old games. They were like a chess match.” “Three batters is a superficial attempt to solve the time issue.”

This was a lot of people’s least-favorite change (The other most common answer was the extra-inning rule). One fan wrote that it turned the sport into a “carnival act.” Another liked it because it made “starting pitching have similar value to years past.”

Here are some other responses:

“Seven-inning double header is solid idea. Over the course of the 162 game season you only would have a handful, and it keeps the players fresher.”

“I don’t necessarily love the seven-inning doubleheader’s, but I like doubleheaders, so if that’s how we have them, then I’m for that.”

“I liked the seven-inning double headers as long as they keep it single admission.”

“I liked that there were more doubleheaders, so much baseball in one day. That those games were seven-inning affairs made it possible for me to listen/watch the whole thing.”

“Seven-inning doubleheaders are anticlimactic every time.”

“Seven-inning doubleheaders are not baseball. It’s trash. I understand it for this season just to be able to get through the games. But it’s not something I’d ever want to see become the norm.”

This one was a little surprising. Before the season, 57 percent of people were against the expanded postseason. But now that it’s here, that number jumped up to almost 71 percent.

One person wrote, “I like a limited expanded playoffs, but eight teams is too many, and the seeding is random and stupid.” Another said, “I think that expanded playoffs dilute the competition, especially the regular season.” And still another person chimed in with, “I’m most against an expanded postseason that does not reward division winners. I don’t mind an expanded field, per se, but there should be a better incentive for teams to win their division beyond just three home games in the first round.”

This one really seemed to bother a lot of people:

“My greatest concern is growing the game. Every choice MLB makes is about short-term financial gains at the expense of future growth and engaging the next generation of fans. I mean seriously, MLB is eliminating minor-league teams, heavily attended by families and kids.”

“Without the minors, for me it’s like one-third of baseball, because I’m the rare fan who follows all of my team’s minor league teams.”

“Great that teams are playing, but fearful of the consequences of no minor leagues and impact on next generation of players.”

“I am sad to see what could be the implosion of the minor-league system as we know it. … While I have been to only a few major-league games in person, much of my love of baseball comes from summers at all sorts of minor-league stadiums.”

“Canceling minor-league baseball was bad for the players but mostly for the small towns that support the teams.”

“I understand why the minor leagues aren’t playing this season, but I don’t like the negative effects on player development and the possible future of the minors in general.”

Here are some responses across the spectrum:

“The D-backs being terrible ruined the whole thing for me, but as a league I think the season went better than expected after the ridiculous labor arguments and early COVID issues. Granted I had very low expectations early on.”

“Good year to experiment. I wish that they tried more things to quicken the pace of the game.”

“It’s a season with multiple asterisks.”

“Short and sweet.”

“Made the games more important.”

“I would have liked even more experimentation. It’s been tough to get overly excited by the season when 50 percent of teams will make the postseason.”

“This season is a joke. Players and owners alike are to blame. They fiddled around and now we’re stuck with a shortened season, ridiculous rules and accommodations to make the season ‘work.’ I’m boycotting MLB this year. I may or may not be back.”

“The season’s sprint to the finish really has me believing a shorter season could be more fun for all.”

“The shortened season has given us a chance to see what the sport might look like if we didn’t have 150 years of history telling us it was something else. Baseball needs to ask itself what it wants to be. Does it want to be more like basketball, with a shorter number of regular season games and a longer postseason? Or does it want to embrace its history and everyday nature and keep the regular season meaningful?”

I was curious if people would change their minds after watching a shortened season. They didn’t. At least not much.

Before the season, just 2.2 percent of respondents thought the ideal season consisted of fewer than 100 games. That number actually went down (slightly) to just 1.9 percent.

Not much change from the survey before the season, when 38 percent percent of fans expressed no confidence at all in Manfred and 47 percent said they weren’t very confident.

Thanks to all who participated in both surveys. Enjoy the postseason.

Angry birds: MLB wants ‘more robust’ drone laws after recent aerial incursions

By Bill Shea

If Major League Baseball approves hedge fund tycoon Steve Cohen’s $2.4 billion offer to buy the , he won’t get missiles, lasers, anti- aircraft guns, or trained attack birds at Citi Field.

The ballpark is one of several American sports venues to employ passive anti-drone technology that identifies the presence of unmanned aerial vehicles – a formal term for drones – and the location of their pilots, but federal aviation and communications laws do not permit the Mets or anyone else to seize control of them – or to blow them out of the sky.

