MLB Bullets won’t go away without a fight

Good morning. Enjoy the weekend.

• Just about six weeks left of the major league season and Anthony Castrovince has one compelling storyline for all 30 MLB teams the rest of the way.
• Jonathan Bernhardt looks at the wild American League Wild Card race.
• Grant Brisbee wonders which team winning the second AL Wild Card would have the best chance of winning the World Series.
• GIancarlo Stanton set a new single-season Marlins home run record with his 43rd home run this season. (He has 44 now.) But Stanton has bigger goals in mind, like the single-season home run make which he says is 61 home runs.
• Grant Brisbee reminds everyone that the single-season home run record is actually 73. The title of “home run king” is a stickier subject.
• Michael Baumann writes that Stanton is finally the most-feared hitter in baseball.
• Now that Stanton has broken the Marlins record, Cliff Corcoran ranks each team’s home run record on how likely it is to be broken.
• Jon Heyman reports that it is very possible that Stanton is traded this winter.
• Very good news for the Marlins and baseball fans: Miami-Dade County says that the Marlins cannot move the psychedelic home run sculpture without the permission of the county. They will also have to pry it out of my cold, dead fingers if they want it to move.
• One sculpture that might never get built in Miami now that the team has been sold is the statue in tribute to Jose Fernandez.
• The new Marlins ownership reportedly won’t keep team president David Samson around.
• The Rays have joined the other two major professional sports franchises in the Tampa Bay area in offering to help pay to remove a Confederate monument from downtown Tampa.
• The Red Sox would like for the City of Boston to rename “Yawkey Way” that passes by Fenway Park.
• Commissioner Rob Manfred said he doesn’t expect to welcome our robot umpire overlords anytime soon.
• The Dodgers say they don’t care about setting a record for most wins in the regular season.
• Albert Pujols set a record too, although it’s probably not one he wants to celebrate. Pujols set a record for most career grounding into a double play.
• Pujols has a negative-WAR this season. Will Leitch looks at Pujols and other players with negative-WAR and estimates if they can get into positive territory this year.
• Rob Arthur estimates that Giants catcher Buster Posey is pretty much a lock to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Arthur doesn’t even mention that Posey was the best player on three World Series champions.
• Travis Sawchik looks at the adjustments that Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge has made this year and ones that he might still need to make.
• Jay Jaffe lists the best current MLB player at each height. Because of Judge and Jose Altuve, of course.
• Cardinals closer Trevor Rosenthal will be examined for right-arm “tightness.” Da-dumm-dumm!
• Matt Snyder thinks losing Rosenthal would be a terrible blow to the Cardinals playoff chances.
• Diamondbacks pitcher Rubby De La Rosa is beyond the dramatic sound effect as he’s already going to have his second Tommy John surgery.
• Jered Weaver announced his retirement.
• Craig Calcaterra believes that Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman is in danger of losing his closing job.
• Joe Mock explains how MLB turned the Little League ballpark in Williamsport, PA into a stadium for major leaguers for this Sunday night’s game.
• Harry Enten points out that most of America could not care less about the Yankees/Mets rivalry.
• Craig Edwards looks at what Statcast data can tell us about a pitcher’s ability to limit hard contact. It’s still a work in progress, but if you’re into hard data analysis, it’s worth checking out.
• Mets catcher Travis d’Arnaud played third base on Wednesday night. Then he played second base. Then he played third. Then second. Then third again . . . etc.
• A look at how some major league players picked their number.
• Sam Miller looks at a trick play from a Rhode Island state high school championship from 2006. The “Skunk in the Outfield” play took two minutes and 32 seconds to play out and pretty much broke baseball. Which is one reason why the team never tried it again, although just one. (Honestly, I’d never heard of this trick play before. It’s too complicated to explain here, so just read the story.)
• Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez took the mound for a charity game.
• And Mike Oz opens 1992 baseball cards with Pedro. Pedro pulls his brother Ramon and trades him away! Find out for whom and why. (No, it’s not because he hates his brother.)
• And finally, this first pitch is making all the rounds. It has baseball. It has groin. You don’t need anything else.
• And really finally, you don’t think Grant Brisbee is going to let this story go by without writing something about it and other bad/good first pitches.

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster.