The season’s final month beyond Bay Area

With the San Francisco Giants joining the Oakland Athletics as 2022 also-rans, it’s a good time to pivot beyond the Bay Area and look at the top Major League Baseball story lines for the final month of the 2022 season:

Home run races: Nobody who saw Albert Pujols struggle in Anaheim could have predicted he’d ever close in on 700 home runs, but here he is. His move to Los Angeles last season (12 homers) and 2022 return to St. Louis (15 homers) has pushed him to 694 with a month left in his career. He said he’ll retire even if he doesn’t hit six more to join Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth in the company of 700, but we’re guessing he has a decent chance, especially if some pitchers on teams going nowhere are somewhat relaxed with their pitch selection — OK, groove some pitches. The Cardinals’ final six games are all against the lowly Pirates.

Unlike Pujols, Aaron Judge plays defense and eventually could be rested for the playoffs if the Yankees are certain to win their division. The question is, does manager Aaron Boone keep playing Judge regularly so the outfielder can reach 60 homers and perhaps pass Roger Maris’ American League record of 61? If it happens in the final days, it won’t be at Yankee Stadium — the Yankees’ season ends with four games in Texas. And media folks, please stop suggesting Judge is getting the Bonds treatment; he has 79 walks, 11 intentional. One year, Bonds had 232 walks, 120 intentional.

MVP races: Shohei Ohtani could win the MVP every year. He’s that unique and that good. As the Ohtani crowd might say, “What’s Judge’s ERA?” Well, yeah, Judge doesn’t pitch, but it’s hard to knock him for that because what other hitter does beyond Ohtani? Ohtani unanimously won the AL MVP last year, but Judge could have the edge if he reaches the big six-oh and his Yankees clinch a division title, but September will determine all. Ohtani is a better pitcher this year (including ERA, WHIP, strikeout rate and walk rate), but his offense is down a bit (including batting average, OPS and homers), and it can’t help his case that the Angels are still awful.

In the NL, Paul Goldschmidt has little competition, and the only question is whether he’ll become the first in his league since Joe Medwick in 1937 to win the Triple Crown. At last glance, Goldschmidt led in average, was second in RBIs and was third in homers. The last Triple Crown winner was Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera in 2012. Before that, Mike Yastrzemski’s grandpa, Carl, in 1967. Division races: The Western divisions are decided with the Dodgers and Astros cruising to the finish line. The Cardinals (NL Central) and Yankees (AL East) would seem to have comfortable leads, at least five entering the weekend, but the Yankees have been in somewhat of a free fall with the second-place Rays applying serious pressure.

In the AL Central, it doesn’t take much to be in first place. One little hot streak by the Guardians or Twins could decide this mediocre division, which includes the fading White Sox. The race to watch is the NL East, where the Mets hold a narrow edge over the defending champion Braves, who hope to use some of their 2021 success down the stretch. Wild-card races: MLB got its wish with a larger playoff bracket but probably had been anticipating more contenders at this point. For now, it’s nine teams for six wild-card spots, and if you’re a baseball romantic, how can you not root for the Mariners and Orioles to earn two of the AL berths? Seattle hopes to snap its playoff drought at 20 years, longest in the majors, and Baltimore averaged 111 losses in the past three full seasons. Five AL teams are separated by five games.

With the Giants gone from the picture, four NL teams are wrestling for three spots — though it’s really three for two considering the Braves, should they remain runner-up to the Mets, have a healthy advantage over the field. That means the final two spots come down to the Padres, who got well with a three-game sweep in San Francisco, Phillies and Brewers.

Around the majors

That recent Yankees-A’s four-game series in Oakland was a microcosm of the Yankees’ season. They clobbered the A’s 13-4 in the opener, and Judge’s three-run homer won the second game. The Yankees seemed destined to sweep, but the A’s outpitched them the rest of the way and pulled off a split. On July 8, the Yanks were 61-23, 15½ games in first place, and have gone 18-30 since then heading into the weekend, including a 10-18 August.

Who’s better? In July and August, the A’s were 24-29, four games ahead of the Giants, who were 21-34.

How could you not love this? The Rays posted a recent lineup with players from eight different countries: 2B Brandon Lowe (U.S.), DH Manuel Margot (Dominican Republic), RF Randy Arozarena (Cuba), 1B Harold Ramirez (Colombia), LF David Peralta (Venezuela), 3B Isaac Paredes (Mexico), SS Yu Chang (Taiwan), C Christian Bethancourt (Panama) and CF Jose Siri (Dominican Republic). Could have been nine had Ji-Man Choi (South Korea) gotten the nod at DH.

Congrats to the Kreidler family, parents Mark and Colleen and son Ryan, a Davis High School grad who made his major-league debut Friday with the Tigers. Mark was a Padres beat writer at the San Diego Union in the Tony Gwynn days before moving to the Sacramento Bee as a columnist and now is following in the footsteps of longtime Los Angeles Times baseball writer Ross Newhan, whose son, David, played eight years in the majors. (I’m not cheering, you’re cheering.)

A classic video clip features the elder Kreidler in the stands alongside Pedro Gomez (the ESPN reporter who had covered the A’s for the Bee and San Jose Mercury News) watching a Pac-12 game, Rio Gomez of Arizona pitching to Ryan Kreidler of UCLA. Well, as you can imagine, the emotions of the parents when Ryan homered off Rio were “priceless,” as broadcaster Roxy Bernstein noted — straight-faced Mark taking video and looking back at a disgruntled Pedro as if to say, “Sorry, dude.” Rio is in Boston’s system, at Double-A Portland.

There’s more to this sons-ofsportswriters story. The L.A. Times’ sports department has had three dads whose sons reached the majors. Aside from the Newhans, Fernando Dominguez’s son, Matt, played five years in the bigs, and Dave Morgan’s son, Eli, is a Guardians reliever.

Looking forward to the Sept. 28 presentation of the Alexis Busch Award, which the Giants inherited from the independent San Rafael Pacifics and will be given to a woman in the Giants’ organization who “made a contribution to the advancement of girls and women in sports.” The award was established in 2017, and the Pacifics honored Jenne Fulle, who made history in the 1970s in Mill Valley as the first female Little Leaguer, and then former Bay Area sports columnist Joan Ryan and former Giants front-office executive in public relations Robin Carr.