I thought about how things are going now that the Jewish New Year has passed. Most things looked up for a change. The New York Yankees have reached the playoffs and still have a mathematical chance to catch AL East leader Tampa Bay with aa four game series starting Tuesday in the Bronx. Plus Aaron Judge was back in the lineup, making the NYY attack more potent.
Those moribund New York Jets actually won their season opener—by defeating Tennessee on the road. This kind of stuff doesn’t normally happen. The Green and White actually looked good.
The Franklin and Marshall football team went to 2-0 with a road win at Westminister last Saturday. A trip to Catholic and another win could put the Diplomats at 3-0 heading into Centennial Conference play. Plus Johns Hopkins, the heavy favorite to win the CC title, already has a loss.
I thought this would be a simple blog about MLB as it heads into the final week. College football’s last weekend in the Summer. And of course the NFL. I will cover all of those topics and more.
I mentioned the Yankees and Rays. It’s more than time to give Tampa Bay some respect for winning the most games in the American League—at least thus far. They have combined solid pitching with a dependable lineup.
Third baseman Junior Caminero, is a verifiable super star. Caminero has slugged 41 home runs, driven in 97 runs and accumulated 162 hits for a solid .277 batting average. Since his MLB debut in 2023, he has made consecutive American League All-Star appearances and he helped the Dominican Republic attain a bronze medal in the 2026 World Baseball Classic. The slugger even reached the semi-finals of the 2026 Home Run Derby held the day before the All-Star Game in Philadelphia.
His swagger and positivity outweigh any deficiencies in his game. I know that the ostensible leader for the AL M.V.P.Award is Houston’s Yordan Alvarez. Alvarez has a higher batting average at .312; he has 167 hits; and he has clubbed 40 homers and has the same R.B.I. total as Caminero.
I don’t want to hear that New York Yankees pitcher Cam Schlittler should be the front runner for the M.V.P. Award. I know that if the exotic metrics are factored in, he’s more important to his team than either Alvarez or Caminero.
But there’s a reason there is a Cy Young Award—one trophy given to celebrate the top pitcher in each league since 1967 after only one was presented for both leagues. Pitchers are normally not recognized for their overall importance to a team.
Twenty-five pitchers have been voted M.V.P. The most recent was Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw in 2014. Justin Verlander won the AL M.V.P award in 2011 as a member of the Detroit Tigers.
Some of Schlittler’s statistics are strikingly similar to those of Kershaw. The major differences are that Schlittler started more games but pitched fewer innings with less strikeouts, a touch higher E.R.A., with Kershaw winning 21 games and losing only 3; Schlittler does not match up on that key statistic. Nor did Schlittler pitch two complete games, one of which was a no-hitter.
Do I love Schlittler and how he burst onto the scene and has become a bona fide ace? Absolutely. He just doesn’t quite compare to to those who have won the M.V.P. Award in addition to the Cy Young Award. And some think that Schlittler isn’t a shoe in for the AL Cy Young Award either.
Which brings me back to the Alvarez-Caminero duel for AL M.V.P. I realize that Alvarez had been chasing a Triple Crown—but his lead is only in the batting average category. His Offensive Wins Above Replacement (WAR) and On-Base Plus Slugging (OPS) numbers are the best. Caminero only is ahead of Alvarez by one home run.
Yet Houston is in a dogfight with Texas for the AL Central crown, with each team at or near .500. Tampa Bay has the best record in the league and Caminero stands out among his teammates. Even if the Yankees somehow overtake the Rays and win the AL East, it was Caminero who led the team to where it ended the season.
I am not diminishing Alvarez’s season. He has been phenomenal. For a very average team. Caminero has been the star on one of the top teams in baseball. To me, he’s more valuable than Alvarez.
It’s not much of a contest for NL M.V.P. Pete Crow-Armstrong has outpaced everyone across the board—even if he does not lead in any statistical category other than OPS. It’s his 9.4 WAR which blows away everyone in both leagues.
PC-A has to worry about his Chicago Cubs making the Wild Card round of the NL Playoffs. Once in the top spot, which would mean hosting the three game series to open up the playoffs, the Cubs find themselves tightly bunched with San Diego and Philadelphia. It would take a total collapse and a hot streak by Arizona to expel CHC from the first round.
Besides the National League Wild Card drama, the American League has much more at stake during the final week or so of the season. In the AL Central, the Cleveland Guardians have caught up with and passed the Chicago White Sox for first place. CWS does hold the tiebreaker. The Sox suffered a bad loss on Friday night when Detroit scored 5 runs in the top of the eighth inning to claim the win and drop Chicago a game behind Cleveland.
Right now, the White Sox have the last Wild Card spot in the American League. But both Texas and Houston are threatening and even a late surge by the Orioles has kept Baltimore in contention.
It would be a great story if the White Sox make the playoffs. From 2023-25 CWS lost over 100 games each year. Such a turnaround just doesn’t happen.
Would it be meritorious if the Sox finished near, at or above .500? Yes.
But meritorious rises aren’t measured in wins and losses. They are decided by playoff berths.
I want to comment on Pete Alonso. The Orioles’ first baseman is having another Pete Alonso-type year—a lot of home runs and a ton of R.B.I.
This is the guy the New York Mets did not want to offer enough money to stay a Met for life. And what kind of season did the Mets have? Last place in the NL East, to be exact. With a bloated payroll and insufficient pitching.
