Welcome to the MLB Star Power Index -- a weekly temperature reading that tells us which players are owning the baseball conversation right now. While one's presence on this list is often a positive, it's not necessarily a good thing. It simply means that you're capturing the baseball world's attention for one reason or another. The players listed are in no particular order.
Ryan Braun has much to do with the following Shocking Baseball Fact: The Brewers have gone from playoff longshots to playoff participant without the services of superstar outfielder Christian Yelich. Yelich went down on Sept. 10 with a fractured kneecap, and at the time the Brewers were in third place in the NL Central -- five games behind the Cardinals and one game behind the Cubs for the final NL postseason berth.
You don't lose a player like Yelich and not feel it in the standings, is the understandable thinking. Yet here the Brewers go, not feeling it in the standings. Since Yelich went down and out, the Brewers have gone 13-2, and along the way they've clinched back-to-back playoff berths for the first time since 1981-82 and also kept the NL Central title in play heading into the final series of the regular season. As noted, the veteran cloutsman Braun -- who's more handsome and more likable than Aaron Rodgers -- has been central to those unlikely efforts.
Braun since the loss of Yelich has batted .308/.386/.718 with four home runs and four doubles in 12 games. In those 12 games, the Brewers are 11-1. Overall, the 35-year-old is now batting .284/.342/.504 (116 OPS+) with 22 homers this season. That's useful stuff, particularly from an aging stalwart who's appeared to be in decline since his standout 2016. As for the road ahead, heck, maybe Braun can again be lineup-worthy in 2020, the final year of his contract (assuming his 2021 club option isn't picked up). For the near-term road ahead, he'll look to keep raking and perhaps power the Brewers to a second straight division title. Aaron Rodgers, meantime, is terrible at baseball. Just terrible.
Buffoonery practitioners across baseball have recently wondered aloud, or at least as anonymous sources, whether the Red Sox should trade Mookie Betts. OK, perhaps trading Betts is defensible under the banner of a deep rebuild, but when you've got a young to young-ish core of Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers and Andrew Benintendi, you build around it; you do not raze it all in the service of an undetermined future. Yeah, Betts is eligible for free agency after next season, and it's doubtful whether he's willing to sign an extension in Boston. That would mean the Sox would lose one of the best players in baseball with nothing more than a compensatory draft pick as their consoling binky.
Before we continue, hey, enjoy some color television:
Laser. 😱 pic.twitter.com/IJVY19p25S
— MLB (@MLB) September 24, 2019
There's our hero. All available lawds and mercies, report here for celebration of that. That's Mookie. Yes, he's fallen a bit from those MVP heights of 2018, but when you do everything well you're a superstar even when not operating at peak. Relative to 2018, he's seen his OPS+ drop 50 points or so, but Betts is still slashing .294/.390/.526 with 310 total bases and 90 unintentional walks. He's also stolen 16 bases in 19 attempts, and he's taken the extra base an impressive 52 percent of the time. On top of all that, he remains among the best defensive corner outfielders in the game today. Oh, and Betts is still just 26 years of age.
The Sox should keep Betts for 2020, and you should still regard him as one of the top players in baseball. It says both of those things right here on the internet.
See those numbers above? They snatch you up by the lapels and communicate in pointed terms that Craig Kimbrel is not longer a stranger to pitching ordure. Kimbrel, ballyhooed as a second-half bullpen savior when the Cubs inked him in back in June (said ballyhooing was certainly justified), but, alas and alack, he wound up heavily abetting their exit from contention.
What especially stands out is that Kimbrel this season has allowed nine home runs in just 20 2/3 innings. That's a career high for home runs allowed in a season for him, and he "achieved" it in just 23 games pitched. Batters put up an OPS of 1.019 against him this season, which means Kimbrel in 2019 basically turned every hitter into Alex Bregman. That's not advisable from the moundsman's standpoint. Also not advisable is allowing hitters to slug .783 against your fastball, which is something that else that Kimbrel's done this season. Yeah, his velocity is down a tick, but that doesn't explain the extent to which hitters have, metaphorically, punched each one of Kimbrel's teeth until they snapped off at the gums and then hogtied him and then pushed him down a dry waterslide and into a pit of aggrieved wolverines.
The sample size is small, yes, so let's bear that in mind. Maybe, though, relievers are especially in need of a normal spring on-ramping, which Kimbrel did not get thanks to a cold market for his services. Maybe there's an underlying injury (no reason to think this beyond the numbers), or maybe early decline has come (as it often does for hard-throwing relievers). Whatever the case, there be aggrieved wolverines here.
Felix Hernandez -- King Felix! -- on Thursday night made what was likely his last start as a Seattle Mariner. It may have even been his last start as a major leaguer. The 33-year-old righty hasn't been both healthy and effective since 2016, and this season he's reached depths that seemed unimaginable just a few years ago.
Recent outcomes notwithstanding, King Felix will forever be a Mariners legend, and that's with good cause:
Felix Hernandez makes possibly his final start for the @Mariners tonight.
— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) September 26, 2019
3.42 ERA, best in team history (min. 1,000 IP)
169 W, most in team history
2,724 1/3 IP, most in team history
2,521 SO, most in team history
In 2005, we were told he would be special. He delivered. @MLB
He also won an AL Cy Young Award in 2010 and finished in the top 10 of the balloting on five other occasions. He's a six-time All-Star, and his career WAR of 50.2 ranks 101st all-time among pitchers. No, Hernandez isn't a future Hall of Famer, but for a couple of years there he was probably the best pitcher in the world. He had a legendary changeup to go with what was a crackling fastball early in his career. He lost velocity in the middle of his career and then transitioned into a deep-repertoire craftsman -- a transitional challenge that's sunk many a pitching career. Felix, however, pulled it off like few others, at least for a while.
If all you know of Felix is his recent struggles, then you might come away thinking he wasn't one hell of a hurler. You'd be wrong, though.
The court is rocking. This is so cool. 👑 pic.twitter.com/SfPtsS8Aby
— MLB (@MLB) September 27, 2019
