PCA vs. Yordan Alvarez: Who Would Be MLB’s Overall MVP?

Though it didn't all take place this week, we've been spoiled by fabulous pitching performances recently from Chris Sayo to Jesus Lazardo. As the pennant race heats up, so do the pitchers and the Cy Young race. It's this week in baseball.

And I think we've been really lucky, 'cause, you know, maybe about ten, twelve days ago, Chris Sayo pitched against Y Yamamoto in a Braves Dodgers game. That is very likely a potential playoff preview here. And

It was every bit the kind of game you hope it was for. Just i it was a master class by sale really. Yeah, well he pitched the complete game shutout and and so both of those things are

you know, you know, unusual these days, a complete game or a you know, a shutout for that matter. And and Sale had, you know, a play go against him in the ninth inning where the guy got on and he just came back and and he bore down and he got him out. And I that was also really impressive because you thought, they're gonna go get him, you know, 'cause he's in a little trouble in the ninth inning. But fortunately they let him stay out there and even better he delivered. And and I think it's interesting 'cause in a lot of ways that's a kind of game that's gonna go on the Chris Sale and I'm gonna say Hall of Fame tape.

It's kind of game that you're gonna put as a centerpiece performance for him on that. 'Cause yeah.

He is, ladies and gentlemen, that was the Hall of Fa like if you needed a performance to convince you, he kinda just gave you one. I'm only glad that earlier, just a few weeks before I had written a post on Chris Sale is already a Hall of Famer. and sure enough, he's been doing everything to tell everybody that, yeah, now it's even beyond that. Maybe he's the first ballot Hall of Famer. And of course the bra unfortunate for the Braves is that while they were the beneficiaries of a fabulous pitching performance with Chris Sale, they were the victims of it here today on Labor Day as Jesus Lazardo, there's a complete game two hit shutout against them.

in the fastest game this season where there are only nine total base runners and the whole thing took an hour and fifty one minutes. That's old school baseball and and Kyle Schwarber hit his three hundred and eighty third career home run for the only run of the game in the eighth inning and that put Schwarber just one home run behind Harold Baines, the Hall of Famer. So we were some coup one one of the guys that I writes on Substack was making comment Robbie Marriage he's talking about Kingman and Schwarber and how Schwarber, you know, you know

And and I said, well Kingman is obviously not even anywhere near as good as Schwarber, but I mentioned that Schwarber was at the time only two home runs. Now he's one home run behind Hall of Famer Harold Baines and everybody else like, yeah, that doesn't make me think Carl Schwarber's necessarily a home run. I think that's one of those situations that more reflects badly on Baines. Now I will say if there is a team that you could probably convince them that he is a Hall of Famer, it would be the Atlanta Braves, because since the start of 2025, he's hitting a casual 302 against them with 13 homers, 24 RBIs.

A cool 429 on base with an 849 slugging and a 1287, 1278 OPS. So he has been killing the Braves the last two seasons, and I am sure they do not want to see him in a playoff series. And I think in that recent series, you know, Ronald Acuna, who's had his difficulties this year, seems to be getting his act together because he had a big home run and a big game, and a big Atlanta win. That series was split, by the way, 2 2. and and as we start, as we finish here on Monday, they're gonna be four games apart. The Braves. And so can the Braves

Hold a four-game lead with about let's say there's a little more than night, like to say ten percent of the season, maybe eighteen, seventeen, eighteen games to play in the season. it would be a big choke, you know, not unprecedented if they were to do that. and I certainly don't expect it. And the Phillies are as concerned about staying ahead of the Cubs than than they are about catching because if if Atlanta does win the division and then the wild card series then would be the Cubs and the Phillies, and the wit the the higher seated team that gets the home scene.

