9 MLB Storylines That Will Define the Rest of 2022 Regular Season
With two-thirds of the 2022 MLB regular season now in the rear-view mirror, it's becoming clear which storylines will be almost impossible to avoid as we enter the closing stretch.
The Aaron Judge home run watch is the clear No. 1 on that list, and that's where we'll begin momentarily.
But Justin Verlander is also chasing greatness. So are the Dodgers. The Mariners desperately want to end the longest active postseason drought among the "Big Four" professional sports leagues. And the Padres might be even more desperate to make the playoffs, given all the money they've invested and all the drama they've endured this season.
Oh, and there are at least two intriguing division races to monitor on a daily basis.
We'll start with AL-specific storylines before transitioning to the National League for the other big things to watch down the stretch.
Records and statistics current through the start of play on Sunday, August 14.
Aaron Judge, MLB's Single-Season HR Record and His Impending Free Agency
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With 16 home runs in his last 25 games to get to 46 on the season, there's almost no point in wondering "if" Aaron Judge will break Roger Maris' Yankees record and AL record of 61 home runs in a single season.
It's more of a "By how many moonshots is he going to demolish that record?" question.
With 48 games remaining in New York's season, Judge currently has a full-season pace of 66 home runs. But with the way he has been mashing since mid-July, Barry Bonds' MLB record of 73 homers in a single season is at least in some danger of being broken.
Per MLB's Sarah Langs, Bonds was the only player to ever hit more home runs through his team's first 113 games, and even he was only two ahead of Judge at that point.
One has to wonder if teams will eventually start pitching around him. Judge has been intentionally walked just twice in the past eight weeks, even though no one is hitting all that well behind him.
(Don't get me wrong: The Yankees have a bunch of solid bats. But the drop-off from Judge to Anthony Rizzo to Josh Donaldson and Gleyber Torres is substantial. I would be walking Judge every single time.)
But regardless of how many home runs he finishes the season with, the secondary, incessantly-in-the-background storyline here is that this might be his final season in pinstripes.
There's a good chance he'll end up staying in the Bronx on some sort of eight-year, $300 million deal, but he is currently scheduled to become a free agent in three months and could end up signing that contract with the Giants, Cubs, Dodgers or someone else instead.
Justin Verlander Chasing a Third Cy Young at 39 Years Young
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For much of the season, it looked like the AL Cy Young Award would go to an up-and-comer in his mid-20s.
Toronto's 24-year-old Alek Manoah was fantastic for the first two months of the season. When he began to fade a bit, Tampa Bay's 25-year-old Shane McClanahan went on one heck of a run, entering the All-Star Break with a 1.71 ERA.
And while that Rays ace has come back to the pack a bit, Chicago's 26-year-old Dylan Cease has made a mind-boggling 14 consecutive starts in which he has allowed no more than one earned run.
But all those young guns are left looking up at Justin Verlander, who is somehow better than ever with a 39-year-old arm that missed virtually all of 2020 and 2021 while recovering from Tommy John surgery.
Verlander is leading the majors with 15 wins, a 1.85 ERA, and a WHIP of 0.86. Seventeen of his 21 starts have been of the "quality" variety, including three instances (against the possibly postseason-bound Mariners, Mets and Twins) in which he went 8.0 innings, allowed zero runs and gave up just three combined hits and walks.
JV is already going to be a no-doubter Hall of Famer one day, but coming back at this age after that surgery to win the third Cy Young of his career would be legendary.
Gaylord Perry won one at 40 years old in 1978, and Roger Clemens won his seventh at the age of 42 in 2004. But those guys didn't do so immediately after recovering from what reasonably could have been a career-ending injury.
Houston vs. New York for ALCS Home-Field Advantage
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In addition to the individual intrigue involving Aaron Judge and Justin Verlander, the battle between the Astros and Yankees for home-field advantage through the ALCS promises to entertain the rest of the way.
Not long ago, it seemed like the Yankees had things well in hand. At the end of play on June 18, they were up nine games on the Astros with a staggering plus-144 run differential. Since then, however, the Yankees have gone 23-26 (despite a plus-60 run differential), and the Astros have moved into first place in the AL by 1.5 games.
Will Houston capitalize on the return of Lance McCullers Jr. and an easier schedule than New York to secure the No. 1 seed?
Or will the Yankees snap out of their midseason funk, get back to winning 75 percent of their games and storm back into the lead?
Impossible to say, but recent history suggests the answer could be a critical one.
Houston and New York squared off in both the 2017 and 2019 ALCS, with the home team winning 10 of those 13 games. And in 20 head-to-head regular-season games played over the past four seasonsโthey didn't face each other in 2020, so no need to apply a neutral site/no fans qualifierโthe home team has gone 14-6.
