I’m not a slave to the good old days, but I do prefer reading more morning baseball stats in a newspaper instead of the internet. Even though online box scores are more up to date and complete, I prefer the big picture of the full page Scoreboard page of a local newspaper.

To get a bigger picture of the complete picture of an evening’s worth of games, I like reading the paper. I also know that fans older than I consumed their box scores the same way-especially if their primary source was The Sporting News. It took me a long time to learn how to consume the full range of daily box scores. I liken the experience to wandering in a Costco for the first time, visual overload if you will,

While scanning all of yesterday’s (8/22) boxes, I noted something very odd for 2024. All nine position players for Boston, had .250+ batting averages. The lowest among the BoSox was David Hamilton’s .256. Whether you are one of those fans that have completely given up on batting average and justify crappy .220 averages, this is a happy anomaly.

While I’m not championing Boston by any means and especially not because they have other flaws and are on the outside of the wildcard picture. This is what’s going to honk off some of you, they are a more fun team to watch than the 2024 Tampa Rays. Sorry folks, Boston has scored 139 more runs than the Rays and have a +28 run differential compared to the Rays’ -51 run differential.

I’m pulling for the Orioles in the AL East battle with the Yankees-so I don’t have a boat in this race, I’m just pointing out the not-so-obvious here.

One of the other things I like to track this late in the season is the likelihood of certain players reaching certain, traditional statistics and not because I placed wagers on any players earlier in the season. Rather, I like to see how the writers cover these stories and how they favor certain players despite the evidence.

If one were to listen to the touts and read the national columnists, the AL MVP is Aaron Judge’s to lose. If you haven’t been paying attention, the Yankee slugger leads the AL with 47 HRs, 117 RBI, but is second in .334 batting average to Bobby Witt’s .352. While there are other players vying for the MVP, pursuing the traditional Triple Crown is historic and more difficult to accomplish than not.

Case in point, heading into the season, the biggest question in the NL, was whether Shohei Ohtani’s likely run at the NL MVP would be hampered by his not pitching this season. No DH-only had every won a league MVP before. I think the question still remains, but there are other figures that figure in the MVP race, most notably Marcel Ozuna.

Currently, Ohtani leads Ozuna 39-37 in homers and the league. However. Ozuna leads the NL in RBI with 94 and batting average at.309. Two-time batting champ, Luis Arraez is second at .302 and Ohtani is only hitting .291 (good enough for T6).

At the very least, it will be fun to see if either Judge or Ozuna can complete the Triple Crown and who or what will trip them up in their quests. Arraez will be looking for his third consecutive title with his second and a half team.

Due to space limitations, I wasn’t able to see if anyone in either league was threatening to complete the traditional pitcher’s Triple Crown.