Drones are a topic in sports lately after a series of incursions by the little remote-operated flying machines, often mounted with a high-def camera and powered by batteries, briefly halted MLB games in Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Dodger Stadium and Target Field since August.

The most recent incident was a seven-minute delay on Sept. 16 when a small drone landed in the outfield at in the fifth inning of a Cubs-Indians game, which saw officials clear both teams off the field until the drone flew away. It’s illegal under federal law to fly drones over a ballpark or sporting event, and it’s also illegal to try to jam their signals or take them down, leaving teams with limited options to mitigate the threat while avoiding liability issues.

Drone use by the public has increased 100 percent during the pandemic, industry experts have said, and total sales of mostly Chinese-made hobby drones to the American public has topped more than 1.7 million registered vehicles, per Federal Aviation Administration data. That includes 1.2 million recreational drones (such as the one that grossly sliced up pitcher Trevor Bauer’s pinky ahead of the 2016 World Series) and almost 500,000 commercial drones.

Baseball said it’s lobbying the federal government for help to counter drone incursions but declined to offer specifics of what it would like.

Here is MLB’s statement on drones: “The FAA has a Temporary Flight Restriction in place over Major League ballparks on game days, which includes a general prohibition on drone operations. Along with other impacted organizations, MLB is actively involved in discussions with the FAA, the DOJ, the FBI, Homeland Security, and other relevant federal agencies to seek additional help in preventing unauthorized drone flights over outdoor professional sporting events.

“Each ballpark has a response plan in place if an unauthorized drone flight becomes a safety or security issue, including attempts to identify the pilot of the unauthorized flight, but drones are considered aircraft and the same Federal laws restricting interference with manned aircraft currently apply to drones. There are additional Title 18 prohibitions and FCC regulations that further restrict the ability to deploy counter-drone technology. MLB is diligently pursuing appropriate federal Congressional action to legally enable more robust mitigation efforts. But in the meantime, it is important for drone hobbyists to understand that flying drones over stadiums during games is dangerous, against the law, and could subject them to criminal prosecution and civil liability. In five instances this season, Umpires have responded to these incidents appropriately and in accordance with our protocols.”

Counter-drone companies caution that it’s dangerous for non-government/military clients to try to interfere with drones or to shoot them down with guns, energy beams, nets and other technology that is currently limited to police, military and other agencies that protect critical infrastructure.

Instead, they recommend teams, leagues and venues stick with passive technology such as sensors and cameras that alert clients to the presence and locations of drones and allows security or police to track down the drone pilots.

“To neutralize a drone – it would be perceived as the same as hijacking a commercial aircraft,” said Amit Samani, vice president of enterprise sales at San Francisco-based Dedrone Holdings Inc., which has the counter-drone contract at Citi Field and has done drone work for the PGA Tour, auto racing, rugby and other sports work in addition to some 400 government and commercial installations.

“Apprehending the pilot is most suitable scenario. Not everyone is a bad guy. Most people just don’t know,” he said, adding that he thinks education will take care of most drone issues.

The New York Mets or some other teams blasting a drone out of the sky – or using a trained eagle to intercept it, as European police and militaries have experimented with – opens them to liability.

“What people need to understand is, when a drone is taken out of the sky, it has to come down somewhere,” Samani said. “What would happen if that drone crashed and hit a spectator?”

That said, the initial impulse from companies and organizations when it comes to drones usually is to take them down, he said. And that’s growing as drones proliferate and people remain stuck at home and unable to attend sporting events.

“The problem is persistent and is definitely escalating,” Samani said. “Where there is a drone overhead, people just start to freak out.”

Dedrone conducted drone monitoring tests over seven airports globally for more than 200 days over 2018-19 and in that time 380 drones were recorded, Samani said.

Federal law allows only the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department to shoot down drones. Local police can be granted permission under certain circumstances. The military has a wide variety of anti-drone technology for combat deployments overseas.

Unless the laws are changed, private companies and organizations are better served by employing the passive technology that tracks drones and pilots and creates data patterns to identify potential incursions. Tracking should begin well ahead of an event or game because drone users often take three or four practice flights ahead of time when the stadium or site is less protected.

“If you use the technology in an appropriate way, you can easily defend the asset and stay within the laws,” he said.

The recent spike in MLB drone incidents is expected to fuel a wave of counter-drone technology investments across sports, Samani added.

