What can I say? A 58-23 record has exceeded all expectations and this team looks better overall than last year's edition which raced off to a huge midseason run before falling apart in September and being swept out of the ALDS. Here are the team stats:
Talk about run prevention. They consistently keep their opponents off the board with a combination of excellent pitching and superior defense (#1 in efficiency, #4 in zone rating). And they've done it with only one start from their ace Tyler Glasnow. And it's no fluke with the team's W/L only 2 games over its Pythagorean. The individual pitching stats:
As successful as we've been, we've cycled through a lot of pitchers and while nobody's been spectacular outside of McKay and Peacock, just about everybody else has been good. Adding Ken Giles as the closer and moving Nick Anderson back into a setup role has really solidified the pen and the rotation suddenly got deep with Peacock being everything we hoped for and more and Yonny Chirinos coming back from missing all of 2021 to pitch as great as he has. Right now Joe Ryan, Reggie Lawson and Luis Patino are stuck at Durham when they'd be in the rotation of about 2/3 of the other teams in the league.
Batting stats:
Last year's big 3 of Brandon Lowe, Meadows and Arozarena have been down some from last year, although Lowe is having a sneaky-good year after being MVP last season despite a lower batting average. Wander Franco has been a bit of a disappointment as he should be hitting over .300 but he's turned into a superior defensive 3B and along with Willy Adames on the right side, their WAR totals are healthy thanks to their D despite middling-to-decent offensive numbers. CF is the only position of concern, we should probably be playing Manuel Margot every day until Vidal Brujan comes back in a couple weeks as Josh Lowe really can't hit.