MLB notes: Surprise, surprise: Red Sox emerging as contender in AL Wild Card race

Coming into the season not many people considered the Red Sox much of a playoff contender. The rest of the AL East would be too strong, the thinking went, and the AL West might have three serious challengers, too. Toss in whoever won the AL Central and it didn’t seem like there’d be much room for Boston to work with.

Nearly halfway through the season, however, a different picture has begun to emerge.

The AL East hasn’t been as strong as expected, as both Tampa Bay and Toronto have fallen from their perch and no longer look like the contenders they were billed as. The AL West, meanwhile, has been a complete disaster, and both the defending champion Texas Rangers and perennial powerhouse Houston Astros have been massive disappointments.

And then there are the Red Sox, who have survived a near-daily barrage of injuries to remain in the hunt.

Entering Saturday, the Red Sox stood just below the playoff cutline, trailing the Minnesota Twins by one game for the last American League Wild Card spot. Boston has also opened a three-game lead over the next closest team, and earlier this week Fangraphs listed the Red Sox playoff odds at a season-high 37.3%. They were 30.4% Saturday morning after the club’s loss to the Reds on Friday.

Those odds may not be great, but it’s an improvement from the club’s 24.1% odds on Opening Day, or its 10.8% nadir on June 4. Now with Triston Casas set to return and a favorable schedule over the coming weeks, the Red Sox have an opportunity to boost those odds even further ahead of the trade deadline.

Starting Monday the Red Sox will play 12 of their last 18 games before the All-Star break against teams that are currently at or under .500. That includes this week’s rematch with the Blue Jays at Fenway Park, along with the following home series against the San Diego Padres, who have been without Xander Bogaerts since the former Red Sox shortstop suffered a fractured left shoulder in late May.

After that will be a trip to Miami to face the last-place Marlins, a tough series in the Bronx against the Yankees, and then one last homestand against the moribund Oakland Athletics and the surprising Kansas City Royals, who have emerged as one of Boston’s top competitors in the Wild Card race.

Imagine that. Not only have the Royals, who lost 106 games last season, been one of the American League’s best teams, but if the season ended today the once-lowly AL Central would have three teams make the playoff field.

Obviously it’s too early to draw any firm conclusions, but with an improved pitching staff, a dynamic and developing core of young position players, and a weaker American League landscape, the Red Sox shouldn’t be written off as a non-factor.

Against all odds, they’re in this thing, and it’ll be fascinating to see how their odds change in the coming weeks and months.

Duran deserves respect

When Major League Baseball announced its initial All-Star voting update earlier this week, most of the results made sense. New York Yankees stars Aaron Judge and Juan Soto were the top two vote-getters, other faces of the game like Shohei Ohtani, Bryce Harper and Mookie Betts all topped one million votes, and most of the leaders at each position were expected and deserving.

But the most surprising total was one that wasn’t listed at all.

Jarren Duran was not among the top 20 vote-getters for American League outfielders, this despite the Red Sox leadoff man ranking among the best in the sport so far this season by numerous metrics.

The fact that Duran wasn’t among the top three or even the top six probably shouldn’t come as a surprise given his comparative lack of name recognition and the uniqueness of his candidacy, but for him to not even make the initial leaderboard?

That’s crazy.

As of this writing Duran has played in every game and compiled 21 doubles, 10 triples and 19 stolen bases, making him the only player in MLB with all of those totals. His 38 extra base hits rank fifth in MLB behind only Judge, Ohtani, Gunnar Henderson and Bobby Witt Jr., and his 150 total bases rank eighth in MLB across all positions.

Duran has also made incredible strides defensively. According to Fangraphs, Duran’s eight Defensive Runs Saved is tied for second among all MLB outfielders, and Statcast rates him as 96th percentile in outs above average and 92nd percentile in Fielding Run Value. For the more traditional-minded people, Duran has also only recorded two errors in 178 defensive chances over 670 innings.

The advanced metrics don’t just like Duran’s fielding work. Statcast also rates Duran as the most impactful baserunner in the sport (100th percentile Baserunning Run Value), and his expected batting average, average exit velocity and hard-hit percentage all rank among the top quarter of MLB as well.

Put it all together, and Duran’s performance compares favorably to the game’s elite.

So how could Duran play at this level and get no love from voters? His candidacy is admittedly a bit wonky, and at first glance his traditional numbers don’t jump off the page. Duran is batting .280 with seven home runs and 34 RBI, and while his 3.9 Wins Above Replacement mark ranks third among AL outfielders, that’s not necessarily going to resonate with casual fans the way it would with more tuned-in observers.

Duran is also still relatively unknown nationally, so he isn’t going to draw support the same way as someone like Judge, Soto or Mike Trout, who was polling ninth among AL outfielders despite having not played in seven weeks due to a torn meniscus.

Maybe the best explanation is Red Sox fans just aren’t voting like they used to.

Not long ago the Red Sox could force candidates towards the top of the leaderboard through the strength of the fanbase alone. As recently as 2018 Dustin Pedroia contended for a top-five finish among AL second basemen despite his having only played three games that season. But now no Red Sox players besides Rafael Devers are gaining any meaningful traction, and Duran finds himself trailing a group that, frankly, he should be leaving in the dust.

Some of the players polling ahead of Duran include Toronto’s George Springer and Tampa Bay’s Randy Arozarena, former All-Stars who are having horrible seasons and have no business going to Globe Life Field this summer. He’s also trailing Baltimore’s Cedric Mullins and Toronto’s Kevin Kiermaier, both talented and exciting players who have been barely replacement level this season, along with young up-and-comers like Cleveland’s Tyler Freeman and Will Brennan, and Texas’ Leody Tavares and Evan Carter. Those four are nice young players, but they aren’t All-Stars yet, and they certainly shouldn’t be drawing more support than Duran.

Luckily for Duran the fan vote only determines the starters, so he should get a good look from his fellow players and the Commissioner’s Office when reserves are selected. Even still, Duran deserves recognition for his breakout season, and fans ought to get behind him.

‘Robot umps’ hit snag

It’s seemed for years that the “robot ump” takeover of MLB was inevitable. The league has spent years testing its Automated Ball-Strike system — an electronic strike zone that uses pitch tracking technology to determine whether a pitch is a ball or a strike — and since last season two versions of the system have been tested at the Triple-A level.

But for tradition-minded fans who lamented the idea of the human element being stripped from the game, this week brought some good news.

MLB announced that going forward it will only use the “challenge” version of the system in Triple-A, and that if the technology is eventually implemented in the big leagues, that’s the version that will likely be used. Unlike with the full ABS system, in which all pitches are called automatically and relayed to the home plate umpire via earpiece, the challenge system maintains the status quo with a human calling pitches like normal, only players will have the option to challenge calls they disagree with, which are then confirmed or overturned via ABS.

The system is modeled after the challenge system used in high-level professional tennis, and unlike lengthy replay reviews, challenges typically only take a couple of seconds.

The challenge system has generally garnered positive reviews, largely because it addresses the problems ABS was developed to solve while minimizing the system’s inherent shortcomings. Despite extensive testing, MLB still hasn’t figured out how to create an electronic strike zone that accurately replicates one called by a human umpire, and that’s led to both tangible consequences like an increase in strikes or walks depending on the zone’s dimensions along with general dissatisfaction.

It may still be a couple of years before we see the challenge system in the majors — the league is still working to determine how many challenges each team should get per game — but this week did bring clarity on what the arrival of “robot umps” could look like when the day finally comes.