Final Record: 107-55 (18-12 for the month+)
1st place AL East, 21 games ahead of Baltimore
And so the regular season ends. The division was clinched on the 10th and it was a month of playing out the string and hoping nobody gets hurt. As far as the latter goes, we did suffer a couple of injuries with
Ryan Pepiot likely out for the playoffs with a rotator cuff strain and
Mason Auer suffering an abdominal strain although he should be back for the postseason as we get a week off while the wild cards play.
Boston rookie Samuel Zavala won the batting crown thanks to being the only AL regular to hit .300, which he did on the nose making him the batting champ with the worst average since another Red Sock, Carl Yasztremski at .301 in 1968. And as you can see at the bottom left our own rookie
Waylin Santana won 20 games (and the ERA crown), the only MLB pitcher to do so. It came down to his final start against Baltimore on the penultimate day of the season, and although he was staked a 4-0 first-inning lead he allowed Baltimore to tie it, before the Rays regained the lead for good before he left after 5 innings.
Elsewhere Toronto snuck into the playoffs despite an 80-82 record; they'll play AL Central champ Detroit in one wild card series while Baltimore and Seattle will face off in the other, with that winner set to play the Rays in the ALDS. Over in the NL, Philly nosed out the Cubs on the final day to take the last wild card in that league.
Just of course a great regular season, which once again will ring hollow if we don't win in October.
Our surprise MVP in terms of WAR was Kevin Alcantara, who had an amazing September/October (9 HR, 33 RBI in 25 games) to finish the year with 4.3 WAR. Due to injuries, trades, platoons, and a lot of depth we only had 4 guys play 125+ games so nobody ran away in the WAR department although you could assign 7.4 WAR to the roster spot which held Wander and
Bobby Marsh since they were traded for each other. Marsh didn't disappoint as a middle-of-the-order force with a .959 OPS and combined with this time in LA he finished 307/421/531 with 31 HR and 110 RBI, earning 6.5 WAR.
Thomas Saggese was a hugely pleasant surprise, coming up mid-year as an injury replacement and forcing his way into the lineup, earning 2.3 WAR in 80 games with a .930 OPS. In the disappointment department,
Mason Auer plummeted from 5.2 WAR in 2026 to 1.3 this year, a 75% drop, and
Brock Jones was sub-replacement after a decent rookie season last year.
Great pitching all around with Santana the Cy Young frontrunner as a rookie, and our second-best pitcher turned out to be Jeffrey Springs, lights-out in September (and really the entire second half):
The playoff rotation is really a conundrum as our nominal ace
Shane McClanahan and last year's Cy Young winner
Taj Bradley were our 4th and 5th best starting pitchers this season. Right now I'm leaning towards Bradley as the odd man out with the likely order being McClanahan-Santana-Springs-Brash.
A final look at the farm:
What a debut year in American baseball for Hirata (45 HR, 5.5 WAR). As mentioned in last month's summary it'll be hard finding him a position on the big club next year but I'm going to have to try.
So now on to the real test: the playoffs.