Three storylines to watch for the second half of MLB season

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The MLB All-Star break is over and now it’s time for the contenders to start separating themselves from the pretenders.

Now that we’ve gotten the American League’s annual paddling of the National League in the All-Star Game out of the way, it’s time to focus on the business end of the regular season. While we’re not quite in the money rounds of the season in September, we’re getting closer to the trade deadline as well. The intensity is starting to ramp up now and here’s what to watch for as the second half gets underway today.

Can Paul Skenes win the NL Cy Young Award?

I know that there’s going to be some of y’all who read this and think “Okay, pump the brakes a bit. Yeah, Paul Skenes has been electric since coming up and his start in All-Star Game did live up to the hype but he’s still a rookie.” That’s true — you have to go all the way back to 1981 to find a rookie Cy Young winner, back when Fernando Valenzuela and Fernandomania ran wild all over the National League. It’s been 43 years and we haven’t seen a rookie win the Cy Young Award in either league ever since, so that alone is something going against Skenes’ chances.

He’ll also have to deal with a very tough pack of contenders. Chris Sale has been fully healthy for the first time since 2019 and the Atlanta Braves are reaping the benefits. Heading into the second half, Sale currently is currently either by himself or joint-leader among qualified NL starters when it comes to ERA- (65), FIP- (57) and xFIP- (63). He’s also heading into the back 9 of the regular season with the NL lead in fWAR as well. Additionally, Sale has also somehow gone his entire career without winning the Cy Young and while you don’t want sentimentalities and narratives to play a factor, the voters are human and it’ll surely be on their mind once it comes time to vote.

That’s not the only Braves pitcher who Skenes may have to contend with, either. Reynaldo López has been one of the surprises of the season in terms of starters and his first half was so good that he’s become a dark horse to win this thing. Skenes will also have to deal with another pair of NL East threats — both from the Philadelphia Phillies’ rotation. Zack Wheeler in particular has also been having a monster season and Ranger Suárez has been going stride-for-stride with him in terms of being dominant on the mound.

It’ll certainly be a formidable task for the young Pittsburgh Pirates ace to overcome those four pitchers and pull off a historic Cy Young Award win as a rookie but it’s also certainly possible that Paul Skenes can pull it off. When you expand the field of starting pitchers in the NL from those who are qualified to those who have simply pitched at least 60 innings, all of a sudden you’ll see Paul Skenes right up there with the best of the best here in 2024. Skenes will be starting the second half of this season with an ERA- of 46, a FIP- of 65 and an xFIP- of 57. Those are incredible numbers for a rookie and if Skenes can keep it up, he will be in the conversation to win this thing. Assuming he can stay healthy as well, Skenes definitely has a shot at making history and putting an exclamation point on what’s been an incredible rookie season so far.

Who will come out on top in the AL East and AL West?

When it comes to the divisional races, the closest action going right now are in the two coastal divisions in the Junior Circuit. The AL West has tightened up significantly in recent weeks and it’s mostly due to the Seattle Mariners not exactly sweeping the leg while the Houston Astros were reeling. Indeed, things have gotten so close in the AL West to where FanGraphs’ Playoff Odds model figures that this race should go right down to the wire.

Right now, the Mariners are leading the division by just one game (after having been up as many as 10 games at one point) and are projected to finish 85-77 with a 48 percent shot at winning the division. Meanwhile, the Astros are projected to end things at 86-76 and are being given a 45 percent chance of winning the AL West. While it may be easy to simply blame the Mariners for picking a very bad time to go on an 8-15 run (which is exactly what happened once they were up 10 games), credit has to be given to the Astros for getting up off of the proverbial mat after suffering an early-season knockdown.

