🔥 Burning Questions 🔥 for the Second Half of the 2024 MLB Season

Much is left to be settled between now and October.

Aaron Judge versus Gunnar Henderson for AL MVP is among the big storylines to watch over the rest of the season.

I don’t know about you, but it feels to me like the first half of this MLB season flew by. So the All-Star break is a nice chance to catch our breath and take stock of what we’ve learned so far — and what we’re still trying to figure out. Since I’m a big fan of the “midseason burning questions” format of article, let’s run through a few of the biggest storylines to watch as we look ahead to 2024's stretch run.

Who wants to be the World Series favorite?

Unlike last year, when the Atlanta Braves were in the driver’s seat for most of the season (until they weren’t), there isn’t a runaway favorite to win it all this year. The star-studded Philadelphia Phillies currently lead the Elo ratings, and they also have the best record in baseball. But neither the markets nor the models are fully sold on Philly;¹ it’s actually the L.A. Dodgers who rank first in my composite odds model at the break, with a 15.7 percent chance to win it all:

Of course, the Dodgers have been riddled with key injuries and have a horrible track record of turning favorite status into postseason success. Which opens the door for the next group of teams, all above 5 percent — including the hot-and-cold Yankees, the rising (though slumping recently) Orioles, the Acuña-less Braves, the Guardians, Twins, Brewers and even the unkillable Astros. Perhaps we will get more clarity with one of these teams stepping to the forefront in the second half, but we may also just go into the playoffs with even less of a sense of who might win than usual.

Can last year’s Fall Classic foes — especially the champs — turn it around?

As of a few days before the All-Star break, the Texas Rangers were tied for the eighth-worst record by a defending champion through the first 94 games of the next season. And the Arizona Diamondbacks only recently broke .500 for the first time since early April. Collectively, both teams’ records are tied for the seventh-worst among all World Series contestants through the first 96 games² of the next season:

The Rangers were clearly the better team in last fall’s 4-1 championship win — but, ironically, they are now the ones with the narrower path back to the postseason.

Arizona has nearly triple the playoff odds of Texas (38.9 percent to 14.0) in large part because the NL’s wild card battle is so much less challenging than the AL’s. Leading the D-Backs by just a game, the Mets occupy the final wild card slot with a record (49-46) only 3 games over .500 — and they’re also the Mets, winning almost entirely on the power of a McDonald’s mascot. Compare that with the 53-42 Red Sox in the AL’s final spot, 11 games over .500 and 7½ clear of the Rangers, and we see why Texas faces more of an uphill battle despite actually having more WAR this season than Arizona.

Who are our MVPs?

Looking at the handy JEFFBAGWELL³ WAR leaderboards, we have some interesting races shaping up in both leagues:

Over in the AL, there’s a two-man race brewing between New York’s Aaron Judge and Baltimore’s Gunnar Henderson, with each on dueling 10+ WAR paces so far. The betting odds favor Judge (-370), probably because of his edge in homers — he’s on pace for his third 50+ HR season — plus RBIs and OPS, though there’s something to be said for Henderson if his O’s hold on to beat the Yankees for the division.

And then, in the NL, it should probably be Shohei Ohtani — the markets have him at -380 over Bryce Harper and others — though our friend Ketel Marte is making the WAR leaderboard vaguely interesting (not that he has a snowball’s chance in hell of actually winning MVP). If Ohtani wins, it would be a significant achievement: Only five players (including Harper) have ever won MVPs with multiple teams, and Frank Robinson is the only player to be named MVP of both leagues.

Can Paul Skenes keep this up?