If

you're the Phillies, you're thinking it's possible. You're either thinking we're gonna catch the Braves and jump them to win the division, or we're probably playing the Cubs and the Wild Cards. But do you want to go to Philadelphia and with the home advantage, or you want to go play the Cubs with their home advantage? Neither of those. Right. Exactly. So they're whereas the reward and that now you have the nightmare scenario where the third wildcard team, their reward right now, might be the Dodgers, because the Braves have now played themselves right being right there. They're right there. They're right there. They're only a game behind for the

As of today, I think the thing they haven't finished their game. And with Shohei Otani sort of being you know, even a bigger question mark beyond not pitching now, which it doesn't look like he's going to do the rest of the season, I'd say at this point, he's not even batting because he is being talked about as maybe going in the IL with the knee problem. And obviously the Dodgers are trying to get the machine all fine tuned for the playoffs, and they were you know, that they've basically been a little better than a five hundred team for like two months. Right now, for for for everybody that has been getting on that, I think if you were a Dodger fan and you're worried.

Let's take a look at your upcoming September schedule. You start with a nice casual three-game series against the St. Louis Cardinals. Then you're still in it. The Nationals, the Reds, the Marlins, the Reds, the Giants. Though there's a game against the Padres, and then you finish up against the Giants. So you play a bunch of

For the Dodgers, not very good teams, and and the two teams, you know, the Cardinals and and the and the Marlins are in life support in terms of their playoff host because they're still four games behind, you know, the Diamondbacks and the Padres who are battling out for the last wild card spot as we speak. And so that's their concern. And so they'll have something to play for, but maybe by the time they play the Dodgers they won't. Right, and th and if they do have something to play for, I think the Dodgers are gonna make it so they don't have anything. And the Dodgers, you know, they're they're they're not playing very well, but they did get Will Smith back, which is a big

get for them by the way. The Dodgers haven't been playing well, they're eighty six and fifty seven and let's all be honest. There's almost thirty games over five hundred. Right, right. They're de it's like there's a still a real good chance they finish the season over with a over a hundred wins. Everybody wants to go, Well, you know, this is maybe this is the time, you know, they're they're they're not they look a little vulnerable. Yeah, it's September. There's nineteen games left. Yeah.

Could they go 14 and 5 and finish with 100 wins? I wouldn't, but they don't need to. But they're just because they want to show you, but yeah, we could do Okay, let's do that. Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. So, yeah, and and in the American League, you know, I I guess the the holding on that the White Sox are showing me is impressing the heck out of me. And I have to say, here's a name that nobody talks about when it comes to the White Sox, the manager. Again, I've asked you before in this podcast, nobody knows who the White Sox manager is if you think about Art Ticket. Will Venable is the man is the manager.

No credit for the zero credit for taking a team that lost a hundred games last year and lost a hundred and twenty games the year before and they're right now in first place and look pretty good to win the division. It may may they can still choke, but it still looks pretty good.

So I have a question for you, 'cause we were on this podcast and we've talked a whole lot about how we don't believe in the Tampa Bay Rays and how we've been waiting for the shoe to drop on them and them to transform into the team we think they really are the entire season. Where here we are with twenty ish games left in the season and they're eighty five and fifty-eight. I don't think that's ch that that's coming anytime soon, but

question is, they go out and they lose in the first round of the playoffs, does that vindicate our point of view? No, no, I don't I actually I I don't here's why I don't think that's true. Number one, this is a better

b raised team than they've had in the past in terms of it's more capable because I think they have more home run hitters. They have more guys that can do damage on offense than they've had in the while. It's possible that the pitching isn't quite as good as it as it was when it's at its very best, but I think they're formulated a little differently for postseason play. It is just interesting that almost they're in sort of the same camp as Milwaukee, where it's like, no, you need to have a postseason run or it's just like you're you're weirdly a team where people look down on you 'cause you're only successful in the regular

season. And then that and that seems to be, you know, so far what the narrative is for people saying, well, Milwaukee gotta show me in the playoffs, you know, and the same thing with Tampa, like it's fun, it's fun to do this, but you know, you got to get to the World Series and win it now. You know, because they've made it to the World Series, but they they haven't been able to win it. I think if you if you're the Brewers or the Rays, if you made the World Series successful the year, even if you ended up I think though, if you're the br I think it's actually a little harder on the Brewers 'cause if you made it out of the N L and then you lost the World Series this year, I think you'd have a lot of the like

