Sixty games. Ninety-eight to go. In a hundred-and-fifty-eight game season, that is enough to know some real things about some real teams. And this league has given us some real things to know.
I put my coffee down four times reading June’s numbers.
The first time was when I looked at what the New Jersey Bobcats have done since the opening bell. Forty-three and seventeen, locked pace-for-pace with the California Strokers in the most competitive division in this league. The second time was when I found Clarke Schmidt’s ERA. One-point-six-five. I had to check the decimal. The third time was when I added up Aaron Judge’s RBI total through sixty games. Fifty-eight. He leads this league by a significant margin, and most of the conversation has been about other things. The fourth time was Paul Skenes’ record. One and five. Which is not a baseball number. It is a miscarriage of arithmetic.
Sixty games. Ninety-eight to go. In a hundred-and-fifty-eight game season, sixty games is not nothing. It is not everything. But it is enough to know some real things about some real teams. And this league has given us some real things to know.
Let me tell you what I learned.
Forty-four and sixteen. I have been covering baseball in one form or another since before most people reading this were born, and I want to be careful about words like “historically.” But forty-four and sixteen is historically good. It is the kind of record that makes you check your arithmetic twice and then call somebody and read it to them out loud just to hear whether it sounds as extraordinary as it looks on paper.
Richard Chapman manages the Kinzua Dam Yankees, and he has built something that doesn’t just win — it suffocates. The Yankees are plus-one-hundred-and-thirty-seven in run differential through sixty games. That is not a lineup with a hot month. That is a machine.
Start with the offense. Eugenio Suarez leads this league with twenty-two home runs and has driven in fifty-five. Shohei Ohtani is batting two-eighty-six with fifteen home runs and thirty-eight RBI, and I want to be honest with you: on almost any other club in this league, those are the numbers of the feature story every week. On the Yankees, you get to them eventually. Alec Burleson is batting three-twelve. Will Smith is batting three-twenty-six. Trent Grisham has fifteen home runs and thirty-two RBI from what functions as the bottom third of the order. Brandon Lowe has fourteen home runs. That last sentence is the one that gets me every time I read it. Brandon Lowe has fourteen home runs batting in the bottom third of the order for a team that already has Ohtani, Suarez, and Burleson in the lineup. That is what construction looks like.
The pitching staff completes the picture. Freddy Peralta leads this league in wins at nine and in strikeouts at ninety-nine through sixty games. Clarke Schmidt is posting a one-point-six-five ERA — the best among qualified starters in this league — with a zero-point-nine-eight WHIP. Tyler Mahle is at two-point-four-five. Luis Castillo and Carlos Rodón have combined for thirteen wins. And David Bednar has twenty saves. Twenty saves in sixty games. That is not a bullpen. That is a fire door that only opens one way.
The last time I sat with Bob Monaghan, he was eating something cold out of a deli container and talking about pitch sequencing. This was in Branchburg, New Jersey — not Hoboken, I want to be precise about this, he has never managed in Hoboken and he has been very clear on the matter — and there was no pretense in the conversation, which is the thing I’ve always liked about him. Bob doesn’t manage for the press. He manages for the standings column.
The New Jersey Bobcats are forty-three and seventeen. I need you to sit with that for a moment. That is the record of a team that is not sneaking up on anybody anymore. That is the record of a team that has decided it is going to play this kind of baseball all season, and if you have a problem with it, the standings are posted on the board in the hallway.
The offensive numbers, laid out in sequence, constitute an argument. Juan Soto is batting three-twenty-six with an OPS of one-point-oh-one-three, seventeen home runs, forty-nine RBI, and nine stolen bases. He has been on base at a rate that makes opposing managers reach for the intentional walk sign three times an inning, and when they try it, Jazz Chisholm is standing in the next spot in the order with an OPS of one-point-oh-one-eight and eighteen home runs. Those two men occupy the middle of this lineup simultaneously. That is not lineup construction. That is architecture.
Bo Bichette at two-ninety-seven. Cody Bellinger at two-eighty-four with nine home runs. Salvador Perez with twelve home runs and an OPS of nine-twenty-two. Kyle Tucker has thirteen home runs, forty-one RBI, and an OPS north of eight-fifty. Matt Olson contributing twenty-nine RBI. This lineup does not give you a place to breathe.
