Friday, August 07

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Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, a weekday newsletter that gets you up to speed on everything you need to know for today’s games, while catching you up on fun and interesting stories you might have missed. Today’s edition is brought to you by David Adler.

If you were watching Pete Crow-Armstrong and Shohei Ohtani’s incredible heavyweight showdown the other day, you got to see something pretty interesting: The National League MVP race flipped in real time. 

Ohtani and PCA are the two MVP frontrunners this season. Ohtani entered the Dodgers-Cubs matchup with a slight edge according to the MVP odds (and our last MVP poll). But when PCA blasted his second home run of the game, he leapfrogged Ohtani and took over as the new odds-on MVP favorite.  

So we want to take a second to look at his case. Here are three key points in PCA’s favor:

1) He’s more than a full win ahead of Ohtani 

Let’s start with Wins Above Replacement, the quickest way to get a player’s value at a glance. Crow-Armstrong is the clear No. 1 player in the Majors right now — even if you combine Ohtani’s hitting AND pitching value. He’s even further ahead of AL MVP favorite Yordan Alvarez.

Highest WAR, 2026

Per FanGraphs 

1. Pete Crow-Armstrong: 7.8
2. Shohei Ohtani: 6.7 (3.7 batting, 3.0 pitching)
3. Yordan Alvarez: 5.7  

WAR isn’t the be-all, end-all — no stat is — but it does give us a good sense of where things stand. PCA being a full win above Ohtani matters. 

2) His “3-way” value is outweighing Ohtani’s 2-way value 

Statcast measures a player’s contributions in each phase of the game — runs created as a hitter and baserunner, runs saved as a fielder and runs prevented as a pitcher — so we can also compare Crow-Armstrong and Ohtani by their total run value generated this season.  

That comparison is pretty interesting, because PCA is great at batting, fielding and baserunning (look no further than his walk-off heroics yesterday) … and then you have Ohtani, the only player in baseball with both batting and pitching value, and lots of it. 

So let’s add it all up and see what happens… 

PCA has a +35 batting run value, +4 baserunning run value and +24 fielding run value. That’s a total value of +63 runs generated for the Cubs on offense and defense. 

Ohtani has a +29 batting run value, +1 baserunning run value, no fielding run value (obviously) … and a +21 pitching run value. That comes out to a +51 total run value for the Dodgers. 

So PCA comes out on top.

If Ohtani were still pitching right now, this might be a different conversation entirely. But right now, PCA’s threefold value is greater than Ohtani’s two-way value for the season.

3) We’re watching historic defense in center field 

Normally, Ohtani is the unicorn player. But as long as he’s limited to DH duties, Crow-Armstrong actually has the biggest outlier skill: his glove. 

With nearly two months to go, PCA is already having the single best defensive outfield season since Statcast started tracking Fielding Run Value in 2018. He has been twice as good as any other Major League outfielder. 

He’s converting a ridiculous 70% of plays with a catch probability of 50% or lower into outs, including 57% of plays with a catch probability of 25% or lower. He makes the impossible look easy in center.

We’re watching a truly transcendent center fielder this season. That’ll be on our minds when we’re thinking about who’s the MVP. 

 

POWERHOUSES ON DUELING WIN STREAKS

Two contenders are taking eight-game winning streaks into the weekend, thanks to some incredible baseball yesterday. 

That would be the Red Sox, who’ve won 26 of their last 29 games, and the Braves, who’ve won 15 of 20 since the All-Star break.

The Sox are a season-high 12 games over .500 and just a half-game back of the rival Yankees for the top American League Wild Card spot. The Braves are the second team after the Brewers to the 70-win mark, and they’re 8 1/2 games up on the Phillies in the NL East.

The Red Sox got to eight straight victories by winning an instant classic to sweep the White Sox. Boston rallied FIVE TIMES — including in the ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th innings — before finally walking it off in the bottom of the 13th.

Atlanta had a little bit of an easier time, beating the Marlins, 11-3 … except that win got started in highly unusual fashion: with Ronald Acuña Jr.’s fly ball deflecting off twoMarlins outfielders and over the fence for a home run.

So what do these two teams have in store for us next?

The Red Sox kick off a series against the A’stonight at 7:10 p.m. ET at Fenway Park. The Braves open an Interleague series against a fellow playoff contender, the Yankees, at 7:05 p.m. ET at Yankee Stadium. 

GAMES OF THE WEEKEND

Here are three games to watch this weekend — one for each day. 

Tonight: Blue Jays at Phillies (6:40 p.m. ET, MLB.TV)  

It’s José Soriano’s Blue Jays debut after they got him from the Angels in a surprising trade at the Deadline. Brent Maguire breaks down what you can expect from the breakout right-hander in Toronto. Soriano has a tough opponent in the Phillies and Zack Wheeler, who’s looking to get back to his usual workhorse self after a couple of short outings.

Tomorrow: Braves at Yankees (3:05 p.m. ET, MLB.TV) 

We’ve got a duel of former Cy Young Award winners on Saturday at Yankee Stadium: Chris Sale vs. Gerrit Cole. Sale won the 2024 NL Cy Young Award, and Cole won in 2023 in the AL. Sale is a top Cy contender again this season, while Cole is rounding back into form, with back-to-back wins over the White Sox and Cubs in his last two starts.

Sunday: Twins at Brewers (2:10 p.m. ET, MLB.TV) 

To finish off the weekend we get the top dog in the 2026 NL Cy Young race, Jacob Misiorowski, pitching the series finale against the Twins. Miz could break the 200-strikeout mark in this start — he enters the game with an MLB-leading 195 K’s, as well as his MLB-best 1.63 ERA. 

WELCOME TO THE HALL OF FAME, MRS. MET

Move over, Carlos Beltrán, Andruw Jones and Jeff Kent. Today we have a new Hall of Famer … and it’s none other than Mrs. Met. 

Mrs. Met has been elected to the Mascot Hall of Fame, joining her partner in crime, Mr. Met, who was inducted in 2007. She is the first female mascot in history to earn the distinction. 

Mrs. Met made her first appearance at Shea Stadium on Opening Day in 1975. Mr. and Mrs. Met were baseball’s first mascot couple. More than 50 years later, both of them are New York sports icons.

See more about Mrs. Met’s Hall of Fame honors here >> 

IT WAS WORTH A TRY

Last night, Luis Arraez took flight. He just didn’t quite think about where he was going to land. We just count ourselves lucky that we got to watch the blooper that unfolded.

Arraez made a valiant effort to escape a tag at home, leaping over Nationals catcher Keibert Ruiz. The only thing was, he didn’t come anywhere close to touching the plate. 

Arraez screeched to a halt and tried to turn back around, only to find Ruiz walling off the plate by that point. And that’s where he gave up. Instead of trying to deke out the catcher a second time, Arraez simply turned and sprinted back to the dugout, without even being tagged.

Watch, and don’t learn:

We want to know what Bryce Harper was thinking during all this. 

 

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