A lot of people would be like, how do you manage to pull that one off? And you know, we're we're gonna talk a little bit here about, you know, this, you know, the imminent labor strife that appears to be the case with the CBA expiring on December first, and you know, how the the Rays and the Brewers, you know, are are making it a little bit interesting for the standpoint of their not high revenue teams. And and the Rays are re they take revenue in, right? Because the owner doesn't spend as much money. And Sternberg's got a lot of money, they're building a new ballpark, so there's sure a hope that the Rays are actually gonna.

Turn around and actually be a team that eventually will spend money on free agencies instead of letting them go away. But it still hasn't happened. But the argument against you know competitive balance when you've got the Brewers and the and the Rays annually, you know, winning you know the division or more at least competing for the division, it's a hard argument to make. All that matters at the end, though, is winning World Series. And so if the it's the kind of conclusion that everybody draws where, yeah, it doesn't matter what happens in the regular season, the Dodgers still win in the end. That's not dispel because, well, the Rays put together a nice season.

And won the ALEs. It's like, yeah, then they got to the World Series and got swept 4-0 and it was boring as sit. And would that matter to you? So if the Rays went to the World Series and they lost a tight 4-3 World Series, would you be like, okay, I, you know, I'll give them some credit. And that would make you feel so different than if they lost 4-0. No, but I I don't necessarily think the salary cap is going to improve necessarily what people's current frustrations are with the Dodgers and baseball and competitive balance. I don't think putting a salary cap on it necessarily fixes it because we see in

In

the other leagues, you could still have a salary cap and one team can be have a run where they're really, really good for a while. It's more of an organizational thing. But I think it makes the argument harder. I think it's the kind of thing where if it's like, yeah, you let's put it this way, yeah, I think everybody will say what you want about competitive balance. If we get to the playoffs and the Dodgers go sixteen and and dog walk the entire thing, I don't think anybody's gonna be super happy with that result, except for LA Dodger fans. No, and maybe the owners, because they'll get their salary cap. Right. They only get their salary cap, but no but a salary floor.

As a fan, right, as a fan, if you went into World Series and it's just you you literally watch it every game, it's just Tarek Scoobel into Yamamoto into Blake Snell, and you're like, okay, yeah, no, my team can't afford that. And even as a Met fan, I don't know if we're gonna be if like what if they back up a truck and pay Tarek Scoobyl some amount of money with please can't pay. The Dodgers shell out $400 million for him over two seasons. They're paying him $200 million a year. It's just deferred over the next 40 years. And and without going down a rabbit hole that could take the entire episode up if we started talking about you know deferred payments, which the Dodgers have sort of you know permitted.

Perfected that particular tactic of of paying guys in the future the way they did Otani. you know, I think there's a shelf life on that. They can only do that right now because of some of the things that they're afforded. Like let's put it this way. It's not

Not noticeable that the exact amount of money that they have deferred in contracts is also the exact amount of money that they brought in extra over the top of everybody from their RSN last year. Like, wow, it's certainly interesting that those two numbers exactly match. And it isn't even about that, I I believe, because when you see that the Padres sold for four, four for the Angels sold for four billion dollars and and as bad as Artie Marino managed that organization, what was that was the deal is because a there's a limited amount of professional sports teams and and seemingly an unlimited amount of billion.

