The Athletic’s Eno Sarris on Shohei Ohtani, the MLB playoff picture, and his favorite baseball park

Welcome to Major League Baseball’s stretch run. The regular season will end later this month, and the playoffs are three weeks away. Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge are putting together two of the best offensive seasons in the sport’s history. Several teams have already won at least 80 games. None look like a clear-cut World Series champion favorite.

With so much on the line, we thought it would be a great time to catch up with The Athletic’s Eno Sarris . He is a senior writer covering baseball analytics and has written for FanGraphs, ESPN, Fox, MLB.com, and SB Nation. We talked to Sarris about the big storylines.

Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Awful Announcing: Could you put Shohei Ohtani’s run at 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in context?

Eno Sarris: “I was training at MLB.com to be an editor for them. In the week I was training there, I edited three stories about how Matt Kemp had said he wanted to go 50-50. Just saying he wanted to do it before the season started was a big deal. That was after 2011 when he’d gone 39-40. He told everybody he was going to go 50-50, and he hit 23 homers and stole nine bases (in 2012). (That’s) how hard it is to do.

“I think it is one of those things you have to make a goal because stealing bases is largely about intent. It takes intent. You have to risk injury. That’s why we’ve seen a little bit of a decline in stolen bases in the league. Shohei Ohtani wants to go 50-50, and that’s why he’s going to do it.”

Is it a forgone conclusion that Aaron Judge will be the AL MVP, and Ohtani will win the NL MVP?

“I have an American League vote, so I can’t comment on that specifically. But one thing that makes the NL MVP vote interesting is that there’s such a difference in offense and defense. Shohei Ohtani has a 167 OPS+, meaning he’s 67% better than the league average with the bat. Francisco Lindor is great. He’s only 37% better than the league average with the bat. His defensive value is obviously through the roof versus a DH, but defensive stats are harder to put a ton of stock in. Even as someone who loves stats, defensive stats are behind offensive stats. As an offensive player, you step to the plate 600, 700 times. You get your chance to show what your true talent is. On the defensive side, you might get 300 or 400 chances, and of those 300 or 400 chances, 200 might not give us any information at all. I think it is fascinating. I would say that the Lindor-Otani race is maybe closer than people think.”

How do you see the Cy Young races shaping up?

“I think that Tarik Skubal has it pretty much locked up. He’s so far out in front with such a great ERA, so that people who are more traditional and want to look at the ERA can look at that. But also, in terms of more advanced stats, he stands out. He strikes out so many guys, doesn’t walk anybody, doesn’t give up homers. Over in the NL, a few guys have different arguments. Chris Sale and Zack Wheeler are among the favorites. And it may matter what happens down the stretch.”

How shocking are the Milwaukee Brewers?

“I did not think the Brewers would be this good. I should have known because they’ve long outperformed their projections. One of the things that they’re amazing at is they’re good at defense. They put a high priority on making sure that they have quality defenders everywhere. Joey Ortiz might be the best third baseman defensively in baseball this year. Brice Turang might be the best defensive second baseman.

“I thought this team would struggle to find innings. They had Brandon Woodruff hurt. They traded Corbin Burnes. I wasn’t sure that some of the young guys were ready. But Tobias Myers has just been a revelation for them. Freddy Peralta has been the ace that they needed. And then they’ve found enough guys like Colin Rea to make it work.”

What fascinates you about the playoff picture?

“The Orioles vs. Yankees for the AL East is fascinating to me. I think the NL West might be closer than it appears. But in terms of in or out of the playoffs, I think there’s only one race this year. It’s the Braves vs. the Mets. What makes it compelling to me is that in terms of playoff odds, despite them being within a half-game of each other right now, the playoff odds over at FanGraphs say the Braves have a 73.3% chance of making the postseason, and the Mets only have a 49.1% chance. FanGraphs thinks that as a true-talent team, the Braves are a .565 win percentage team, and the Mets are only like a .49.5 team. But a lot of that gets thrown out when you’re talking about less than a month left.”

How wide open will these playoffs be?

“I think this is going to be good partially because the teams that are the best in terms of talent all have significant question marks. The Yankees are one of the best teams in baseball, and right now they’re not playing like it. There are some question marks, especially when it comes to the lineup a little bit and the bullpen. When you go to the Orioles, you want to say, ‘Well, this is the best lineup in baseball. ‘ You (can also) say, ‘Well, who’s pitching tonight? You’ve got Corbin Burnes., but is Grayson Rodriguez going to be healthy? They’ve been trying to figure out that bullpen all year.

“The Dodgers are probably going to end up with the best record in baseball, and yet, we have no idea what their playoff rotation is going to look like. Clayton Kershaw’s hurt. Walker Buehler’s not the same as he used to be. Tyler Glasnow’s hurt. Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s coming back. They could put it all together just in time for the playoffs.”

Aroldis Chapman throwing 103 m.p.h. used to amaze us. Now there are so many guys throwing over 100. Will there be a day when a pitcher reaches 110?

“I recently wrote about this where I examined the upper end of what is possible for the human arm. A few people said, ‘Oh, we can make it to 120.’ Some said, ‘Can we get to 110?’ Then there was one prominent researcher, Glenn Fleisig at (American Sports Medicine Institute), who said we are at the maximum right now. His reasoning: ‘Well, ligaments are breaking.’ So, this might be the best we can do. Another way he might end up being right is that we’ve been tracking VELO across the league since 2008. The maximum VELO has been steady. It’s been Chapman, Ben Joyce, and Mason Miller. There’s been guys who throw between 104 and 106. There is nobody that has pushed the needle. Even though the average starting pitcher has gone from 89 miles an hour to 94 miles an hour over the same time frame, the maximum has not changed. So we’re doing better at getting more VELO out of the guys that we’ve got, but not necessarily pushing the upper edges. I do think there might be a little bit left.”

How did you get into this profession?

“I was at Stanford and was the editor of the arts and events section of the newspaper. It was not a time when blogs were necessarily an option, so I was applying to small newspapers all over the country and getting rejected. I went into educational publishing, but I ended up spending a lot of my time reading the blogs on FanGraphs, Rob Neyer’s column on Page 2 on ESPN, where you used to have all these links to different research and different work being done. That was when blogs started exploding. I was reading them all, started my own, and started writing with people. I got lucky, man. I wrote a piece about Kevin Maas, about how we should have seen that maybe he wasn’t going to be as good as people thought after that first great season because he was always older than his competition in the minor leagues. I won an award for that from the Fantasy Sports Writers Association. That got me noticed at FanGraphs.”

What’s your favorite baseball park?

“There are some more unique-looking parks, but San Diego has good food and beer. They’ve got this cool outfield situation where there’s a berm, the grass that you can sit on and watch the game. It’s great for families. They usually have bounce houses, and there’s even a sand pit. The weather is usually good. They even have a little spot behind home plate. There’s some standing room only back there. So, no matter where you’ve gotten seats in the park, you can spend an inning or two behind home plate. (Petco Park) checks all the boxes.”

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