“Over the next 12 to 24 months you’re doing to see every major stadium start to invest in this technology,” he said.

It’s not just MLB affected. Arrests were made last year when drones were flown over the University of Michigan’s football season opener. Drones have been confiscated and pilots arrested at recent Super Bowls, and one crashed into empty seats at Petco Park during a Padres game in 2017. That year also saw a drone pilot arrested for dropping leaflets over San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders games. And in 2015, a drone tumbled into the seats at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in Queens, N.Y., and police arrested the pilot.

The New York Giants added the AirWarden Drone Detection System from Holmdel, N.J.-based AeroDefense in 2018 at MetLife Stadium.

“This has not been a major issue for us so far. The AeroDefense system seems to work well. Obviously, we are aware that drone usage is increasing, and we will continue to monitor this going forward,” said John Mara, the Giants co-owner and top executive, via email.

While no one will disclose specifics or numbers, the technology has halted drone incursions at MetLife.

“There have been more than several incidents they have been able to disrupt,” said Lexi Rinaudo, AeroDefense’s marketing manager.

There’s been a sharp spike in teams and sports inquiring about AeroDefense’s technology, she said, but declined to disclose names. Dedrone’s Samani said the same thing – sports clients are expected to be a growth market.

Most counter-drone systems are predicating on identifying the presence of radio frequency signals unique to drones, using a series of antennas mounted around the stadium or event site. Ballpark operations and security staff get audible, visual, text and email alerts when a drone is spotted and a user interface on a mobile device, tablet or computer provides the drone and pilot locations.

The idea is that the security and police assigned to the ballpark can track down the pilot to decide if there is nefarious intent or if the person simply is ignorant of the laws that forbid flights near stadiums during games.

The counter-drone technology has to be able to sift through the presence of a vast array of RF signals in and around a stadium, which emanate from Wi-Fi, mobile devices, and other technology. Some systems are able to account for permissible drones, such as those used by Fox for its golf broadcasts.

Identification of the vehicle and pilot is the safest way to handle drone incursion, Rinaudo said, because “mitigating a drone” – tech speak for jamming its signals or shooting it down – raises liability concerns because it could crash into people on the ground.

“It can be a pretty dangerous situation, which is why that authority (to force down drones) is not given out freely,” she said. “What we’re saying with our system, you can locate the drone and pilot now. You don’t need legal approval for it. It’s really the safest way to mitigate a drone threat.”

While drones can represent a dangerous threat as a weapon, or even be used by an opposing team trying to spy, most incidents at sports venues are out of ignorance, Rinaudo said.

“The majority are just clueless, careless hobbyist pilots,” she said.

Nearly 40 percent of drone operators say they have little or no familiarly with civilian drone regulations, according to an August poll of drone pilots by data intelligence firm Morning Consult.

At MetLife, most drone incidents have been during other events rather than Giants or Jets games, she said.

“It’s either people just trying to get a peek at the action or people might not be aware anything is going on at the stadium,” Rinaudo said. “There haven’t been any nefarious incidents at stadiums thus far.”

The PGA Tour declined to comment, citing privacy of its security techniques, but tour events have been known to employ anti-drone technology. The country’s other large open-air pro sport, Major League Soccer, didn’t respond to a question about its anti-drone efforts. Its matches this summer included ESPN drone coverage as part of broadcasts. A message was also left on Wednesday for the Mets, and for the NFL about its position on drone laws, but the league didn’t respond.

ESPN How empty ballparks would have changed MLB history -- and could alter games this October

By Sam Miller

Humans are heat factories. If the average human being produces heat at a rate of 80ish watts, then 19 humans hunched together would radiate as much heat as my 1,500-watt space heater. Humans' surplus heat warms a housing project in Paris, a 13-story office building in Stockholm and the Mall of America in sub-freezing Minnesota.

A baseball stadium in the Midwest in October is, unlike a shopping mall, outdoors. But for a few hours it gathers an astounding quantity of hot mass -- roughly 7 million pounds of it, equivalent to 2,500 space heaters -- into a relatively dense seating area. If 19 people can heat the inside of a small room and several thousand can heat an office building, what might 47,325 people arranged in a ring around a baseball field do? A baseball hit at a typical home run trajectory travels farther in warmer air, physicist Alan Nathan has shown. A change in temperature of one degree Fahrenheit affects the distance of a batted ball by about 4 inches, which means a half-degree would matter for 2 inches, a quarter of a degree for 1 inch -- and baseball, we all know, is a game of inches. In the biggest moments, it's often a game of even less than that.