Millionaires who or companies buy these teams. So that that pumps up the volume. Baseball being the only sport that doesn't have a salary cap, what the owners, in terms of valuation and being able to predict, you know, how much money they're gonna make, they love a salary cap because now your cost structure is predictable. Right, and this is why you're seeing this argument now kind of positioning into it, because ultimately with a salary cap, I think both the players and the owners from a competitive balance aspect don't really care. Like they don't care.

care

players don't care about competitive balance. And I don't think the owners really care. The owners care only as much as it competitive balance affects fans watching the game. That's the group that compares about competitive balance. I agree with that. And so I I I think you're running into a situation here where the players

Will only they're only gonna care about competitive balance if they feel like there's some kind of outside force unbalancing the game. Like i i if there was some new rule that was like, well, the pirates haven't won in forever, so their wall their wins count for two wins. Yeah, no, that's not happening. That's not happening, but like if they put in that rule, the players wouldn't like that 'cause that's obviously unfair. But like, one team has more money than the others and so they spend more to get good players. They don't care about that. That's not important to them. The conversation I heard not long ago between Steve Phillips on the on on the

leadoff spot and I think it was Kevin Franson. It might have been Chris Jimenez, it was it wasn't the normal guys that that's there with Steve. And you know, b basically asking the question, as he asked Franson or or or Himenez the question, so what

If eighty-five percent of the players aren't super high paid players and fifteen percent are the you know the most high play players and they're voting on on this and and the l and and a salary cap and a floor would have the lower ranked players move their l salaries up maybe by you know over a million. It's already almost a million dollars. Let's say it's in so it could be worth a lot of money to that four average four-year career to get that much more at the bottom to for eighty-five percent of the people as opposed to Bryce Harper making fifty million.

As opposed to Bryce Harper making 40 million. Right, right. What you're looking at is that there's a whole lot of guys that are making, you know, just league replacement money. They're making the baseline contract in the Which is still a lot of money these days. But let's say that doubles. You're going for just to make numbers easy for everybody. Go from a million to two million. It won't be that much, but yeah, it's a good point. Just to make it easy. There's a lot of guys that are go, wait a second. If I have a four year career, I go from making four million to eight million. That's a big difference. Do I really care that Bryce Harper doesn't get an extra twenty million dollars next year? Not really. And so now it's.

Well

have you don't give up the salary cap. This is that's that is our Rubicon, right? Right, right, right. And it's tough on the players because I think one, Bryce Harper doesn't want to give up the chance to be earning fifteen million, but I think he also doesn't want to be the guys that gave up the last league without a salary cap. Marvin Miller would be rolling in his grave. Right, right. Now and I think but the problem is that the Harper argument is hey, you don't want to give this up because you could be in my position one day and you could be the guy that's trying to make sixty million dollars and now you can't. But the problem for Bryce Harper is, and the fifteen percent is

By the nature of the fifteen and eighty for five percent. Yeah, sure, any one of those guys in the eighty five percent could become like you in the fifteen, but not all of them. Not all of them can't. All of them can't be a superstar. That's just not how baseball works. And so some of them by nature are going to have to be the guys that are the replacement level that come in, play a few years, and are out again. And if you're telling those guys, hey, you can potentially double your career earnings, it's a really tough sell for them not to put in that floor and cap. And and you were saying this off air, and I think it's a

really a really intelligent comment when you said, you know, I don't I I I think you're realistic. As much as I'd love to see us a cap at on a floor in the major league, I don't think that's what's going to happen. I think aproning the way they have in the NBA and you had mentioned that going okay so so in in basketball there's first aprons and second aprons and so what's happened in the NBA is teams don't want to hit the second apron because it's a big penalty and a big expansion.

the world, but you almost never want to be in the second apron for two years in a row because it's just back breaking to what your team is able to do. Basketball has a lot more different contracts they can sign and being in the second apron restricts you from signing certain types of contracts. It can restrict which wouldn't apply in baseball. Which wouldn't apply baseball. But if you were able to set something up like that, where like, hey, if you're over the second apron

