Outside The Confines: Records and milestones

It’s hard to believe there are only 2½ weeks left in the 2022 regular season. Of course, with all the extra playoff teams, I’m expecting the postseason to finish up sometime around Christmas. (Yes, I’m aware that the World Series is scheduled to end no later than November 5. I’m exaggerating for rhetorical effect.)

• Yankees slugger Aaron Judge hit home runs number 58 and 59 on Sunday in a 12-8 win over the Brewers. Judge now only needs three home runs to pass Roger Maris for the American League record.
• Bryan Hoch has a look at Judge and his quest for the record and maybe a Triple Crown.
• Dan Szymborski evaluates Judge and the Cardinals’ Paul Goldschmidt’s chances of winning the Triple Crown in their respective leagues. That was published on Friday. The odds have no doubt changed since then.
• However, Angels two-way star Shohei Ohtani said he’s having a better season in 2022 than he did in his 2021 MVP season. Sam Blum evaluates that claim. (The Athletic sub. req.)
• Matt Snyder thinks that even without examining the relative won-loss records of the Yankees and Angels, Judge deserves the MVP in 2022 over Ohtani.
• Of course, Judge going for Maris’ 62 is not the only milestone home run within reach this year. The Cardinals’ Albert Pujols is going for 700 career home runs. David Adler explains how Pujols, whose career looked over last season, has found a finishing kick this past month to put 700 home runs within reach. He sits at 698 with over two weeks to go.
• Four writers from mlb dot com debate who is the greatest baseball player ever from the Dominican Republic and Pujols is certainly in the debate.
• Michael Baumann notes that Pujols attended Maple Woods Community College and makes the point that great baseball talent can come from anywhere.
• Baumann includes a really fun Sporcle quiz in that article where you need to guess where all the MVPs since 1931 went to college (if any). But it’s very hard to play it at that article so I found it and I’m providing a direct link here. I’m not going to say how I did on the quiz, but I will say is that if any of you know where Joe Morgan went to college without looking it up, you’re a much better trivia wizard that I. Also, you know too many useless facts about Joe Morgan.
• There were a couple more records set over the weekend. Astros starter Framber Valdez set an MLB single-season record with 25-straight quality starts.
• And Braves rookie pitcher Spencer Strider became the fastest pitcher to 200 strikeouts in a season, completing the feat in just 130 innings. That’s two-thirds of an inning faster than Randy Johnson in 2001. Also, Strider was the first rookie pitcher in Braves history with 200 strikeouts.
• Will Leitch has each team’s most pleasant surprise in 2022 and Strider didn’t even make the list for the Braves.
• The Braves got some bad news as infielder Ozzie Albies came off the injured list and one day later went back on it with a broken pinkie finger. Albies is out for the regular season, but he might make it back for the postseason if the Braves stay alive long enough.
• Thomas Harrington has nine stars who need to prove themselves in October.
• Stephanie Apstein has a feature-length article on how the Mets (mostly) overcame decades of dysfunction to be a contender to win it all this year.
• Joel Sherman touts the role Terrance Gore and his baserunning provide for the Mets.
• Buster Olney looks at the Dodgers first-three batters in the lineup: Mookie Betts, Trea Turner and Freddie Freeman and argues that it might be the greatest 1-2-3 lineup of all time. (ESPN+ sub. req.) I had thought Rose/Morgan/Bench for the mid-70s Reds, but I went back and checked. That was the lineup sometimes, but much more often Griffey batted second and Morgan and Bench batted third and fourth. Not that Ken Griffey Sr. was bad or anything.
• Bob Nightengale writes of how Dodgers outfielder Trayce Thompson has finally “arrived” in the second-half of this season.
• Dodgers pitcher David Price said he has not yet decided whether or not he’ll retire at the end of the year. There had been some reports that he had decided to hang it up after the season.
• Jeff Passan looks at the “tiers” of free agency at the end of this season. (ESPN+ sub. req.) You’d better believe Aaron Judge is in “tier one.”
• Jay Jaffe explains why, despite leading the AL in fWAR and FIP, Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman is not a serious candidate for the Cy Young Award.
• The Mets lost some members of their extended family over the weekend. Former Mets catcher John Stearns died at 71 after a long battle with cancer. I remember Stearns as the only catcher who stole bases more than once or twice a year of the era.
• And Joan Hodges, the widow of former Mets manager and Dodgers first baseman Gil Hodges, passed away at 95. Our sympathies go out to both of their friends, families and the Mets organization.
• If you’re curious as to how the MLB draft lottery will work, R.J. Anderson has you covered.
• The owners of Nationals Park and the District of Columbia are at odds over the failure to build commercial and retail space outside the park like they agreed to when the stadium was built.

• Watch this play, because Pirates third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes certainly wasn’t watching it.

• Pirates manager Derek Shelton said that the matter has been dealt with and that it was an “outlier” for Hayes.
• And finally, Zach Buchanan looks at the art of giving good news, or the clever and increasingly elaborate ways that minor league managers are telling players that they are going to the majors for the first time. (The Athletic sub. req.) As of now, this is kind of neat, but I fear that it’s going the way of gender reveal parties and pretty soon managers will have players take batting practice with an exploding ball that reveals “You’re going to the big leagues!” in smoke and fireworks. Eventually, some stadium is going to burn down by this thing or some prospect will get so badly burned in the celebration that he’ll go in the injured list before he even makes his debut. (I’m exaggerating for rhetorical effect again.)

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