Would 2,500 space heaters running nonstop for 3 hours, 46 minutes and 13 seconds have a collective effect on air temperature in a partially enclosed outdoor stadium by one degree Fahrenheit? "It seems plausible to me," Nathan tells us. "I can't say that I know with any authori-"

Let's stop you right there, Nathan. Plausible is enough for us. If humans' bioenergy could power the machine city in "The Matrix," we believe it can power a baseball. It's an indirect power, not exactly propelling baseballs so much as freeing them to travel more easily through less dense air. And when David Freese hit a baseball to deep right field in the ninth inning of Game 6 of the 2011 World Series, we can believe that the 47,325 Cardinals fans weren't just wishing that it would carry slightly beyond the reach of Nelson Cruz but were actually causing it.

All hail the fan. All hail the crowd.

In a baseball stadium, spectators are strictly forbidden from breaching the border between Fans Space and Players Space. The players are allowed to reach into the Fans Space a little bit, just as the gods (or their offspring) might walk among us in the human realm. But the spectators aren't allowed into the Players Space, any more than mortals can stick an arm into heaven. If fans try to break the boundaries, it's a violation of the natural order, and there are rules against it. Reaching into the realm of the players is cause for a play's outcome to be overturned for fan interference, at a minimum. If it's extreme enough, the fan could be ejected or even put in jail.

But not all fan influence is interference. In fact, fans constantly affect play without touching any player, any equipment or any part of the field of play. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes accidentally, fans have figured out how to change outcomes without violating the rules or breaching the borders.

If you watch closely, you can see the fans' direct influence everywhere -- and we're not just talking about some emotional lift they give players with their support. Consider, for example, what might be the most memorable postseason moment of the past decade: the second-to-last play of the 2014 World Series, when Alex Gordon singled to center field and advanced to third on an error. The ball never gets close to a fan, and no fan enters the Players Space:

But the fans are there, and they force themselves into the play:

0:05: Gordon hits the ball 0:08: Ball lands safely, bounces past Gregor Blanco. Crowd erupts in predictable cheers. Gordon goes for second, digs for third. 0:13: Left fielder Juan Perez goes to pick the ball up but kicks it. 0:14: Crowd, seeing this, erupts again -- with this second eruption being unpredictable, anomalous. 0:15: This unpredictable cheer alerts Gordon to events outside his field of vision. Wondering what this unexpected ruckus could possibly be about, he lifts his head and turns to see what is happening.

In a world without fans, there's no eruption at 14 seconds. In the COVID-19 world, the fake crowd murmurs used for white noise would be replaced with the fake crowd excitement used on base hits. The cheering for the base hit would start a half-beat later than real crowd noise would, but then it would just stay at that level throughout the play. The fake crowd noisemaker doesn't do nuance. And without the second eruption, Gordon would keep his head down and charge into third, where he would expect the play to end uneventfully. Gordon would look for his third-base coach to signal whether he needs to slide into third or just stop standing up. He would find out that Perez kicked the ball only after the play was over. But with a crowd, the second roar got his attention and provided him a little intelligence about a part of the field he couldn't otherwise see or wouldn't otherwise be looking at. He changed his behavior: looking over his shoulder (and probably causing himself to slow down a little) and consequently picking up his third-base coach's stop sign only at the very last second, forcing him to stop abruptly and a little awkwardly.

It probably didn't affect the outcome of the play. If Gordon had never turned, he'd probably have still had the stop sign, still obeyed it and still been safe at third. It would have been a little less herky-jerky, but probably the outcome would have been the same. Still, in the biggest moment in franchise history, when Alex Gordon had an extremely simple job -- to run forward as fast as he could until his coach told him to stop -- the fans managed to touchlessly change his course slightly.

The 2020 playoffs will be a fanless experience, and in unexpected ways it will quite possibly be decided by its fanlessness, just as so many postseason games of the past have been unexpectedly decided by their fanfulness. Not every play is like the Gordon play -- nudged by the fans but not actually toppled over. In some of the most important moments in postseason history, the fans did change history or arguably changed history or might be thought to have changed history (even if we'll never know).

The power to make demands

For example: Oct. 17, 2004. Game 4 of the American League Championship Series.

