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The pennant races are coming into focus … right? (Not really).

Plus: Aroldis Chapman is having a stupid-good season, Trea Turner’s hamstring is in a race against time and Ken’s take on the contenders is that nobody is perfect. I’m Levi Weaver, here with Ken Rosenthal. Welcome to The Windup!

Clarity? Pennant race roundup

Ah, September: when every day has multiple “must-win” games on the schedule. Let’s check those playoff races:

NL West: For 8 2/3 innings on Saturday, Yoshinobu Yamamoto held the Orioles to zero hits. One out away! Then Jackson Holliday homered, and Yamamoto (at 112 pitches) was replaced by Blake Treinen.

Five batters later … Orioles 4, Dodgers 3. (Oh, and it happened on the 30th anniversary of Cal Ripken Jr. breaking Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-games-played streak. Britt Ghiroli has a story with Ripken’s trainer here).

Shohei Ohtani’s two-homer game yesterday snapped the five-game losing streak against last-place teams, but with San Diego winning two of three against the Rockies, L.A.’s division lead is back down to one game.

AL West / wild card: The Rangers took two games out of three from the Astros, with Houston’s lone win coming on a Hunter Brown masterpiece. Throw in a Mariners series win against the Braves — Cal Raleigh hit his 53rd home run yesterday — and Houston’s lead is now 2 1/2 games over Seattle, four games over Texas.

AL wild card: That also means Texas is 1 1/2 games behind Seattle for the final wild-card spot. Kansas City is just a half-game behind them, Cleveland just a half-game further back.

AL East: The red-hot Yankees took two of three from the division-leading Blue Jays, including yesterday, when Max Scherzer was tipping his pitches. Meanwhile, Boston dropped two of three in Arizona. Toronto’s lead is down to two games over New York and 3 1/2 games over Boston.

NL wild card: The Reds managed two wins against the Mets behind a first MLB home run and a(nother) dominant pitching performance. That means there’s a tie — at four games out of a playoff spot — between Cincinnati and San Francisco, with the they’re-not-dead-yet Cardinals and Diamondbacks tied a half-game back.

NL East / NL Central / AL Central: It’s status quo. The Phillies, Brewers and Tigers each lead by at least seven games.

More pennant-race watching: Our staff lists one key X factor for each of the top contending teams. Full standings here.

Ken’s Notebook: MLB’s flawed contenders

From my latest column:

Two years ago, the Rangers entered the final weekend leading the AL West by 2 1/2 games. They proceeded to drop three of four in Seattle, losing the division to Houston on a tiebreaker, then flying cross-country to face Tampa Bay in the wild-card series, seemingly certain to be a quick out. And of course, they won the World Series.

We offer that refresher on the Rangers in the hope of comforting fans infuriated by the topsy-turvy play of their favorite teams. Fans of sadsack franchises fall into that category naturally. But in this wacky season, so do fans of pretty much every contender.

In writing this, I am channeling the spirit of my late father, Big Ed Rosenthal, who would shrug off any illness, surgery or other calamity my sister or I might endure by staring at us blankly and saying, “It could be worse.”

So, in these thumbnails of the various pretenders — er, contenders — I will attempt to show that no matter how bad your team looks, it could be worse.

Los Angeles Dodgers: Ah yes, let’s start with the Team That Is Ruining Baseball. The team that couldn’t win a game Saturday in which it no-hit its last-place opponent for 8 2/3 innings, increasing its win probability to 99.5 percent with a 3-0 lead. The team that is nine games under .500 since July 3, seemingly operating under the premise, “Just wait, we’ll turn it on at the right time.”

The right time might already have passed. The Dodgers trail the Phillies by 4 1/2 games in the race for the second bye in the National League. Good luck winning four series with a bullpen that leads the majors in blown saves. Heck, good luck getting out of the wild-card round.

New York Yankees: Give the Yankees credit. After doing what they do best, pummeling the dregs of the sport, they actually rose up and went 4-2 this week against two first-place clubs, Houston and Toronto. Of course, no Yankee fan can be too secure, knowing one of the team’s patented meltdowns is never far behind.

Manager Aaron Boone said the team has been working on “creative cuts” (cutoff plays) to help compensate for right fielder Aaron Judge’s forearm flexor strain. Maybe the Yankees shouldn’t be reinventing a game they often struggle to play at the most basic level?

For the rest, click here.

Timelines: Trea Turner’s balky hamstring

With just under three weeks to go in the regular season, the Phillies have that aforementioned seven-game lead in the NL East.

But — as Matt Gelb points out here — while that division lead is comfortable, there’s another lead that is perhaps more important: Right now, they’re four games up on the Dodgers for the second and final first-round bye.

That’s more important than usual, because Trea Turner might be in a race against the clock to return to action before the Phillies’ (post)season ends. He suffered a hamstring strain over the weekend and will undergo an MRI today to determine the severity.

Turner, 32, is having a brilliant season, leading the NL with a .305 batting average, and rounding out that slash line with a .356 on-base percentage and .458 slugging for an .814 OPS. His 5.3 bWAR is the second-highest mark of his career (6.5 in 2021 between the Nationals and Dodgers).

Now he’ll be on the sidelines for a while, as the Phillies wrap up the prelude to the postseason. The wild-card round begins Sept. 30, while the Division Series doesn’t get going until Oct. 4. You always want the bye. But if Turner hits Sept. 30 still needing more time, it could mean even more than usual for the Phillies.

More Phillies: Good job by both the Phillies and Marlins to make up for the fan who forgot to be a good person.

Sheesh: Aroldis Chapman’s absurd season

I’ve referenced it before, because it just seems so unbelievable: As Buster Olney lays out here, Red Sox catcher Connor Wong suggested in spring training that Aroldis Chapman can aim at a particular area of the strike zone, rather than just aim for the strike zone.

And apparently the 37-year-old hadn’t ever done that before. It’s legitimately comical. As a result: His whole season has been dominant — after a scoreless ninth inning yesterday, his ERA is down to 0.98 over 55 innings pitched.

But his second half has been something out of a Dennis Eckersley fever dream. Since Aug. 1, Chapman has faced 41 hitters over 13 innings. He has allowed one walk. That’s it. No runs, no hits, no nothing.

Since the last hit he allowed (July 23), his WHIP has been 0.06. You can’t even do this in “MLB: The Show” — maybe not even with the difficulty set to “let me cheat, I just need a win in my life.”

We haven’t had a reliever win the Cy Young award since Eric Gagne in 2003. That’s not likely to change this year, not while Tarik Skubal exists. But good grief, what a season.

Handshakes and High Fives

Two updates to stories from Friday: MLB determined that Taylor Trammell’s bat was, in fact, illegal — but also that he didn’t do anything wrong. Also, the Mets did in fact send Kodai Senga to Triple A.

I really enjoyed this Jen McCaffrey breakdown of Ceddanne Rafaela’s five best plays of 2025.

I’ve seen catchers hit with backswing before, but I think Jacob Wilson’s accidental contact with Logan O’Hoppe was the first time I’ve seen it before a swing. O’Hoppe left the game; we’ll know more today.

Jim Bowden gives us his list of the top 10 AL rookies of 2025.

Davey Johnson, who managed the 1986 Mets World Series team, died Friday at 82 years old.

Most-clicked in our last newsletter: Ken’s story on how Salvador Perez hitting a line drive off Chapman’s face more than 11 years ago sparked a lifelong bond.

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(Photo: Tommy Gilligan / Imagn Images)