The rotation is anchored by Logan Gilbert at nine wins, Tarik Skubal at three-point-six-two ERA with eighty-nine strikeouts, Nathan Eovaldi at two-point-seven-seven with a zero-point-nine-two WHIP, and Cristópher Sánchez at three-point-four-five with a zero-point-nine-oh WHIP. Aroldis Chapman has nineteen saves at the back end. The rotation holds. The bullpen converts.
Before I go any further, I owe something to the California Strokers and to anyone who reads this column carefully.
The California Strokers are forty-three and seventeen. The same record as the Bobcats. And I have spent two full sections writing about the Yankees and the Bobcats without giving the Strokers more than a passing mention. That is an editorial failure, and I want to correct it here, in print, where it can be held against me.
Aaron Judge’s RBI total through sixty games is fifty-eight. That leads this entire league. He is batting two-ninety-three with twenty-two home runs and an OPS of one-point-oh-seven-one. Kyle Schwarber has eighteen home runs and forty-five RBI with an OPS of nine-thirty-three. Cal Raleigh is batting three-twenty-one with twenty-one home runs, thirty-eight RBI, and an OPS of one-point-one-one-nine. I want to say that again. One-point-one-one-nine. That is the highest OPS in this league among qualified hitters, and it belongs to a catcher. That should be the lead of every league publication that has come out in the last two months.
Freddie Freeman is batting three-eighteen with eleven home runs. Max Muncy with eight home runs. Mike Yastrzemski batting two-eighty. Xander Bogaerts contributing across the lineup. This roster has an able hitter at virtually every position.
The pitching is where I should have been leading. Max Fried is six and zero through sixty games. Six wins, no losses. His ERA is three-point-six-nine with a WHIP of one-point-oh-eight. Jesús Luzardo is five and one with a three-point-oh-six ERA. Jack Flaherty is six and one with a three-point-two-three ERA and sixty-two strikeouts. Three rotation arms with a combined seventeen wins and an average ERA below three-point-two-five. Edwin Díaz has sixteen saves. Ryan Pressly has twelve more. Ray Goyenechea has built something real, and I should have been writing about it from the first paragraph.
I cannot tell you with certainty which of these two clubs is better. The Bobcats and the Strokers are forty-three and seventeen and anyone who tells you definitively which team is better at this moment is working from feeling, not evidence. I work from evidence.
Both teams deserve to be in the conversation. Cal Raleigh’s one-point-one-one-nine OPS is not a smaller story than Soto’s on-base percentage. Judge’s fifty-eight RBI is not a smaller story than Chisholm’s home runs. The Strokers earned the same breath. Consider this the correction.
I am going to say something that will surprise some of you, and I want you to hear it out before you move on to the next section.
The Cedar Rapids Rampage have the best collection of starting pitching in this league. They are twenty-one and thirty-nine.
Hunter Brown’s ERA through sixty games is one-point-nine-five. That is the second-best ERA in the league among qualified starters, behind only Clarke Schmidt’s one-point-six-five. His WHIP is zero-point-eight-eight. His strikeout total is seventy-eight. He has eight wins for a team that is twenty-one and thirty-nine, and I want you to sit with the math implicit in that statement.
Quinn Priester is two-point-two-eight ERA, eighty-five strikeouts, zero-point-nine-five WHIP, and eight wins. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is two-point-six-three ERA, eighty-eight strikeouts, zero-point-nine-oh WHIP. Corbin Burnes is two-point-five-one with seventy-one strikeouts. Chase Silseth is three-point-nine-eight. Four of the Rampage’s starting pitchers rank in the top twelve ERA qualifiers in this league. The team is twenty-one and thirty-nine. This is either the most dramatic case of run support failure in recent league history, or there is something in the distribution of run production and the timing of losses that I cannot fully diagnose from the outside.
Mookie Betts is batting two-eighty-seven with eleven home runs, thirty-eight RBI, and an OPS of nine-fourteen. Royce Lewis has eleven home runs and thirty-eight RBI. Marcus Semien with eleven home runs and thirty-five RBI. Seiya Suzuki at two-seventy-three. These are not numbers that explain twenty-one wins. Something in the sequencing and distribution has conspired against a rotation that deserves better.