The Yankees were leading by one run in the ninth inning of a possibly clinching Game 4 against the Red Sox. Boston's Kevin Millar drew a walk in the ninth inning. Dave Roberts entered as a pinch runner, stole second base on the first pitch and then scored on a single to tie the game. Boston won the game in extra innings, went on to come back from a 3-0 deficit to win the series -- the first time any team had ever done that -- and then won the World Series, snapping an 86-year franchise drought. When Roberts got on first, though, there was a moment. It came after Mariano Rivera made a pickoff throw to first, then a second pickoff throw, then a third. The home crowd booed, as crowds do, impatient with the excess of pickoff attempts. Rivera could have thrown a fourth, fifth and sixth pickoff attempt over. But he stopped after three and delivered the pitch. Roberts took off and was safe by an eyelash.

Four consecutive pickoff attempts are very rare. Over the past decade, there have been only 14 instances per year, on average, of pitchers throwing four or more times in a row, about once every 180 games. But this year, without fans, that super rarity has actually changed. Pitchers have thrown four pickoff attempts in a row about four times as frequently this season.

If you believe there's a connection, it suggests that fans have the power to make demands. Of course, the pitcher knows that booing fans can't hurt him, and that he (the pitcher) is free to make a fourth pickoff attempt if the situation calls for it. But the evidence this year suggests that he is influenced by the boos, that throwing too many pickoff attempts is annoying, and he wants to avoid being annoying. Take away the fans and the social pressure to cease pickoff attempts apparently drops way down.

Take away the fans, we're saying, and Mariano Rivera might have made a fourth pickoff attempt.

If the power to make demands is one of the fans' powers, what else is there?

The power to delay

Sometimes, this delay is accomplished by violating the Players Space, as when Braves fans, protesting an 's call during the 2012 wild-card game, stopped play for 19 minutes by throwing trash onto the field. (Or in 1934, when Tigers fans pelted Cardinals left fielder Joe Medwick with so much debris that commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis had Medwick ejected.)

But we're interested in influence, not interference. For instance: In 1983, the start of the eighth inning of Game 1 of the World Series was unexpectedly delayed several minutes so that the television broadcast could interview a fan who was leaving. (The fan was President Ronald Reagan.) The delay irritated the pitcher on the mound, Scott McGregor, and he later blamed it for the first-pitch home run he allowed to Garry Maddox once play resumed. That home run broke a 1-1 tie and decided the game, which the Phillies won 2-1. "There is a certain flow to the game," McGregor complained.

The crowd didn't do anything to thwart McGregor; ABC's producers did. But Reagan was interviewed because he was at the game, and he was at the game because the existence of the crowd legitimized it as an important place to be. No crowd, no president, no interview, no delay, no homer.

The crowd causes smaller, non-presidential delays all the time. Earlier this year, the Rays' Brandon Lowe tied a game with a solo home run in the bottom of the ninth inning. He rounded the bases in an empty dome, celebrated briefly with his teammates, returned to the dugout and play resumed. The first post-homer pitch came 54 seconds after Lowe had made contact. By contrast, when Alex Gordon homered to tie a game in the bottom of the ninth inning of a 2015 World Series game, he rounded the bases, celebrated with his teammates, returned to the dugout -- and then the fans kept cheering. The next batter stepped out, the pitcher stepped off and it ultimately took 1 minute and 11 seconds between pitches. Without throwing a single water bottle, fans froze baseball time for 17 seconds.

The power to introduce uncertainty

In the 2018 ALCS, Jose Altuve hit a fly ball over the wall in right field. Mookie Betts made a leap for it and had his glove in position to attempt the catch, but his glove collided with the hands of fans sitting in the outfield seats in Houston. An umpire called it fan interference. A video review, failing to find a camera angle that was conclusive -- indeed, finding that camera angle to have been serendipitously blocked -- let that call stand. Instead of a game-tying home run, it was an out.

Altuve ruled out on fan interference

Mookie Betts tries to make a play at the wall on a Jose Altuve hit, and the umpires rule that a fan interfered and call Altuve out.

Fans have the right to impede a fielder's attempt to catch a ball as long as they don't cross the border between Fans Space and Players Space. The home crowd can, in effect, defend its space, and it can become an occasional accomplice of the home team's defense. A home crowd that doesn't thwart at least one catch by the visitors each season probably isn't doing a good job of influencing. (A home fan that does the opposite gets a 30 for 30 film made about him.) On its face, this play is an example of near fan influence by the four men attempting to catch the ball at the railing.