Well, something we were gonna talk about is when we were looking at, you know, we're watching position players pitch, right? What if if you were over the second apron, everybody gets twenty-eight roster spots. But if you're in the second apron two years in a row, you only get twenty-five. Or twenty-six or twenty-five. You lose roster spots for being in the second apron. That's gonna be meaningful to a lot of teams because teams would probably die to carry two more extra pitchers and not have to think about doing that. And so that would be a very meaningful thing to lose if you're in the second apron to lose roster spots. Okay, that's gonna make me evaluate man.

hypothetical but an interesting one. But I think that's a that's a way. And so would have the salary floor. This is a way that we can stop having teams basically skirt by on the revenue sharing. And just not spend the money. They get revenue sharing and they don't put it back in the team. Like the Rays. Right. They're a team that could be spending more money. And it the pirates. And let's put it this way if the very worst thing that results out of that is that the rank and file MLB player is being paid more because every team is forced to increase their salaries, it's not the end of the world. It's been my take the whole time is like Lang I I think and I think when when Phillips put it see Phillips put it into you're talking about eighty five percent of the people versus 50%

Somebody's got to go around to the players, and they kind of have been polling them anonymously, going, Well, if you know, if you could have a situation where you might at the minimum salary make 50% more than you're making right now, would you be willing to listen? Yes. Right. And so I think having a second apron style thing allows the players to save face and not give up unrestricted free agent contracts. It allows the owners to still have the luxury if you're a Steve Cohen, if you're the bigger market team, Steve Cohen now can be like, okay, well, at least now if I really want to sign somebody, I can still back.

Up the truck, I just have to deal with the financial consequences of it. I'm not unable to go get that. And know what they are. Right. And I know what they are. So I I think that is something that we could see, and I think that would be great because that's something that could be resolved this year. And then you can also, what's great about a system like that is you can always change what the second neighboring penalties are. Right. If you after after a year you notice, the teams don't care, make them worse, and now they'll start caring. So you touched on something there, and and we were gonna just briefly talk about two more things. And one of them is position players pitching, and I don't think there's any big

baseball

fans right any any longer that are like, yeah, I can't wait until some you know shortstop comes in and starts throwing sixty-four miles an hour and and there is approximately one group of fans that likes position players pitching and that is fans that are not fans of the teams involved in the game. They're betting on the game it's super fun for every other team involved to watch some guy come in and throw lollipops and see if he can get anybody out. Because that's really fun. Like when the Mariners are playing the Astros and they have some position player pitching from the Astros, okay, yeah I'll watch the highlights. That's amusing. When I'm watching my team play

I don't want to watch that. It's terrible. It's not baseball. And and so it's it it it it appears to be happening more often more frequently, and without the understanding is because arms are at such a premium major league baseball. So expanding a roster spot again, you know, to allow them to carry another pitcher or two so that we won't have to watch these position players pitch as often, or we put bigger stipulations on when they can pitch. Now it's I think it's 10 runs after 70. You gotta do something because this is awful. And the reason why, for everybody that's curious, why we see the position.

Players come in and throw the lollipop lobs in there instead of trying to throw like an actual pitch, is because the hitters are just so good that if these guys came in and even if they could throw fastballs with relatively decent velocity. Like I imagine you put a former shortstop on the mount, he's gonna be able to get it in there at 90 something mostly. Or 80 to 90. Yep. Yeah, but that's the thing. That's not gonna be enough to get these guys out. They're gonna have nothing else. They're gonna get shelled. Throw these little lollipops right that it's so difficult. Hard to time in it's like slow-pitched softballs. Right. The batters are forced into doing something they're not doing, so they

Actually, have a higher percentage chance of getting an out doing it that way than pitching to these guys legitimately. And I think that's when the game feels like it's no longer the game is when you're watching something that doesn't really resemble baseball. And I I have never heard a player poll about you know whether or not what do you guys think about having non position players and non-pitchers come in and pitch in the game. Would you like to see more, the same, or less of it? They'll say let me pitch and an actual

Run rule in Major League Baseball. If team is up by 15 runs after the conclusion of the seventh inning, we just call the game. That's sacred. What would the players be more in favor of, you think? Or do you think they would just be like, Yeah, we're fine with a run? I don't think a run rule is gonna be sold as a basic major league baseball. That's true. That's true. But that's because you've got such disparate talent levels between some of the teams that you have to It's just interesting to think about. Yeah.