The Coats Division, through sixty games, is tied at the top: the Illinois Polecats and the Pitt Panthers are both thirty-one and twenty-nine. Below them, nine games back, sit the Wales Black Sox at twenty-two and thirty-eight. The race is real, and it is not being covered at the level it deserves.
Let me start with Seth Lugo, because Seth Lugo demands to be started with. His season ERA is two-point-seven-four with seventy-one strikeouts and eight wins. His June ERA was zero-point-two-oh. Zero-point-two-zero. His June WHIP was zero-point-three-six. I have been covering baseball at the highest level for a very long time and I do not throw around phrases like “one of the great single-month pitching performances in league history” lightly. Those numbers from Seth Lugo in June are extraordinary. Shota Imanaga is seven wins, three-point-one-nine ERA, seventy-eight strikeouts. Luis Severino at five wins and three-point-eight-four ERA. Chris Paddack at three-point-three-five. Four reliable rotation arms in Woodlawn, Illinois.
The Polecats offense is led by Josh Naylor at twelve home runs and forty-one RBI. Anthony Santander has fifteen home runs and forty-four RBI. Nico Hoerner — acquired from the Yankees in the Bednar trade — at two-seventy-two with ten stolen bases. Jeremy Peña batting three-oh-eight with an OPS of eight-forty-two. Isaac Collins at two-seventy-five with eight stolen bases, and Collins is the player I keep writing down in my notebook. He runs the bases like he has thought about what happens next before the ball is hit. He does not take the extra base when the throw is going to be early, which sounds obvious and is not something every player actually does. Write down Isaac Collins before August makes him expensive to have been wrong about.
The Panthers arrived at thirty-one and twenty-nine by a different route. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is batting two-ninety-seven with fifteen home runs and fifty-two RBI. Bobby Witt Jr. led the league in June batting average at four-oh-five. Yandy Díaz has a one-point-oh-four-four OPS with nine home runs. Brice Turang at three-eleven with an OPS of nine-oh-nine. Garrett Crochet is three-point-one-two ERA with sixty-three strikeouts. Mark Gaudiano in Pittsburgh has managed this club to a first-place tie through sixty games of legitimate competition. JoJo Romero has seven saves for the Polecats. Both back ends convert. This divisional race is going to be worth watching in the second half, and I’m going on record now so it’s in print before it becomes obvious.
Let me tell you about Clarke Schmidt.
Schmidt pitches for the New York Yankees. He is posting a one-point-six-five ERA — the best mark in this league among qualified starters — with a zero-point-nine-eight WHIP. He had a stretch in May where he went twenty-one consecutive innings without allowing an earned run. The Yankees won those three games by a combined score of approximately thirty to seven. Schmidt’s twenty-one scoreless innings were absorbed into the broader narrative of the Yankees’ dominance rather than recognized as an individual achievement.
Five wins through sixty games. The Yankees have been so dominant in their run-scoring that Schmidt has frequently been lifted after six or seven quality innings because the game was already decided. He has surrendered the win-counting portion of his value to the roster strategy of a team that can afford to deploy its bullpen casually. That is not a criticism of how Chapman manages. It is a description of what it costs a pitcher to pitch for a team this good.
Freddy Peralta has nine wins and ninety-nine strikeouts. That is the top of the league in both categories, and it is an extraordinary season from a pitcher who has not always been in these conversations. I want Peralta and Schmidt to get the individual recognition they deserve, separate from what the Yankees have built as a unit. The team winning is not the same thing as the individuals not mattering.
Doug has been managing the Komodo Dragons for eleven years.
I mention this not as a biographical detail but as context that matters to what I want to say next. Eleven years is a long time in any simulation league. It is long enough to see everything — the dynasty runs, the rebuilding summers, the seasons where the dice go cold for three weeks and the team falls six games back before anyone understands what happened. Doug has seen all of it.
The Dragons are thirty-four and twenty-six, ten games behind the Yankees in Pendleton. That gap is significant. It is not insurmountable in ninety-eight games. But I want to talk honestly about what the standings conceal and what they reveal.
