There’s always something fascinating going on in the world of baseball — and there’s always something new. Every Friday morning throughout the season, heading into the weekend, inspired by Zach Lowe’s terrific “10 Things I Like” NBA column for ESPN, we present the Five Fascinations, five fun things going on in the baseball world. Submit your personal fascinations to [email protected].
1. Is this the year Juan Soto wins an MVP Award?
Because Soto is still somehow only 25 years old, there is a sense that he is just getting started, that he somehow just got here. But you know, this is Soto’s seventh year in the big leagues — he made his debut the same year as Corbin Burnes, John Means, Kyle Tucker, and yes, Shohei Ohtani — which is already a pretty substantial big league career. Soto’s career is only five years shorter so far than, say, Kirby Puckett’s entire career — and Puckett is in the Hall of Fame. That leads one to ask: Considering how great Soto has been already, since Day 1 isn’t it about time for him to win an MVP Award?
The other two transcendent stars to debut in 2018 — Ohtani and Ronald Acuña Jr. — already have three MVP Awards between them, but Soto’s best finish is NL MVP runner-up in 2021, and he finished a distant sixth in NL MVP voting with the Padres last year. Soto is the sort of transcendent player whose career will be judged not by whether or not he wins an MVP, but how many.
And it’s all lining up for him this year. He has four clear advantages:
A) Soto plays for one of the most famous sports teams in the world. The Yankees tend to show up on your TV a lot, though, to be fair, only two Yankees have won an MVP in the last 40 years: Aaron Judge and Alex Rodriguez (twice).
B) Soto will be seen as the savior if the Yankees recover from last season. New York has more on the line than nearly any other team in the sport, and if the club can make the playoffs — or even better, win the AL East — he’ll be seen as the primary difference maker. You’re already seeing this with the Yankees’ hot start: The highlights feature Soto doing something every night.
C) His counting numbers should explode at Yankee Stadium. Soto hit a career-high 35 homers in San Diego last year, but he should be able to best that with relative ease at left-handed-hitting-friendly Yankee Stadium. If he puts 40 or more on the board, no one will be able to claim he just takes walks anymore. (Though, he of course does that, too.)
D) Betts, Acuña and Ohtani all play in the National League. That certainly helps, particularly with Betts’ face-melting start. The primary competition for Soto may well be his own teammate in Judge.
In a few weeks, we’ll do our first MLB.com poll for our favorites to win the MVP Award. Soto will almost certainly be the early leader in the American League. It’s all setting up for him to hold that spot all year. For what it’s worth: Ted Williams didn’t win his first MVP Award until he was 27. (Though that World War II business had a little bit to do with that.)
2. Phillies fans are just getting warmed up
Of all the October memories this sport has given us over the past few years, the first thing I think of when I close my eyes is how absolutely bonkers Phillies fans have been at Citizens Bank Park. It has been a little different than perhaps what we’ve come to expect from Philadelphia fans: I wouldn’t say they’ve been friendly, exactly, but they’ve been more intensely supportive of their team rather than intensely terrifying for opposing fanbases. They just love this team.
The genesis of this was actually during the pandemic, when Phillies fans — with their team playing (like everybody else) in empty ballparks — gathered outside the gates of Citizens Bank Park to make a ton of noise. “The Phandemic Krew,” as they were called, drove other teams nuts; Yankees manager Aaron Boone actually complained about them that year, becoming the first manager in baseball…
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