The final quarter of the regular season is in session, and there are still so many questions about which teams will make the postseason and which players will come away with the end-of-year awards.
Shohei Ohtani is no stranger to adding hardware to his résumé, as Ohtani is the reigning two-time NL MVP and has won three MVPs overall since 2023. Ohtani was in a class of his own the last two seasons, but this year, he’s not the easy favorite to win the NL MVP award.
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Over on the north side of Chicago stands a 24-year-old, five-tool talent that has taken baseball by storm this year. Pete-Crow Armstrong has made an incredibly strong case for the MVP award, as he became the first Chicago Cub in history with two consecutive 30-30 seasons while playing tremendous defense in center field. As of Wednesday Aug. 19, Crow-Armstrong leads all of baseball with 8.2 fWAR, while Ohtani has him beat in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and RBI and… he has a 1.79 ERA on the mound
Patrick Saunders of MLB.com writes about the tight race between Crow-Armstrong and Ohtani.
It’s safe to say that Kyle Tucker’s first season as a Dodger has been completely underwhelming, as the outfielder is now slashing .230/.326/.367 with 11 home runs and 55 RBI over 119 games. After a hitless series against Milwaukee, Tucker snapped out of an 0-26 skid with an RBI double against Ryan Feltner on Tuesday in the Dodgers’ 7-6 win over the Colorado Rockies on Tuesday.
The Dodgers have repeatedly ensured that they have Tucker’s back despite the poor performances, and Dave Roberts has made it his mission to be more open with him and to have a more personable relationship, per Maddie Lee of the Los Angeles Times.
“When you start to struggle and you internalize … you find yourself going dark, and that’s a lonely place,” Roberts said Tuesday, before the Dodgers’ 7-6 win against the Rockies. “So I think that for me, trying to proactively pull conversations out of him, talk about life, talk about baseball, it just kind of opens things up, and I think that it’s freeing. He’s a cerebral guy by nature, internalizes a lot. But still, for me, he’s with a new ballclub, he’s scuffling, so I want to get that out of him.”
As for Tucker himself, he wishes he knew the answer behind his year-long struggles.
“If I knew, I’d probably have figured it out by now,” he said. “But that’s just kind of how it’s gone.”
During Tuesday’s contest, Hunter Feduccia had to leave during the bottom of the seventh inning due to a stomach bug, and the catcher vomited after getting off the field, reports Jack Harris of the California Post.
“He’s got this stomach bug or food poisoning, something like that,” manager Dave Roberts said afterward. “He was scuffling all game. So finally –– he went as long as he could go.”
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