ARLINGTON, Texas — There was Shohei Ohtani’s soaring home run, the best baseball player on the planet flexing his preeminence. Paul Skenes rocking the mound at 22 years old. Mason Miller unleashing 103.6 mph madness, with eight of his 12 pitches topping 100. And an All-Star Game played in 2 hours, 28 minutes, the briefest Midsummer Classic in 34 years.
There was plenty to buzz about here, not just during the game itself but in the days leading up. What there wasn’t any of, though, was buzz about Chicago baseball. White Sox pitcher Garrett Crochet was of interest because he’s likely to be traded before the July 30 deadline. Cubs pitcher Shota Imanaga played second banana to Ohtani with the traveling Japanese media. But the Sox and Cubs teams? Forget about it.
Chicago might as well be Snoozeville.
And yet, onward the Sox and Cubs go.
For the 27-71 Sox, toiling in invisibility is in the best interests of all involved. Who needs to see more of that? Although, for some unimaginable reason, FanGraphs’ predictive models have the Sox playing not-so-unsightly .418 ball from here to finish with a mere 108 losses. Hey, wonderful.
“We’ve had a lot of tough losses,” Crochet said. “We’re not breaking the [Sox’] losing record by getting blown out every game. There’s a lot of games we’ve been in, but the ball hasn’t gone our way. It’s tough that it hasn’t gone our way so far, but I think when we turn the page to the second half we’ll put together a good [brand] of baseball.”
That’ll be a stretch even if Crochet — not to mention Luis Robert Jr. — isn’t traded.
The Cubs, dull and disappointing as they are, are more compelling than the Sox. Then again, so is the average fire hydrant. At 47-51, the Cubs are 8½ games out of first place in the division — don’t even think about them coming all the way back to win it — and 3½ games out of a clogged wild-card scene. Not to make too much of FanGraphs, but it gives the Cubs an 11.9% chance of making the playoffs, which is slightly more encouraging than a foul tip to the groin.
Still, an 8-3 stretch to enter the All-Star break stirred a bit of hope even if getting swept in a doubleheader Saturday in St. Louis stung.
“We were playing really well as a team,” Imanaga said. “Even after the [doubleheader], we were trying to figure out how we were going to win. We’re on a good run. Hopefully, if we just stick together, we’re going to have results.”
In a twisted sense, the Cubs’ July MVP might be Orioles reliever Cionel Perez. He broke Cody Bellinger’s left middle finger with a pitch last week, possibly removing Bellinger from contenders’ lists of trade targets and certainly making the outfielder and first baseman harder to deal for good value.
Still, on July 30 in Cincinnati, the Cubs will play a night game that might not matter very much at all. With the deadline earlier that day, it gives the Cubs 10 games out of the break — three each against the Diamondbacks and Brewers at Wrigley Field, three at the Royals and one at the Reds — to convince president Jed Hoyer this team is worth fighting for. Lose half or more of those games, and Hoyer will have the cover he needs to pull the plug on the season. Win more than half, and Hoyer might have no choice but to go the other way and bolster the roster, particularly the bullpen.
It might be this simple: If the Cubs were good enough to go to Baltimore and sweep a three-game series against the playoff-bound Orioles, it’s too soon to dismiss them.
“They looked good to me,” Orioles All-Star Adley Rutschman said. “I think they’re just one of those teams that comes out, and you’ve got to be ready every single day because they’re going to give you the best that they’ve got. They’re a good team.”
Let’s see if he’s right, then.
Imanaga is a rookie, but he’s also 30. One would think it might not tickle his funny bone to see the Cubs in last place at the All-Star break.
Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong had the first multihomer game of his career.