Beyond the MVP races, the Cy Young battles also look really fascinating. And though he’s not quite on the lists above, one of the players making noise in the NL race is Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes — yes, that same phenom who only debuted in mid-May. With his 99+ mph heater and ridiculous command, Skenes has an unreal 6-0 record, 1.90 ERA and 6.85 strikeout-to-walk ratio in his first 11 career starts. It’s one of the best starts to a career by a starting pitcher ever, if we look at average Game Score for starts in a player’s first 11 appearances:

Aside from Masahiro Tanaka’s dominant first 11 starts, we haven’t seen a pitcher begin his career in this fashion since José DeLeón (another Pirate) in 1983 and Mark “Bird” Fidrych in 1976. Oh, and this week, Skenes also became the youngest pitcher to start an All-Star Game since Doc Gooden in 1986 — naturally, pitching a scoreless inning before handing things off to Max Fried. The only question is whether Skenes can stay this red-hot for the rest of the season — and, sadly, this being the era of increased pitcher injuries, how long he can stay healthy while throwing the ball this hard, this often.

Which team currently in playoff position will fall out (and vice-versa)?

For all of the uncertainty about the top of the World Series race, we do have a decent idea of who will actually be in the playoff field come October. According to the composite model, eight teams have at least a 75 percent chance of making the postseason, ranging from the Phillies (effectively 100 percent) to the Twins (78 percent). That means eight of the 12 playoff slots are at least a good amount of the way toward being locked up even now, before the start of the second half.

But that also means there are still spots plenty up for grabs. If I had to pick the teams currently in playoff position most likely to drop out by regular season’s end, the Cardinals (36 percent playoff odds) and Mets (45 percent) seem most vulnerable.

St. Louis has a number of particularly glaring issues — they have the run differential of a team with a much worse record, and they will go from facing the 22nd-hardest first half schedule (by Elo) to the fifth-hardest in the second half. They have fewer WAR than all but one of the six teams (Pittsburgh) sitting outside the playoffs but within 3½ games of the last wild card. Speaking of which, for New York, it’s more the precarity of having to hold off all of those teams; the Mets are better than the Cardinals, but this is still a team that looked dead in the water just a few months ago.

In the AL, the ever-confusing Red Sox are probably the playoff team in the most danger of falling out; Boston has exceeded expectations to get to where they are, two games up on the rest of the wild-card field, and as much a fan of ASG MVP Jarren “Big Swole” Duran as I am, I’m still not sure we can fully count on him to be a 7.5-WAR player. Similar to the Cardinals, the Sox also get the schedule-strength knob turned up in the second half. And call me crazy, but the Mariners are far from a sure bet to hang onto their AL West lead; if Seattle falls out of first place, they would instantly be out of wild card position as well.

Who would take these spots? The easy call is for the Astros to leapfrog Seattle and win their seventh division title in eight years. In fact, given how well Houston has played lately, that outcome is more likely than not (54 percent) at this point. And while I’m not sure I trust them to chase Boston down while counting on the likes of Seth Lugo and Cole Ragans to pitch like Cy Young candidates, the Royals do have a solid chance as long as Bobby Witt Jr. keeps playing like the new George Brett.

The NL is more interesting. I already touched on the D-Backs’ situation earlier, but the Padres (45 percent playoff odds) are in arguably an even better spot due to a much more favorable second-half schedule — seventh-easiest in baseball, per Elo. Arizona and San Diego are the only NL teams currently outside the playoff picture with at least a 20 percent chance to make it in. Outside of them, there are the frustrating Giants and Cubs and a Pirates team already led in WAR by a guy (Skenes) who’s only been on the team for a few months.

But the most interesting team in this tier might be the Reds, who are only 3 games back of the Mets with a vastly better run differential (+38 versus +13). No matter how it happens, I think I’ll be rooting for a postseason with Elly De La Cruz in it, even if the odds are currently long (16 percent).

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Filed under: Baseball

1. I’m honestly not completely sure why. Sure, they’ve played an easy schedule, but the Phillies have gone to each of the past two NLCSes and they have the best underlying stats — per either Wins Above Replacement or BaseRuns predicted winning percentage — of any team this year. What exactly do Bryce Harper and company have to do at this point?

2. 96 games is the minimum between the two teams; Arizona played its 97th game before the All-Star break.

3. The Joint Estimate Featuring FanGraphs and B-R Aggregated to Generate WAR, Equally Leveling Lists.