Alonso returned to Citi Field, welcomed by the adoring Mets fans who offered tribute after tribute to their franchise hero. In his 7 seasons in Flushing, the Polar Bear set the team record for most career home runs.
He did so in dramatic fashion, slugging his 300th career homer to tie the score on Tuesday night in a game the O’s eventually won. Pete then hit #301 on Wednesday for good measure.
Alonso loved his time with the Mets. He never wanted to leave. Now he is very happy in Baltimore and hopes to end his career there. A career which could approach 500 home runs and possible enshrinement in Cooperstown.
Whoever made the decision not to retain Alonso—whether it was GM David Stearns or owner Steven Cohen or both—blundered. Badly.
I haven’t addressed the albatross in the room. The New York Yankees. And number 99, Aaron Judge.
Judge came back last week and looked rusty. To be expected. He didn’t want a major league rehab stint, which almost all players endure as part of the road of return to the big leagues.
The Yankees captain convinced Yankees brass that he could make it work without a trip to the minors. They agreed. After all, this is Aaron Judge. Three-time AL M.V.P. winner. The man with the single-season American League home run record. Who would know better about his body than Aaron?
On Monday in Minnesota, Judge launched his first home run on his return, a mammoth shot into the second deck in left field. He was back. The Yankees future looked brighter than it has been in quite awhile. Their leader would lead them to the World Series, fans thought.
Until Wednesday night. While playing right field, Judge felt tightness in his right calf. He tried to play through the soreness. He was lifted for a pinch hitter in the sixth inning.
Yankees Nation fretted over the news. Was this just soreness that would need a little rest? Or was it something worse? The visions of the muscular Giancarlo Stanton’s calf issues sidelining him were all too troubling for the NYY faithful.
On Friday Judge was placed on the 10 day IL. His regular season was effectively over. He would not be there to challenge the Rays during the critical four game series at Yankee Stadium beginning on Tuesday.
Moreover, would Judge even be available for the projected first round matchup against the Red Sox? Would his return be more of a liability than a benefit especially considering how he had performed in his limited return from the rib injury which had sidelined Judge for so long?
Yeah, I know that New York fans could turn their attention to their football teams. Both won on Sunday, with the Giants outclassing the Dallas Cowboys on national TV in John Harbaugh’s debut as head man for the G-men.
That euphoria may be short-lived as the Giants travel to Southern California to take on a Rams team still licking its wounds after a disastrous trip to Australia and a loss to the 49’ers. LAR will be without top pass rusher Myles Garrett, out after arthroscopic knee surgery. Former All-Pro Aaron Donald will make his return in Garrett’s place rather than alongside him.
Unless the Giants are now that good and the Rams are that overrated, who would be surprised if NYG was 1-1 after Monday night?
Ditto the Jets. Green Bay lost at Minnesota and will be in an ugly mood coming to New Jersey. NYJ will be without key players at wide receiver and on defense this week. Green Bay is much better than the Tennessee Titans. Besides, are the Jets even as good as the 2-0 Buffalo Bills or New England?
In college football, the big game is LSU-Mississippi. I find myself rooting for the Rebels only because LSU Head Coach Lane Kiffin is generally somewhat deplorable.
Both schools push the limits on who can play for them. Mississippi QB Trinidad Chambliss is playing in his seventh year —who goes to college for that long unless there is a sweetheart deal keeping him there—academically or monetarily. Meanwhile LSU wants kids who signed NFL contracts but didn’t make the rosters to be able to play this season.
The Ole’ Miss fans will be nasty towards Kiffin on Saturday night, Kiffin left Mississippi before last season’s bowl game and he tried to poach players and staff to go to Baton Rouge. In the end, both schools get what they deserve—even if one wins and one loses.
Don’t you just love SEC football? It reminds me of the old Southwest Conference where cheating and dastardly doings were the norm. It’s kind of ironic that four former SWC schools—Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Texas A&M—are SEC members. Kind of fitting?
My Rutgers moment is this—Saturday afternoon RU is a 29.5 point underdog to #12 USC at home. That’s right—the University of Southern California is coming to play in Piscataway. That’s true college football royalty visiting SHI Stadium to likely demolish Rutgers.
In some quick research, USC joins such blue bloods as the original Big Ten, and the other West Coast schools that joined the conference to play at Rutgers. College football royalty such Army, Texas and Notre Dame have visited Piscataway. Others played games versus the Scarlet Knights at Giants Stadium.
And in an anomaly in 1925, LSU visited Rutgers in New Brunswick and RU won. Don’t let Lane Kiffin know about this—he’d schedule RU in Baton Rouge for a revenge annihilation. Using whatever means allowable.
As for me, I believe that I am in some way at fault for all the New York chaos. Since last Saturday, I have had problems securing new cell phones and then securing delivery of a split box spring. All that was fixed and my neighbor and I secured the right tree expert for removal of a pin oak on our properties.
Then I was the last one sick in my house—a virus infection which came on suddenly on Wednesday morning. As I was gleefully thinking about how much of a great post-season the Yankees would have.
I sweated out the low-grade fever and the hacking cough is subsiding. I am most likely not going to the Jets game in the predicted rain for Sunday.
Somehow, I am going to have to do a lot of atoning on Sunday and Monday when Yom Kippur arrives. Otherwise the Yankees are doomed. Isn’t that what New York fans must do these days for success on the order of the NBA championship the Knicks won after 53 years?
Given the plights of the Giants, Jets, Yankees and Mets, is selling your soul worth it? Hard to tell.
Or was it just the illness making me crazy?
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