At the All-Star break, the one award race that seemed like it might be over was for National League Rookie of the Year.
Not so fast.
A terrific month of August has helped San Diego's Jackson Merrill emerge as the new favorite for the honor, displacing Pittsburgh right-hander Paul Skenes. The flip in the betting odds has been dramatic. Skenes was a -1200 favorite at the break, according to BetMGM Sportsbook. Now it's Merrill who is the pick at -800.
It's not as though Skenes has done anything to lose the award. The 2023 No. 1 overall draft pick is 8-2 with a 2.23 ERA and a 0.95 WHIP. The last-place Pirates aren't pushing him overly hard, but they haven't shut him down either, and it was perfectly reasonable to consider him a huge favorite for Rookie of the Year back in mid-July.
But Merrill, who unlike Skenes has spent the whole season in the big leagues, has made a huge push for a surging San Diego team that is now in wild-card position. In August, he hit .303 with seven home runs and a .969 OPS. After homering again on the first day of September, Merrill is batting .289 with 21 home runs and 79 RBIs.
Skenes still has a solid lead over Merrill in Baseball Reference's version of wins above replacement, but Merrill is ahead in the FanGraphs version.
What's remarkable is that the other major awards have basically held to form. The favorites at the All-Star break — Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani for MVP, Tarik Skubal and Chris Sale for Cy Young — are still the favorites now. In fact, all four of them have shorter odds now than they did then.
Who was the most recent San Diego player to win Rookie of the Year?
Houston's Yordan Alvarez hit three home runs in a 10-0 win over Philadelphia on Wednesday. Alvarez also had a single, which gives him the nod over Lawrence Butler's three-homer game the following day for Oakland.
If those were the best statistical lines of the week, the most unique one went to catcher Danny Jansen, who on Monday became the first player in big league history to play for both teams in the same game. Boston and Toronto resumed a game that had been suspended in June. Jansen was actually at the plate for the Blue Jays when the game was halted by rain. He was traded to Boston in late July.
When the game finally resumed at Fenway Park, the Red Sox put Jansen in at catcher — as the Blue Jays sent a replacement hitter to finish the plate appearance Jansen had started a couple months earlier. Jansen went 1 for 4 for the Red Sox in their 4-1 loss.
Skenes pitched five innings Wednesday against the Cubs and exited with his team ahead 10-3. Then Chicago came storming back. Christian Bethancourt hit a two-run homer in the seventh and a two-run double in the eighth. Then he scored on Ian Happ's single to make it 10-8.
After Dansby Swanson's bases-loaded grounder in the ninth brought in another run, Chicago trailed by just one but was down to its last out. After an intentional walk re-loaded the bases, Bethancourt came through again, hitting a two-run single that gave the Cubs the lead. After three more RBI singles in the inning, Chicago closed out a 14-10 victory. The Pirates had a win probability of 99.4% at one point, according to Baseball Savant.
Chicago has won nine of its last 10, scoring 99 runs in that span. The Cubs are now just three games out of a playoff spot.
Benito Santiago in 1987. It's the longest current drought of any NL team for that award.
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Pittsburgh Pirates' Paul Skenes delivers during the second inning of a baseball game against the Chicago Cubs, Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024, in Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Matt Freed)
San Diego Padres' Jackson Merrill celebrates with third base coach Tim Leiper (33) after his two-run home run off Tampa Bay Rays starting pitcher Ryan Pepiot during the fourth inning of a baseball game Sunday, Sept. 1, 2024, in St. Petersburg, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)
LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Sphere, Las Vegas' transformational new masterpiece, stole the show Saturday night at UFC 306, but Merab Dvalishvili put on a performance not to be forgotten in capturing the bantamweight championship with a unanimous decision over Sean O'Malley.
The judges scored it 49-46, 48-47 and 48-47 in favor of Dvalishvili (18-4), a 33-year-old from the country of Georgia. He used a ground-and-pound attack to control most of the action against O'Malley (18-2).
