MLB news & notes: baseball mourns two greats

Welcome to ‘Marty’s Musings’, my weekly column of numbers summarizing the happenings in the baseball world. I am your guide for taking an analytic look at the news and notes throughout the game, and highlighting this week’s key pitching matchups.

This week we see more postponements due to COVID tests, we look at the potent Dodgers roster that set some home run records, and remains the World Series favorite, and discuss the Mets’ team valuation amidst a change in ownership.

News & Notes

75 - Age of Mets’ icon Tom Seaver, who passed away on Wednesday. Seaver had previously withdrawn from public life to fight against progressive Alzeimers. Seaver is the all-time Mets WAR leader (by a longshot) having spent 12 years in New York. Seaver also served as an announcer for the Mets, and had a reputation as one of the good guys in baseball. He will be sorely missed.

81 - Years of age for Cardinals speedster legend, Lou Brock. The Hall of Famer and six-time all star died over the Labor Day weekend. Brock had over 3,000 hits, and is the National League stolen base leader with 938 bags. Brock had a reputation as a great teammate, and a patient mentor to young players.

2 - Three-home-run days in a row against the Red Sox, with Marcell Ozuna and ADam Duvall joining Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig as the only duo in MLB history to both have three-home runs in back-to-back games.

57 - Home runs for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the month of August, a National League record. LA leads the West by five games and still has the highest World Series odds of any team, nearly three-times that of any other team.

8 - AL teams with playoff odds ~85 percent of higher going into the last few weeks of the season. With the expanded playoffs, the American League is basically set as far as what teams are going to make it. Kinda takes the sails out of most of the games until October. While the NL is closer, the playoff teams are largely set there as well.

0 - Dollars several Angels’ Minor League players have received since the team issued a statement saying they’d pay their MiLBers through August.

8 - Wins the Rays have put on the Yankees through this shortened season. With only 60 games on the schedule, the teams have been playing intra-divisonal games more than usual by percentage. The Rays have scored 47 runs in their 10 games versus the Yanks, and their pitching has held New York at Bay. Consequently, Tampa leads the American League by 5.5 games over Toronto and New York who are virtually tied.

Series of Note

Astros v. Athletics, Tuesday September 8th - September 10th

The A’s and Astros will play five games in four days this week. The A’s go into Monday night’s late-night action up 3 ½ games over the ‘stros.

Twins v. Cardinals, Tuesday, September 8th

Minnesota and St. Louis are right behind their division leaders, but are well-positioned to

Yankees v. Blue Jays, Tuesday September 8th - September 10th

The Yankeses have suffered injury-after-injury, and have been getting smacked around by the Rays in recent weeks. They lost three out of four to the Orioles over the weekend, and are looking to turn it around against the Blue Jays, who are neck-in-neck with the Yanekes for second-place in the AL East.