As such, it appears that we’re going to be in for a whale of a race out West. What makes this even more interesting is that we won’t have to wait to see these two teams lock horns — Seattle will be hosting Houston to kick off the second half of the season tonight. Julio Rodríguez and the rest of Seattle’s offense will need to step it up if they’re going to have a shot at finally winning the AL West again but they will certainly have their work cut out for them as they’ll have to deal with Houston’s trio of Hunter Brown, Framber Valdez and Ronel Blanco to kick things off. That should be a fun series out West.

Meanwhile, things in the AL East are heating up as well. While Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees have spent most of this season in first place, they’ve never put more than three games between themselves and their foes in the East. The Baltimore Orioles had been nipping at their heels all season and we eventually saw Gunnar Henderson and the O’s overtake New York in the standings. The Yankees have had a rough go of it lately — after starting off the month of June by continuing an eight-game winning streak that had started in late-May, New York has gone 13-21 and fallen into second place since that streak was snapped.

Meanwhile, Baltimore has been a bit streaky in both directions since the start of June. The O’s won six-straight in early June and then closed out the month with a run where they lost five straight and then won four straight immediately afterwards. The Orioles then went into the break by losing five straight games before breaking that streak with a win on the final Sunday before the break as they salvaged a three-game series (and a one-game lead in the division) against the Yankees, themselves.

However, New York’s wheel-spinning and Baltimore’s back-and-forth streakiness has opened the door for an unlikely contender in the form of the Boston Red Sox. All-Star Game MVP Jarren Duran and the rest of the Sox are now just four-and-a-half games back of the Orioles for the divisional lead and have also recently gotten over the 50 percent Playoff Odds mark for the first time all season. If both Baltimore and New York continue to be inconsistent, then the door could potentially swing wide open for Boston to become a real contender to pull off a massive upset and take the East.

While there’s still plenty of baseball left and the trade deadline still yet to come, it really wouldn’t be shocking at all to see both of these races go right down to the final days of the regular season in September.

How will each Wild Card race shake out?

While I’m personally not a fan of a sport with 162 games expanding its Postseason to the point that MLB has done, the format expansion has accomplished its goal of keeping more teams competitive in the regular season. For instance, the Cincinnati Reds are currently 47-50 which is good enough for fourth place in the NL Central and a tie for seventh in the Wild Card standings. A team having a resumé like that used to mean that they were heading for ol’ “Sellville” at the deadline. Instead, they’re only three games out of the third and final Wild Card spot which means that Elly De La Cruz and the Reds are just a hot streak away from being a real contender for a Postseason spot.

There are currently three NL teams (Arizona Diamondbacks, San Diego Padres and Pittsburgh Pirates) who are fewer than two games out of the third Wild Card spot and then it gets six-deep when you expand the field to teams who are fewer than four games back (Reds, San Francisco Giants and the last-place (!!!) Chicago Cubs). That’s 12 teams who all still have a puncher’s chance of getting into the Postseason — the Playoff Odds might be pessimistic for the NL Central teams but hey, as long as you’re staying that close to a playoff spot in the actual standings then you may as well stay in it to win it, right?

While the AL doesn’t have nearly as much of a crowded field for their third Wild Card berth, it still figures to be very interesting going down the stretch. The Kansas City Royals have already gotten a jump on trades by adding Hunter Harvey from the Nationals to their bullpen, the Tampa Bay Rays have been staying alive and floating around .500 for a couple of weeks now and we’ve already talked about what’s going on with the AL West and their divisional situation. One of those teams out West is likely going to get a Wild Card berth at this rate but that still doesn’t mean that the battling for both the division and a Postseason spot in general will be any less fierce.

Simply put, everything’s still all up in the air as far as the Wild Cards in each league are concerned. Again, there’s still plenty of baseball to be played and acquisitions to be confirmed so we’re nowhere near having a true crystal ball for what’s going to happen in the future. What we do know is that it sure will be fun watching how this all plays out. From award debates to actual playoff races, there’s still a ton that’s left to be decided. It all starts tonight when baseball gets back underway and hopefully we’ll see the second half of the season start out with a bang.