Yeah. So the last thing I I wanted to talk about and and that is I I have a post coming out this week and I you know I've been looking at things like war and and and WPA and I was comparing maybe I I maybe it did come out. I w Pete Crow Armstrong was leading in in war, whereas Jordan Average was leading in WPA. We talked about that. So it made me think of say so if had an overall MVP in baseball, and and so here it is the only professional league that has two MVPs is baseball. There's only one MVP.

In football, there's only one MVP in basketball. There's only one MVP in hockey or soccer. Right. And you'd think that those would like football would be a league where it would actually feel most appropriate to have MP. Well, and it did have that because when it was the AFL and the NFL before they merged, you had MVPs because they were two different leagues. Right, right, but they play such a high proportion of their games now in conference. Right, right. That it would make sense that it would feel that you would have separate MVPs. Basketball feels like they play enough games against everybody that okay, yeah, one MVP makes sense. So who would be your overall major league baseball MVP? Right now, we thought the MVP was between

Pete Crow Armstrong in the National League and Shohei Otani. But now Otani is not playing as much as Armstrong seems to PCA seems to have that. I think right now I'd have to give it to PCA because if you're looking at the two players, both of them are singularly really powering their team in a Jordan Albus is going win the triple crown. Right. But I think PCA's team, he's basically doing the same thing for him, and his team is better. Yeah, yeah. And and and I think Andy's playing unbelievable defense. I think to me that's the real difference, is that a DH over

A guy who plays center field at an elite level. Right, right. And it's not like he's just an outfielder. He's a best defender in the MLB. So that's that's why. And he's gonna possibly have a 40 40 season himself, Pete Crow Armstrong. So I I basically voted saying if I had to vote for one, and it would be interesting at some point in the future if there's realignment, whatnot, if MLB would give up, because we've talked about not having two leagues, you know, the s the two MVPs and have one single major league baseball MVP.

MVP. It c it could happen, but I I think the tradition's too strong in baseball to give that up. And also if you're baseball, you wouldn't want to give it up purely because you get double the news by getting to announce two separate MVPs, you get double the news cycle too. And there's that linear connection, right? You're the AL MVP, you can go back to how many was and and would be that's from a nostalgic standpoint, it would be something to give up. So maybe maybe there's another award for player of the year or something that would supersede or make them so you can keep the two and

Then have somebody who's going to be the overall. This guy had the best year in all major league baseball because it really is one league. He's the best player. Yes, exactly. So well, we've got like about 10% of the season to go. I keep thinking about, you know, so who's gonna go 12 and 6 or 12 and s and five to because if you start the season 12 and 4, 12 and you're off to a great start and it almost sets up the first two months of your year. Now, if you go 12 and 4, 12 and 6, 12 and 5 and finish the season, you might win your division coming from nowhere or get a playoff spot.

Over a team that goes six and seven six and eight or six and nine or something like that. But but and that but the difference is is that the twelve and four stretch, you wouldn't see it in the record, but you would see it in how the season ends. Whereas at the beginning of the year, you don't know if that twelve and four stretch is gonna make a difference to how your season ends, but you feel it because you could see it there in the record. Cause twelve and four, when you see that on the win-loss column, feels very different than having that run somewhere else. But here's the thing, you know, the reason those teams are battling around five hundred to try to get in the playoffs is because they're not teams that go twelve and four.

So to pull the pour a little cold water on it, Bill Bill Parcells used to say, you are what your record says you are.