Moreover, the Yankees are 41-15 at home this season, compared to a much more pedestrian 31-27 on the road. It's the most substantial home/road split in the majors and surely something to keep in mind when filling out those postseason brackets if they end up with the No. 2 seed.
Are the Mariners Going to End the Drought? (And Get Some Postseason Home Games?)
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There are a combined total of 124 teams between the "Big Four" sports leagues in North America (MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL), 121 of whom have made at least one postseason appearance since 2011.
The three exceptions are the NHL's Seattle Kraken (new franchise in 2021-22), the NBA's Sacramento Kings (last postseason appearance in 2006) and Major League Baseball's Seattle Mariners, who haven't played a meaningful game in October since the 2001 ALCS.
It's quite the drought, and it's one made even more painful by the fact that the Mariners are the only active MLB franchise to have never played in a World Series.
At least they're in a great position to finally make the playoffs again for the first time since Ichiro Suzuki was a rookie.
The M's entered play on Sunday 0.5 games behind the Blue Jays for the AL's top wild-card spot. They were also 1.5 games ahead of the Rays and had a 2.0-game cushion over the Orioles, who are in the "first team out" position.
Better still, they have the easiest remaining schedule in the majors, and they will close out the regular season with 20 straight games against the A's, Angels, Rangers, Royals and Tigers.
There's little to no hope of storming all the way back to catch the Astros for first place in the AL Westโespecially with nary a head-to-head game remaining against Houstonโbut Seattle should be able to edge out the other AL wild-card hopefuls for the No. 4 seed.
And that would be huge because the No. 4 seed gets to host the No. 5 seed in that best-of-three series, and the atmosphere at T-Mobile Park for those games would be all sorts of fantastic.
Grand Central Station
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While the AL East, AL West and NL West have pretty much already been decided, and the NL East looks like the Mets' to lose, both the AL Central and NL Central could come right down to the wire.
And though a first-round bye in the playoffs is likely out of reach for those respective division champions, there's no good reason to believe that the Brewers/Cardinals/Guardians/Twins/White Sox couldn't at least win a best-of-five series against the Astros/Dodgers/Mets/Yankees.
In the National League, Milwaukee and St. Louis have been jostling back and forth all season long, perpetually within 4.5 games of each other. Even the head-to-head series has been a virtual stalemate, all knotted up at seven wins apiece prior to Sunday's showdown with first place in the division hanging in the balance.
St. Louis should prevail in the end, as it has the easier remaining schedule and made two low-key-but-critical moves at the deadline (acquiring Jordan Montgomery and Jose Quintana) to significantly improve the back end of the rotation.
In fact, this could turn into a blowout within the next four weeks, as 24 of St. Louis' next 27 games are against the Cubs (eight), Nationals (four), Reds (three), Pirates (three), Diamondbacks (three) and Rockies (three). But we'll see how it plays out.
The AL Central is a three-horse race between the Guardians, Twins and White Sox. Minnesota was the only one of the bunch to actually do anything to improve at the trade deadline, but it's Cleveland that has pulled into first place in the past week, with Chicago in a seemingly permanent state of three-ish games back.
There are nine Chicago-Minnesota games remaining, eight Cleveland-Minnesota games left and six Chicago-Cleveland games yet to come, including a three-game Twins at White Sox series to close out the regular season. It might be the only undecided division by that point, but all signs point toward the AL Central being a photo finish.
The Crowded National League MVP Race
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The 2022 AL MVP is officially Aaron Judge's to lose. And if he does let it slip away, it will almost certainly go to Shohei Ohtani.
Not a whole lot of drama in that race.
But for the National League MVP, it's still wide open.
St. Louis' Paul Goldschmidt has been the slight favorite for almost two months now, and understandably so. He entered play on Saturday leading the league in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage, and has shown no signs of slowing down. He's also making a spirited push for the RBI title with 22 in his past 18 games.
However, teammate Nolan Arenado isn't that far behind Goldy in most batting categories and has been every bit as valuable, if not more so, once you factor in their respective impacts on defense.
That lack of a clear frontrunner just among Cardinals has left the door open for quite a few others to remain in the hunt for NL MVP.
The Dodgers have three solid candidates in Freddie Freeman, Trea Turner and Mookie Betts. The Mets have a pair of viable MVP options in Pete Alonso and Francisco Lindor.
San Diego's Manny Machado is still hanging around, and new Padre Juan Soto could surge back into the mix if he can maintain his 1.034 OPS through his first 10 games in new threads. And with a triple-slash of .376/.424/.733 since June 30, Atlanta's Austin Riley is the top challenger to Goldschmidt right now.
That's 10 legitimate candidates more than two-thirds of the way into the regular season.
