The debate no longer exists.
It is over. There is a clear answer by now, and it really isn’t even close enough for an argument to be had.
The National League Central is Major League Baseball’s best division, boasting three of the four best records in the game and the top three in the NL. If that trend holds up over the final six-plus weeks of the regular season, it would be historic, as no division in the wild-card era has ever housed its league’s three best records.
With the St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs claiming the only NL winning percentages higher than .567, it is difficult to say those three clubs are not the favorites to claim the available playoff spots, nor that they aren’t the best teams in the league, regardless of what records or run differentials might say.
“I mean, it’s awesome,” Cardinals second baseman Kolten Wong told Ryan Fagan of Sporting News last week. “It definitely is. Just shows the kind of talent that we have in the Central right now.”
The talent is truly incredible.
The Cardinals, who have the best record in the majors at 77-43, have a starting rotation that, as an entire group, could be on the fringes of the NL Cy Young Award race this season. It went into Thursday with a 2.76 ERA, 3.31 FIP, 0.71 home runs allowed per nine innings and stranding 79.3 percent of its baserunners. All of those numbers rank in the top two in the majors, as did the rotation’s 13.5 FanGraphs WAR.
Since the start of the live-ball era in 1920, there have been only 21 other seasons where a rotation has had a lower ERA than what the Cardinals went into Wednesday with, and no team has been lower since the 1985 Los Angeles Dodgers. Only one team—the 1972 Cleveland Indians—has stranded runners at the rate the Cardinals have to this point, according to FanGraphs.
Oh, and the Cardinals are doing this without their ace, Adam Wainwright, who was lost for the season after four starts.
“The Cardinals are your working man’s old-school rotation,” an NL scout told Jayson Stark of ESPN.com. “Other than [Carlos] Martinez, they don’t really have those big-velocity guys. Plus they’re usually out of there after five or six innings, and then a bunch of relievers go out there and finish the job. But what they do, they do better than anybody.”
The Cubs have been the surprise emergence. It’s not that improvement wasn’t expected after a 73-win season, but improving to the point of basically locking up a playoff berth by September seemed like a pipe dream considering all the young, somewhat unproven talent and lack of a true ace in the rotation.
But the youngsters have mostly produced: Anthony Rizzo has blossomed into an MVP candidate—it is still Bryce Harper’s award to lose, of course—and rookies Kris Bryant, Addison Russell and Kyle Schwarber are showing loads of promise. Jake Arrieta has developed into an ace since arriving from Baltimore two seasons ago, Jon Lester has been solid, and Hector Rondon, Justin Grimm and Pedro Strop make up a strong bullpen.
“In my mind’s eye, I am going to be talking playoffs this year,” first-year manager Joe Maddon told reporters in November, per the Chicago Tribune, and that comment looks more accurate by the day. In the fourth season of the Cubs’ Theo Epstein era, they are finally a legitimate pennant contender.
Meanwhile, the low-market Pirates have shown that a once-perennial loser can sustain long-term success, which the Milwaukee Brewers and Cincinnati Reds, other teams in the NL Central, have not been able to accomplish.
After 20 consecutive losing seasons, the Pirates finally broke through in 2013, improving by 15 games to take the NL wild-card berth. Last year, they did the same, but they lost to the San Francisco Giants in the play-in game.
It appears they will host that game for a third straight season—this year against the Cubs—as they now have an annual MVP candidate in Andrew McCutchen and a true ace in 24-year-old Gerrit Cole. Both players were first-round draft picks during the franchise’s losing years.
“The fans were discouraged and here comes young [general manager] Neal Huntington in with more of the same: We’re going to grow it, we’re going to build it from within, we’re going to succeed,” Atlanta Braves president of baseball operations John Hart told Bill Brink of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “At some point they get a little tired of hearing it. To Neal’s credit, he stayed the course.”
The emergence of the Pirates, the rise of the Cubs and the perennial excellence of the Cardinals have grown the NL Central into the envy of baseball divisions. And none of these teams give off the stench of a one-hit wonder, including the Cubs, a team still waiting for that first hit.
To the assumed hatred of other teams in the league, this year is looking like a historic one for the division as it rolls its way into heavy October representation.
All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.
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