Joe Ryan is the third-best ERA qualifier in this league at two-point-two-five, with eight wins and seventy-eight strikeouts. Drew Rasmussen is two-point-six-three with a zero-point-nine-three WHIP. Logan Webb has been reliable at three-point-three-three. Andrew Abbott giving innings at three-point-eight-six. Adrian Houser at four-point-oh-nine, doing what Houser does: keeping the ball in the park, changing speeds, forcing weak contact on pitches that look drivable. That is a specific skill and it is underappreciated.
Adrian Morejon — known simply as El Fuego Cubano — has been a lockdown high-leverage pitcher, leading this club in saves and available at any point in a game when the situation demands it.
The offense: Byron Buxton has twenty-one home runs and forty-seven RBI with an OPS of one-point-oh-five-nine. Pete Alonso has sixteen home runs and fifty-four RBI — third in the league — with an OPS of zero-point-nine-eight. Brett Baty at two-ninety-nine with eleven home runs. Elly De La Cruz at two-seventy-nine. Gunnar Henderson at two-forty-seven with eight home runs. Riley Greene at two-fifty with thirteen home runs and thirty-one RBI. These are not the numbers of a team without talent.
In batting average, Miguel Andujar of the Jaybirds leads at three-twenty-eight. Will Smith and Juan Soto of the Yankees and Bobcats are tied at three-twenty-six. Ketel Marte of the Fightins is three-twenty-five. Cal Raleigh of the Strokers is three-twenty-one. In June specifically, Bobby Witt Jr. of the Panthers hit four-oh-five and Juan Soto hit three-ninety-seven. Those are June numbers that make the whole month feel different when you read them.
In home runs, Eugenio Suarez of the Yankees and Aaron Judge of the Strokers lead at twenty-two. Byron Buxton of the Dragons is third at twenty-one. Cal Raleigh is fourth at twenty-one. Jazz Chisholm and Kyle Schwarber are at eighteen. The top of this home run leaderboard is extraordinarily compressed, which tells you something about the quality of offensive construction across the top clubs in this league.
In RBI, Judge leads at fifty-eight. Eugenio Suarez of the Yankees is second at fifty-five. Pete Alonso of the Dragons is third at fifty-four. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. of the Panthers is fourth at fifty-two. Yordan Alvarez of the Fightins is fifth at fifty-one. Good luck to the Fightins in the second half. But not too much. Juan Soto of the Bobcats is sixth at forty-nine. Six different teams in the top six RBI positions. That is either a testament to the spread of offensive quality in this league or a coincidence I’m inclined to trust.
In OPS among qualified hitters, Raleigh leads at one-point-one-one-nine, Judge is second at one-point-oh-seven-one, Ketel Marte is third at one-point-oh-six-three, Byron Buxton is fourth at one-point-oh-five-nine. Yandy Díaz of the Panthers at one-point-oh-four-four, Jazz Chisholm at one-point-oh-one-eight, Juan Soto at one-point-oh-one-three. Seven players above one-point-oh OPS in this league. That is a league with real offensive depth.
In ERA among qualified starters, Schmidt leads at one-point-six-five, Brown of the Rampage at one-point-nine-five, Ryan of the Dragons at two-point-two-five, Priester of the Rampage at two-point-two-eight, Tyler Mahle of the Yankees at two-point-four-five, Burnes of the Rampage at two-point-five-one. The presence of four Rampage pitchers in the top ten ERA qualifiers, on a team that is twenty-one and thirty-nine, is the single most clarifying statistical fact of the first sixty games.
In strikeouts, Freddy Peralta of the Yankees leads at ninety-nine. Brandon Woodruff of the Golden Bears is second at ninety-two. Tarik Skubal of the Bobcats is third at eighty-nine. Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Rampage is fourth at eighty-eight. Cristópher Sánchez of the Bobcats is fifth at eighty-seven.
In saves, David Bednar of the Yankees leads at twenty. Aroldis Chapman of the Bobcats is second at nineteen. Edwin Díaz of the Strokers is third at sixteen. Jack Dreyer of the Speerits is fourth at thirteen. Carlos Estévez of the Black Sox is fifth at twelve, with Ryan Pressly of the Strokers also at twelve.