But what's more interesting about this play is the uncertainty the fans' mere presence introduced to the play. Because the Fans Space and the Players Space abut each other, it can be nearly impossible to distinguish between legal fan actions and illegal ones. Human eyes and video technology couldn't see whether the fans had crossed the line on the Betts play, which led to a situation that was ambiguous on multiple levels. We didn't know whether the fans' actions were legal, and we didn't know whether the fans actions mattered:

Perhaps Betts would not have caught the ball at all, even if there had been no fans. But the fans -- through no illegal action but merely their existence -- confused the umpires' perception and caused them to turn it into an out instead.

Perhaps Betts would not have caught the ball at all, even if there had been no fans. But perhaps the fans -- through an illegal act of reaching over the barrier -- turned the play into an out. In this case, Betts would have failed first, but the fans overwrote his failure with their own. Perhaps Betts would have caught the ball had there been no fans, but he had to enter the Fans Space to do it -- and the fans, through legal and appropriate means, were able to make the catch too hard for him. But because the fans had to be present to (legally) thwart Betts, and their presence confused the umpires' perceptions, Betts ended up getting credit for a catch he couldn't actually make.

Perhaps Betts would have caught the ball had there been no fans, or had there been fans defending their realm legally, but perhaps the fans did violate the barrier between players and fans and interfered with him. In this case, the correct call was made -- but nobody will ever know because of the layers of ambiguity. Instead of a single great catch in a single postseason game, the uncertainty will cause the play to survive as an all-time moment of what mighta been that will be written about for roughly 500 years.

It's sort of tautological, but the only reason there is ever controversy over fan interference calls is that there's a fan interference rule, and there's only a fan interference rule because there are fans. Umpire judgment is fallible and changes outcomes, and fans make umpire judgment necessary, so fans change outcomes.

The power to normalize umpire behavior

The plate umpire's response to crowd pressure has long been one of the leading explanations for home-field advantage. The 2011 book "Scorecasting" concluded that the plate umpire is responsible for most of the home team's edge, while The Hardball Times' John Walsh found that it explains about a third of that advantage.

According to pitch data kept by ESPN Stats & Information, that home-field favoritism has held up in recent years. On taken pitches deemed "likely to be called strikes," umpires from 2017 to 2019 called 88.6% strikes when the home team was batting and 89% strikes when the home team was pitching. On pitches "likely to be called balls," the gap was similar: 5.4% called strikes on home hitters and 5.7% called strikes on visiting hitters. That's about one pitch switched in the home team's favor every three games.

But this year, without fans, there's no difference, according to ESPN Stats & Info's categories. Home hitters are slightly more likely to have a strike called on pitches out of the zone (5.8% to 5.7%) and slightly less likely to have a strike called on pitches in the zone (89.4% to 89.5%) -- two tiny differences that basically cancel each other out.

Of course, umpires miss calls all the time, and it's hard to know which one every three games to credit to the home crowd. Was it the home crowd that kept Rich Garcia from ringing up Tino Martinez in Game 1 of the 1998 World Series -- the pitch that "turned" the 1998 World Series, just before Martinez hit a two-strike to break a seventh-inning tie? Or was it just a bad call? We'll never know.

But it's fair to say that home-influenced calls are sprinkled throughout postseason history. It's also fair to say that a game like Livan Hernandez's 15- strikeout performance in the 1997 National League Championship Series probably wouldn't happen on the road. As umpire Eric Gregg expanded the strike zone farther and farther outside, rewarding Hernandez with called strike after called strike, one assumes the home crowd's approval had to play some role in preventing Gregg from correcting himself. Ultimately, we shape our reality around the reality that other people are living. There were 52,000 people in the ballpark that night, and all but about 30 of them -- the Braves' players and coaches -- were telling Gregg that, yes, that's what a strike is. To Gregg, that zone must've seemed more and more true as the game went on.

The power of noise

The most direct influence the crowd has is the noise it makes. This shows up in unexpected ways, which the crowd itself is often not aware of. We'll never know exactly how much the sign-stealing Astros were stealing signs during the 2017 postseason, for instance, but some players said (after they were caught) that they had quit their trash can-banging scheme in the postseason because the noisier crowds made it too difficult for batters to hear the bangs. There's ambiguity about whether that's fully true, but there's some evidence that the Astros' fans, with the influence of their lungs, actually caused the home team to play with some integrity.

