3 Up/3 Down: What I Liked — And Didn't Like — During Week 9 of MLB Season
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We're a third of the way through this season this week, as most teams hit the 54-game mark on their 162-game schedules. There's been a lot of great stuff going on so far, which makes this a fun exercise every week. There are always great story lines every week.
Here's the best and worst of what I saw this week:
What I liked
1. Rays get to 100 homers 10 weeks ahead of schedule
On Saturday, Tampa Bay designated hitter Harold Ramirez hit a two-run homer off of Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw during a game at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. It was the Rays' 100th home run of the season — tops in the majors, by far — and it came on May 27.
This 39-16 start by the Rays has been filled several amazing stats — heck, they are No. 1 in baseball in homers, stolen bases and starters ERA, quite the. trifecta — but this home run barrage has been something else. They didn't their 100th home run last season until Aug. 12. That's beating the pace by an amazing 87 days.
The Rays are slugging away from top to bottom in the order, too. With Isaac Paredes' homer on Sunday, the Rays are at 101 now. They have 11 players with seven home runs or more. That's full roster production.
Want a head-rattling comparison? This year, the Cleveland Guardians have only 30 homers all season, and they have only TWO players with more than three home runs.
Miami Marlins designated hitter Jorge Soler (12) celebrates with teammates in the dugout after hitting a home run against the Los Angeles Angels during the third inning at Angel Stadium. (Jonathan Hui-USA TODAY Sports)
2. Marlins' Jorge Solar homers for five straight days
Miami outfielder Jorge Solar was in rinse-and-repeat mode this week, playing baseball like a broken record. He hit a home run on Tuesday, then Wednesday and Thursday, Friday and Saturday. He finally missed on Sunday, going 0-for-4 in the Marlins' 2-0 win in Anaheim against the Los Angeles Angels.
Solar has 17 home runs now on the season, best in the National League in the non-Pete Alonso (20) division.
The Marlins concluded their long 10-game West Coast trip by winning four of their last five games. They are 28-26 on the season now, and in second place in the National League East, which is very impressive for a team that was a consensus fourth-place pick in this division. They're only 4 1/2 games behind the Atlanta Braves.
Don't be surprised if the Marlins don't stick around for a while, too. Their next 12 games are all against teams with losing records, including nine straight at home against San Diego, Oakland and Kansas City before playing three games in Chicago against the White Sox.
3. Atlanta's Spencer Strider fastest ever to 100 strikeouts, too
Atlanta pitcher Spencer Strider is only 6-foot tall and 195 pounds, but he's a great physical specimen. He's got a rocker fo an arm, touching 100 mph with his four-seam fastball and wiping hitters out with a practically unhittable breaking ball.
He struck out nine Philadelphia Phillies on Sunday and now has 106 strikeouts over 11 starts. When he got Nick Castellanos in the fourth inning, he reached the century mark in just 61 innings, the fastest ever to that milestone. Jacob deGrom was the previous record holder at 61 2/3 innings in 2021.
“It's cool,” Strider said after Atlanta's 11-4 win on Sunday night, adding “hopefully it'll keep going. Getting a lead first is big, especially when you get that big of a lead. When we're putting up runs, my job isn't to be perfect. My job is to get outs.”
The Braves scored seven runs in the first inning and Strider, who's 5-2 with a 2.97 ERA this season, has been great all year. Even in his two losses, the Braves allowed three unearned runs and scored only one run themselves over 12-plus innings. He's an ace, no doubt about it.
Atlanta Braves pitcher Spencer Strider was the fastest-ever to 100 strikeouts, doing it this year in just 61 innings of work: (Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports)
What I didn't like
1. Dodgers' starting pitching gets knocked around
The way the Tampa Bay Rays are hitting this season, it's hard to be critical of the failures that other teams have against them. But this is the Los Angeles Dodgers, who have legit World Series aspirations. And their starting pitching was brutal this weekend in the three-game series in St. Petersburg, where the Dodgers lost twice despite scoring 19 runs themselves.
Starters Noah Syndergaard, Clayton Kershaw and rookie Gavin Stone pitched a combined 13 innings over the weekend and gave up 17 runs. Seventeen runs! Let that sink in for a minute about the 9-3 and 11-10 losses. They salvaged Saturday with a 6-5 win, coming back to to at last steal one win the the rematch from the 2020 World Series.
The Dodgers are 32-22 so far, tied with the Braves for the most wins in the National League. But they're also 10th in the league in ERA at 4.50. That is not the easy path to the World Series.
Want a more damning stat? They have a 5.89 ERA on the road, which ranks 29th in baseball behind only the Oakland A's. So, yeah, dead last in the real team division. It's a good thing Los Angeles can score a bunch, but this is still something needs to get addressed, and not at the trade deadline. It needs to be sooner.
2. Twins letting everyone back in AL Central race
I picked the Minnesota Twins to win the AL Central this year, and probably felt better about it than any of my other six picks. (My ''Rays win AL East'' longshot is looking pretty good, though).
I liked the Twins so much because I didn't think Cleveland could hit enough, the White Sox were a looming disaster and the rebuilds in Detroit and Kansas City were still a long way off.
But the Twins just haven't been very good lately. They went just 2-5 since last Sunday and scored a total of SEVEN runs during the five losses. They can't get anything done at the plate.
They are 27-26 this season, and even at just one game over .500, they're still in first place in the AL Central, the worst division in baseball. The Twins would be in SIXTH place in the five-team AL East. They lead the Tigers by a game, but are tied in the loss column. The Tigers are 15-9 in May and have suddenly made this interesting.
I still feel like the Guardians will figure things out and make a run. They're too good when all that pitching is healthy. But it's the Twins who have been first place all but two days this season, and I still think they're the best team. But they really need to start scoring runs.
“Every time the opportunities were in front of us, every time there was something we could have done, it felt like we went in the wrong direction,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said.
Maybe it's just a bad stretch. Maybe it's not. They're 10-14 in May and now start a crazy hard stretch with 15 straight games against Houston, Cleveland, Tampa Bay, Toronto and Milwaukee. What if they go 5-10 or 6-9 during that run? First place will be long gone, even in that division.
Let's see what they wind up doing but they've really been a disappointment.
Minnesota Twins manager Rocco Baldelli (5) argues with third base umpire Dan Iassogna (58). (David Richard-USA TODAY Sports)
3. A's just might be the worst team ever
I'm the last person to pile on to the Oakland Athletics, because I do feel legitimately bad for what's happened to this franchise. They've been stripped of talent, and are on pace to be the worst baseball team ever. Yes, ever. They lost every game this week and have now lost 11 games in a row. They are just 10-45 this season and are on pace to win only 29 games. That's way ahead of the pace of the 1962 New York Mets, an expansion team that's always been considered the worst team ever. They were 40-120.
Oakland is awful in many, many ways. During their seven games this week, they lost four straight at Seattle by a combined score of 23-7 and then lost three in a row at home to Houston by a 21-6 mark. That's a minus-31 run differential for the week, and they are at minus-199 on the year.
They can't pitch — they are dead last in ERA at 6.87 — and. they can't hit, either. They're hitting just .220 this season, also dead last. That's a very bad combination .I feel sorry for the young kids out there trying to win games, but their ownership group is 100 percent to blame for all of this. Sure they didn't care to contend while they were trying to escape from Oakland, but they've taken it way too far. It's an embarrassment to the game to have a team so bad.