I have been covering baseball — real baseball, simulated baseball, the baseball that lives in the margins of spreadsheets and scorebooks — for long enough to know what sixty games actually tells you and what it doesn’t.
It tells you the Yankees are real. It does not tell you they are inevitable.
It tells you the Bobcats and the Strokers are both genuine contenders, playing at a level that earns the October conversation. It does not tell you which one gets there. I cannot tell you that. Nobody can.
It tells you Clarke Schmidt at one-point-six-five deserves more press coverage than he is currently receiving. It tells you Paul Skenes’ one-and-five record is a lie, and the truth is in his three-point-five-three ERA and his sixty-seven strikeouts and the twelve times his offense did not score enough to protect a quality start. It tells you Hunter Brown at one-point-nine-five is carrying more weight than the Rampage’s record suggests and that the gap between what the Rampage rotation is producing and what the team is winning represents the most consequential injustice in this league right now. It tells you Seth Lugo posted a zero-point-two-oh ERA in the month of June, which is a sentence I typed correctly.
It tells you Joe Ryan is the third-best ERA qualifier in this league and is largely invisible to the national conversation because he pitches in Pendleton for a club that is ten games out. It tells you Nathan Eovaldi at two-point-seven-seven and a WHIP of zero-point-nine-two is one of the steadiest arms in the league, and I am putting it in writing before someone else does.
It tells you Aaron Judge has fifty-eight RBI and that number leads the league by seven over Eugenio Suarez. It tells you Cal Raleigh has a one-point-one-one-nine OPS from the catcher position, which is not supposed to be possible at the scale of sixty games. It tells you José Ramírez drove in forty-six runs and stole eleven bases and did it without a single theatrical moment, which is its own kind of theater. It tells you Bobby Witt Jr. hit four-oh-five in June across a real sample of games. It tells you Isaac Collins of the Polecats is the player I keep writing down in my notes when I think nobody is watching, which is the clearest signal I know that someone is worth watching.
It tells you Doug has been at this for eleven seasons and he is not done. It tells you Bob Monaghan eats cold food from deli containers and wins forty-three games in sixty tries. It tells you Tom Bryce in Roseville is not having the year he wanted, and that Brandon Woodruff at two-point-nine-six with ninety-two strikeouts is pitching better than the record suggests, and that Tom will be back to talk about it in September. It tells you Tom Speer in Greer, South Carolina is managing a thirty-two-win ball club and running an entire league simultaneously, which is either admirable or a scheduling conflict that should be reviewed by the league office.
Sixty games is enough to know some real things. Ninety-eight games is enough time to make them matter.
I’ll be watching.
There is a piece of league news I have been asked to address that falls somewhat outside my usual editorial lane, but I am told I am the appropriate person to carry the announcement, which tells you something about either my credibility or my reputation for staying up too late with a press release.
The TSL and Tom Speer have entered into a formal partnership with Krispy Kreme Donuts.
I want to read that sentence back to myself. The TSL. And Krispy Kreme Donuts. Those four words represent a commercial arrangement between one of the oldest and most respected simulation baseball leagues in operation and one of the great American confection institutions — founded in 1937, which is twelve years before the TSL, but close enough that both organizations understand what it means to outlast the people who said you wouldn’t.
Tom Speer picked up the phone and made this happen. I have covered a lot of baseball. I have never written that sentence before.
The spokesperson announcement is coming. I am not permitted to name names. I am told it is not something to be glazed over.
Ninety-eight games remain. The league is real. The donuts are glazed. Somewhere in Branchburg, Bob Monaghan is reading this with cold deli food in front of him, and he is going to win forty-three more games before October. Somewhere in Cedar Rapids, Brian Lyons is staring at a rotation ERA that belongs on a championship contender and a win total that belongs on a team in rebuild. I do not have a resolution for that. I have a very good ERA for him, which is not the same thing. Somewhere in Pendleton, Richard Chapman is managing a forty-four-win ball club with the quiet confidence of a man who has already decided that October is not a goal, it is a logistical matter.
Watch the second half.