Which one of these aces would you rather face?
If you’re like me and you find standing outside a batting cage terrifying when it’s set to 90 MPH, the answer is backing away slowly and pretending you didn’t hear the question.
If you’re an actual baseball player, it’s easy. Clayton Kershaw was, and still is, one of the greatest pitchers in the history of baseball, and he’s still solid at age 33 even with a little drop in spin rate recently. (Whoopsie!)
Any honest man would say Kershaw, especially a veteran big leaguer. I would like to face the human being over the space alien, please. That’s the answer. But when Fernando Tatis Jr. was asked that question earlier this month, he said he’d rather face Jacob DeGrom. The Jacob DeGrom who has been around three times better this year than any pitcher in the history of baseball.
Thing is, I think Fernando really meant it:
-He’s 22, 22-year-olds are reckless idiots
-DeGrom is his closest competitor for the MVP (Fernando did manage a double of Jake. He later said DeGrom is his vote for the MVP.)
-You’re supposed to want to face the best guy, the fans love that attitude. Ah, but fans also like winning. And it’s easier to win if you’re not facing the best. But sometimes you don’t have a choice.
Since baseball teams play a good chunk of their games against teams in their division, it’s normal that the good teams have played most of their games against bad teams and vice versa. It’s normal too, it follows, for the shittier teams to have played, say, 49 or 50 games against teams with over .500 records, like the Rockies and Snakes, while the top teams in a division are more likely to have played, say, 34 or 40 games against teams with over .500 records, like the Giants and Dodgers.
The Padres, you may have noticed, are not in last place. Yet they’ve faced more teams over .500 than all but five teams: Colorado, Arizona, Texas, the LA Angels, and the poor Baltimore Orioles, who thanks to playing in the AL East have played 64 of their 75 games against teams with winning records. (Coincidentally, facing the Orioles so much is one reason all those teams have winning records.)
By the law of averages, the only way for a team as good as the Padres to have played 49 games is to have played an extraordinary amount of out of division games against good teams. Here are the Padres’ out of division opponents and their current place in the standings since May 24, after a few early games against Texas, Pittsburgh and Seattle:
-Brewers (joint 1st place)
-Astros (1st place)
-Cubs (joint 1st place)
-Mets (1st place)
-Cubs (joint 1st place)
-Mets (1st place)
-Reds (3rd place and 4 games over .500…until they left San Diego)
(Plus the Rockies in Colorado, where their record is 25-16.)
Will it get better? The short answer is yeah, looks like it. At the moment the Padres have many more games remaining against teams .500 or below (56) than against teams with winning records. (29)
That’s because they’ve still got 26 games against the rest of the NL East, and although Philly, Washington, Atlanta (!) and Miami (the only one of those four with a positive run differential) all sit at .500 or below for now, all four of them have under performed their peripherals and/or potential, so it does depend on the form the Friars find those teams in in July and August.
But there’s also plenty more against the Giants (currently outperforming both their peripherals and expectations, so who knows there either), the Dodgers, and the Rockies at Coors (although they only play in Colorado three more times, which would be cause for a big exhale, if it was possible to do a big exhale at a mile above sea level.)
Then again, there’s also 13 more games against the Diamondbacks.
Not gonna jinx it.