Less speculatively, take Game 5 of the 2011 World Series. Cardinals manager Tony La Russa called the bullpen to get two pitchers -- lefty Marc Rzepczynski and closer Jason Motte -- warm. But the crowd was so loud that La Russa was misheard, and only Rzepczynski got up. When La Russa saw the problem, he called back -- and was misheard again. Lance Lynn, who wasn't supposed to be available unless it was an emergency, got up instead of Motte. Without a right-hander warm, Rzepczynski ended up having to face Mike Napoli with the bases loaded. Napoli doubled, breaking a 2-2 tie and winning the game for Texas.

"That phone in a loud ballpark, it's not an unusual problem," La Russa said after the game. He was underselling the magnitude of what had happened: In the middle of a World Series game, the Rangers' fans got to choose the Cardinals' pitcher.

It's thanks to that Napoli double that, one game later, the Rangers were in a position to clinch the World Series in the ninth inning. They had David Freese down to his final strike with two outs, when Freese hit a fly ball to deep right field and the Cardinals' 43,000 fans roared with hope.

As an outfielder gets close to the wall, he often gets guidance from teammates nearest him: "Room, room, room" when he has room; "wall" when he is nearing the wall. This is necessary, because, as Doug Glanville wrote for ESPN, "the warning track is useless," and perhaps worse than useless: good only for scaring and distracting fielders.

This season, in silent stadiums, we've been able to sometimes hear the outfielders talk to each other, guide and prepare and protect each other. "Wall, wall, wall, wall," Jason Heyward tells Ian Happ as Happ chases a ball in the gap. "WALL!" Brandon Nimmo (probably) warns as Jeff McNeil reaches out and prepares to smash into it. But when Freese flied to right field, there was nothing for Cruz to listen out for. The 43,000 fans made him all alone: His center fielder was on another auditory continent, his five senses cut down to four. Cruz moved back, and he had room -- but there was nobody capable of telling him he had room. For all he knew, he was about to smash into a wall, with nobody to yell, "Wall!" He retreated tentatively, unbalanced, confused -- without conviction.

And to make matters worse, the air around him might have been slightly warmer than usual. The ball sailed just beyond him.

Democracy is not a spectator sport, the saying goes. Or life isn't. Or religion isn't. Or health isn't. But all of those things, at times, can make us feel like spectators. One lesson of baseball is that even spectating isn't a spectator sport. Even spectators can make matter move.

New York Times

M.L.B. Awards: In a Short Season, Veterans Are Standing Out

The top contenders for baseball’s annual awards include two 30-somethings who could take home the Most Valuable Player Awards.

By Tyler Kepner

A typical baseball schedule is merciless — six weeks of spring training followed by six months of games, with few days off and many thousands of air miles. The advantage for younger players shows up in the list of Most Valuable Player Award winners; it has been 13 years since anyone started a season in his 30s and won the M.V.P.

That was Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees, in 2007 — and he, of course, used performance-enhancing drugs at various points in his career. The last player to do it without ties to steroids was Jeff Kent of the San Francisco Giants, two decades ago.

This pandemic season, as you may have noticed, is far different from any other. With just 60 games in the regular season, and travel limited to divisional regions, it should theoretically be easier for older players to stand out. Sure enough, some leading contenders for the M.V.P. Awards are out of their 20s: The Atlanta Braves’ Freddie Freeman was 30 on opening day in late July, and the ’ Jose Abreu was 33.

Picking the winners for such a small sample of games will be tricky for voting members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. (The New York Times does not participate in awards voting.) But as the season enters its final days, this is how the leaders look from here, with all statistics through Tuesday.

N.L. Most Valuable Player

Freddie Freeman, Atlanta Braves

Freddie Freeman has a remarkably similar pedigree to that of the ’ Nolan Arenado and the St. Louis Cardinals’ Paul Goldschmidt: All are infielders who have won the Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards and made at least four All-Star teams; all made their debuts in the first part of the 2010s and have spent their careers with mid-market National League teams, earning multiple trips to the postseason but never to the World Series; all rarely stir controversy and seem averse to self-promotion.

The M.V.P. Award is its own kind of promotion, and Freeman should become the first of the three to win it after a combined 13 finishes in the top 10. He is leading the N.L. in times on base for the third year in a row, while batting .347 with 12 homers and 50 runs batted in — numbers all the more impressive because of what came before.

In early July, three weeks before the start of the regular season, Freeman struggled with a case of Covid-19. He prayed when his fever spiked to 104.5 degrees, he said.

