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Tuesday, September 20

• Mets punch ticket to October with grander goals ahead

• Astros clinch AL West, 1st-round bye to ALDS

• Kershaw locks up LA’s 1st-round bye with 10-K gem

• Scherzer spins 6 perfect innings for 200th career win

• Key for Braves down the stretch? Getting ‘dangerous’ trio going

• Guardians head to Chicago to ‘close this thing out’

• Santana talks the talk, then walks the walk for Mariners

• Burnes hopes for October rematch after rough start vs. Mets

• Young Guardians poised for postseason history?

More top news >

Best hitting season ever? Here’s the case for Judge

Too much attention is being paid to Aaron Judge’s pursuit of Babe Ruth, Roger Maris and various Yankees / right-handed / American League home run records.

It’s not that it’s not noteworthy, or incredible, or historic. It’s obviously all those things, and more. It’s just that if all we talk about are the homers, then we risk missing out on the totality of the .316/.419/.701 season that Judge is having at the plate. This isn’t an “empty” 40 home run season, like some of the years where those sluggers barely had an OBP above .300. This is, by any measure, one of history’s greatest all-around hitting seasons – and that includes the 91% of his plate appearances where he’s not hitting balls into the stratosphere.

The measure we’ll go with to back that up: OPS+. It’s adjusted for park and era, and compares a player’s performance to the rest of the league that season, setting the league average as “100,” which this year is basically what Josh Donaldson is doing.

Judge’s OPS+ is 213. It makes him more than twice as good as a league average 2022 batter. It is one of the 25 best seasons in Major League history; it’s one of just 50 seasons all time to see a 200 OPS+ or better.

He almost left baseball behind. It’s a good thing he didn’t

Benched at Triple-A and demoted to serving as the team’s bullpen catcher, Jason Delay was ready to walk away from the game on a road trip to his home state of Georgia. Now he’s the Pirates’ starting backstop.

Postseason watch: 1 more spot, 2 byes clinched

The Mets are in and the Braves will be right behind them, with the NL East still up for grabs. And one team in each league knows it won’t have to play in the Wild Card round.

Top 20 college prospects for ’23 Draft

Just as with the 2022 college crop, hitters dominate next year’s college Draft class. Position players claim six of the top seven spots and 12 of the first 15 on MLB Pipeline’s rankings of the 20 best collegians available in 2023.

MLB Network takes you behind the scenes

Ever wonder what goes into getting MLB’s Emmy-award winning show MLB Tonight on the air? See how it all works in a special live edition of MLB Tonight at 6 p.m. ET.

Today’s Trivia Question

Who was the last pitcher to win his 200th game with the Mets?

Answer »

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