O'Malley, 29, who lives in Phoenix, was a slight -125 favorite at BetMGM Sportsbook.
Valentina Shevchenko reclaimed the women's flyweight championship with all three judges awarding her a 50-45 victory over Alexa Grasso in the co-main event.
This was the third consecutive meeting between the two after Grasso took Shevchenko's belt in the first match. The second was a draw.
The third one wasn't closer, with the 36-year-old Shevchenko (24-4-1) using a ground-and-pound strategy to win all three rounds over 31-year-old Grasso (16-4-1) on the judges' cards.
“It's so huge," said Shevchenko, who is from Kyrgyzstan. "It like a dream come true fighting in the Sphere.”
This show at the Sphere was unlike any show in the UFC's history, taking full advantage of the 160,000-square-foot high-definition LED screen to create an outer-space type feel as the pay-per-view portion of the card was about to begin.
UFC President Dana White called this card his “love letter to Mexico,” and mini stories of the neighboring country's history and culture as part of a celebration of the country’s Independence Day weekend were told on the screen throughout the evening. One created the illusion the arena was moving as the video played out.
Seven Mexican fighters, including Grasso, populated the card, and chants from the crowd of “Mexico” broke out several times.
Aztec pyramids seeming to hover over one contest in the octagon changed from night to morning. Another fight took place with a Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) holiday scene that included dressed up male and female skeletons lighting up the screen. Other matches had similar scenes dominating the background.
The screen was used throughout to introduce a tell-of-the-tape of each fighter, and highlights were shown on the building's exterior.
White has said this is a one-and-done given the overwhelming undertaking to put together the show as well as the roughly $20 million cost. To help pay for it, White secured a title sponsor for the first time for one of his PPV cards, making the official name Riyadh Season Noche UFC.
But White has waffled as the event approached, and it's possible the UFC will have future cards at the Sphere, those the organization is contractually obligated to MGM Resorts, which includes T-Mobile Arena. An exception was made for this night and perhaps there will be more.
T-Mobile had its own tribute to Mexican Independence Day three miles away with Canelo Alvarez winning by unanimous decision as the headline fighter.
UFC's in-house production team crew worked with Antigravity Academy production led by founder and Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Carlos López Estrada to put together this event.
Heavyweight champion Jon Jones, considered by many to be the greatest fighter in UFC history, will face Stipe Miocic in UFC 309 on Nov. 16 at New York's Madison Square Garden. Jones has not fought since moving up from light heavyweight to claim the heavyweight crown with a first-round submission of Ciryl Gane on March 4, 2023.
Jones, who was in the crowd wearing a black cowboy hat, and Miocic were scheduled to fight last year, but a pectoral injury forced Jones to postpone.
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Attendees watch Yazmin Jauregui fights Ketlen Souza in a women's strawweight mixed martial arts bout during UFC 306 at the Sphere, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024, in Las Vegas. (Wade Vandervort/Las Vegas Sun via AP)
Attendees wait for the main mixed martial arts event during UFC 306 at the Sphere, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024, in Las Vegas. (Wade Vandervort/Las Vegas Sun via AP)
Valentina Shevchenko, right, fights Alexa Grasso in a women's flyweight mixed martial arts title bout during UFC 306 at the Sphere, Saturday, Sep. 14, 2024, in Las Vegas. (Wade Vandervort/Las Vegas Sun via AP)
Valentina Shevchenko celebrates after defeating Alexa Grasso in a women's flyweight mixed martial arts title bout during UFC 306 at the Sphere, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024, in Las Vegas. (Wade Vandervort/Las Vegas Sun via AP)
Sean O'Malley and Merab Dvalishvili appear on screen during UFC 306 at the Sphere, Saturday, Sep. 14, 2024, in Las Vegas. (Wade Vandervort/Las Vegas Sun via AP)
