Texas ace Robert Ahlstrom, the best pitcher in the game, won the pitching Triple Crown, adding 291 strikeouts. The MVPs in both leagues appear pretty clear as well. And that's old friend Luis Patino of the Dodgers with a shot at the NL Cy.
In the end this turned out to be a pretty good team once it got out of its own way around the first of August. The offense found its stride, nobody ran the bases better, and pitching was always pretty good. The defense stunk, but that's true for about 95% of the teams in my saves.
Ozzie Albies had a nice bounceback season and it would have been even better had he not missed about a quarter of the season, although Kolten Wong filled in for him admirably. Santana had a massive power year and Elijah Green was a revelation in limited playing time and might not just start against lefties in the playoffs. One of these years James Wood will live up to his ratings but this was not that year.
It was a weird year for the staff as we had a fair number of injuries and ten different guys started games. While nobody had a real standout season, we still led the league in ERA (albeit at a high 4.01) and fewest runs allowed. It turned out our best run came when guys we were looking at as relievers turned out to be solid starters (German, Evans, Sears) while the guys we looked at as staff anchors (Swanda, Eldridge, Bradley) either had down years or got hurt. The bullpen was pretty good although Edwin Diaz had an off-year allowing too many homers and blowing a few too many saves.
Now that elite prospect Nelson Haro has graduated the farm system is bereft of help for 2030 and our top 3 prospects all came from this year's draft. It's not pretty.