Can the Dodgers Set the Single-Season Wins Record?
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While everyone has been freaking out about the Yankees playing sub-.500 baseball since mid-June, the Dodgers have almost quietly been on one of the most ridiculous prolonged tears in MLB history.
Dating back to June 29, Los Angeles has won 34 out of 39 games, gaining at least 15.5 games on every other team in the NL West.
The Dodgers already had the best run differential in the NL before beginning that stretch of dominance, but they have gone plus-126 in those 39 games, more than doubling the run total of their opponents over the course of nearly one-fourth of the regular season.
The Mets were one game ahead of the Dodgers 39 games ago, have gone a second-best-in-the-NL 27-12 during that time and now sit six games behind Los Angeles in the quest for NLCS home-field advantage.
Can L.A. keep it up for another seven weeks to finish off the greatest regular season of all time?
At 79-33, the Dodgers would need to go 38-12 the rest of the way to reach the record-setting win total of 117, which is asking an awful lot.
Even if you assume they'll take care of business against sub-.500 competition, they still have nine games left against the Padres, seven against the Brewers and three each against the Mets and Cardinals. Winning more than 75 percent of games the rest of the way will be tough, even for them.
We're also talking about a team that has won 87 percent of games played over the past six weeks, though.
It probably won't become a big storyline unless 117 wins are still feasible at the beginning of September, but at least it's something to keep an eye on with 50 percent of the divisional races already effectively over.
*Gestures Wildly at the San Diego Padres*
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Through its first 42 games, San Diego was 28-14 and was basically tied with the Dodgers atop the NL West. Manny Machado was the front-runner for NL MVP, Eric Hosmer was batting .320, and Taylor Rogers had a 0.47 ERA and was one of the best closers in baseball.
MacKenzie Gore was also doing an excellent job as a rookie in the starting rotation. Blake Snell had just made his season debut and Fernando Tatis Jr. would hopefully be back in a month.
Life was good in San Diego.
But over the next 61 games, both Hosmer and Machado batted .234, Gore (6.94 ERA) and Rogers (7.77 ERA) both imploded, Tatis' return kept getting delayed and the Padres went 29-32, plummeting out of the race for the NL West crown.
It didn't stop them from going all-in at the trade deadline, though. The Padres shipped Rogers to Milwaukee, Hosmer to Boston and Gore (and many others) to Washington in the process of bringing in Juan Soto, Josh Bell, Josh Hader and Brandon Drury.
And we couldn't forget about Tatis, mysteriously off in the distance with the promise of finally making this team a World Series contender upon his return.
But then came the hammer of Tatis' 80-game PED suspension on August 12, leaving everyone to wonder what exactly the final few chapters of San Diego's season will look like.
Sans Tatis, will the Padres "Ewing Theory" their way to a strong finish before stunning the Dodgers in the NLDS?
Will they more or less keep the status quo and finish right at the postseason cut line?
Or could they implode and become the 2022 version of the 2021 New York Mets, who went 17-30 down the stretch and ended up nowhere near the playoff picture?
Whichever way they go, we'll probably be drawn to it like moths to a candle. That's just the way it seems to go with this year's Padres.
Repeating with Rookies Ruling the Roost?
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This is more of a premature postseason train of thought than a "rest of the regular season" storyline, but wouldn't it be something if the Braves repeated as World Series champions with a trio of rookies playing a huge role?
At this point, the NL Rookie of the Year race has pretty much been whittled down to either Atlanta's Spencer Strider or Michael Harris II.
And, frankly, it'd be wonderful if they perfectly split the vote and shared the honor because the Braves' season turned on a dime after they called up Harris (May 28) and moved Strider into the starting rotation (May 30).
They were 23-27 and five games back for the final wild-card spot at the end of May, but they have gone 46-19 since then to move comfortably into the postseason picture.
As if Strider and Harris weren't enough, here they go again with Vaughn Grissom, who had a HR/SB combo meal in his MLB debut on Wednesday before demolishing another home run on Saturday.
Atlanta had been floundering at second base since losing Ozzie Albies to a fractured foot in mid-June, even taking a flyer on Robinson Cano for a couple of weeks. But in Grissom, it appears they've solved their problem so well that there's now a new dilemma of what to do with Albies and Grissom once the former is healthy enough to return to action.
Might Strider, Harris and Grissom all be starters for the reigning champions in the postseason, or will they fizzle out down the stretch and eventually pass the torch back to their more experienced teammates?
Either way, it's a little ridiculous that we haven't spent more time over the past few months discussing the possibility of Atlanta becoming the first back-to-back World Series champion in more than two decades. Sure, the Dodgers are great, and Aaron Judge is awesome, but Atlanta's quest for a repeat should become the No. 1 storyline once the postseason begins.
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