“My body was really, really hot, so I said, ‘Please don’t take me,’” Freeman told reporters when he returned. “I wasn’t ready.”

Freeman was ready by opening day, and in mid-August he started an 18-game hitting streak, helping the Braves win 12 of those games and run away with their third N.L. East title in a row. He gets the nod over his teammate Ronald Acuna Jr., the ’ Mookie Betts, the ’ Juan Soto and the teammates Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr.

A.L. Most Valuable Player

Jose Abreu, Chicago White Sox

If we’re going to be swayed by the outsize production of a steady, dependable, veteran first baseman in the N.L. race, we’ve got to endorse Jose Abreu in the A.L. Abreu has been a foundational piece since the White Sox signed him out of Cuba before the 2014 season, and the team refused to trade him during a roster overhaul that has made Chicago a force. Smart move: Abreu leads the majors in hits (74), runs batted in (56) and total bases (141), while playing every game and belting 19 homers. His younger teammate, shortstop Tim Anderson, has continued his ascent with a .353 average. The Yankees’ D.J. LeMahieu and Luke Voit, Cleveland’s Jose Ramirez and the Angels’ Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon have been outstanding, too. But Abreu is the choice.

N.L. Cy Young

Trevor Bauer, Cincinnati Reds

This award is essentially too close to call, making the pitchers’ final turns in the rotation especially important. Besides Trevor Bauer, all of these pitchers could make a case: the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw, the Chicago Cubs’ Yu Darvish, the Milwaukee Brewers’ Corbin Burnes, the San Diego Padres’ Dinelson Lamet and the Mets’ Jacob deGrom, who has won the last two N.L. Cy Young Awards.

But Bauer, the iconoclastic right-hander, has been the best at the two factors that should matter most when evaluating pitching excellence: durability and dominance — that is, overpowering hitters while consistently working deep into games. The Reds can count on Bauer for at least 100 pitches in nearly every start (he has thrown fewer than 100 just once this season), and the results have been dazzling: a 1.80 earned run average with about 12 strikeouts, two walks and five hits allowed per nine innings.

A.L. Cy Young Award

Shane Bieber,

When something very obvious and distinctive identifies a player, he has to be really good to shake it. The ’ Jose Altuve was always associated with his height (5 feet 6 inches) until he played so well that people stopped bringing it up. Shane Bieber is entering that territory.

He’s the only Bieber in major league history, but, of course, he’s hardly the most famous entertainer with the name. For Players’ Weekend last summer, Bieber, 25, poked fun at himself by wearing a jersey with “NOT JUSTIN” stitched across the back. He still trails Justin Bieber in Twitter followers by the slim margin of 112.4 million to 30,800, but he has become so successful on the mound that his eye-catching name is an afterthought.

We mention it here only because Bieber’s greatness as a pitcher has been so obvious. He leads the majors in wins (8), E.R.A. (1.74) and strikeouts (112), and should win the Cy Young Award unanimously. It will be his first, but may not be his last.

N.L. Rookie of the Year

Jake Cronenworth, San Diego Padres

The Phillies’ Alec Bohm has blazed through September as Jake Cronenworth’s production has waned. But Bohm did not debut until Aug. 13. By then, Cronenworth was hitting .333 and had started at first and second base, helping to steady the Padres until their late-August surge.

Cronenworth, who is hitting .304 with an .886 OPS, would be just the third Padre to win the Rookie of the Year Award and the first since Benito Santiago in 1987. Besides from Bohm, he could face competition from starter Dustin May of the Dodgers, a team whose past is brimming with rookies of the year. Starting with the award’s namesake, Jackie Robinson, in 1947, Dodgers players have won the award 18 times.

A.L. Rookie of the Year

Kyle Lewis,

The Mariners haven’t had a rookie of the year since in 2001, which was also their last playoff season. Their drought is the longest in baseball, and longer than that of any team in the N.F.L., N.B.A. and N.H.L., too. It will continue through 2020, but Seattle’s long-term plan is taking shape, with Lewis as a pillar. Though he never played in Class AAA, he has built off a 2019 cameo to hit .272 with 11 homers, a good eye at the plate and sensational defense.

Lewis, who played at Mercer University, was chosen 11th over all in the 2016 draft, which means 10 teams whiffed on a future star. In Seattle, he is a worthy heir to the tradition of dynamic center fielders who came before him, like Ken Griffey Jr., Mike Cameron and Adam Jones, a first-round pick the Mariners traded, something they regretted for a decade.