By: Carlos Marcano
Imagine there is a planet outside of our galaxy capable of developing life, let’s call it planet Hearth, in which its inhabitants the hearthians, have created some action-packed ways of having fun and amusement, let it be Jugger, Motorball, or Thunderdome; these are complemented with a goofy game called Earthball, the name being a reminiscence of the long extinguished planet from which hearthians scouts uncovered some ancient scrolls with annotations on how the game looked like.
To everyone’s surprise, Earthball became very popular, extremely popular, getting to be the number one pastime on the planet, with around 30 teams in the top tier league, The Glorious Manfred League (Glo-Man, for short), named in honor of one of the most beloved promoters of the game, back on Earth, according to what little could the hearthians humanologists uncover and decipher from the lowly evolved human documents fetched from their ruins.
Said league adheres to an ever less important division of two 15-teams sub leagues, each one fractioned in 5-teams divisions, distributed all over the planet and playing against each other 162 times each team. In recent years, a phenomenal player called Star-Man (hearthians aren’t eager to use denominations like Carlos, John, or Shohei for their descendants) irrupted in the Glo-Man league with an extraordinary force, as a fantastic two-way player. It was something pretty much unheard of, to the point that in 2021 he earned the Kenesaw “The Amalgametor” Mountain Landis Most Important Player (MIP) award for the “best player” (more on this later) in his arbitrary 15-team league.
By some intricate and elaborated combination of not loved by everyone numbers, like fission-fueled-FanGraphs Wins Above Replacement (abbreviated fWAR), there wasn’t a more important or better (or just important… or just better, I’m not sure, this is something unresolved even at intergalactic levels) than Star-Man and his combined 8.0 fWAR from hitting and pitching. Not even the electric shortstop Closte-Bebo could catch up with him, as his 7.3 fWAR fell almost ten percent short from the hitters’ side and still better than the 7.5 fWAR posted by Burnesy, from the pitchers’ side. This was something unheard of, something so unique that everyone fell for Star-Man, and well deservedly. And everyone asked themselves: if this is the new normal, how could Star-Man ever lose the MIP award ever again?
To make things more interesting, Star-Man keeps his great performance in 2022: with more than a month to finish (and about 34 games left) he is already on the 7.0 fWAR mark, 3.0 as a hitter, and 4.0 as a pitcher.
His numbers as a hitter, while still great (3.0 fWAR), aren’t as impressive as last year’s, but his pitching stats have taken a step further into wonderfulness.
It feels kind of crazy that while throwing less because of being part of a six pitchers’ rotation, Star-Man only has a little less than thirty fewer innings pitched than the leader in that category in his league. Furthermore, while 25 starting pitchers have more innings pitched than him, just two of them have a larger fWAR and, of course, no other pitcher has more.
To put things in perspective, Star-Man leads the league (well almost, as he needs a couple of innings to qualify) in K% with 34%, K-BB% with 27.6%, and Soft% (% of batted balls considered soft contact) with 21.4%, second in FIP with 2.59, third in fWAR with 4.0, fifth in K with 176, sixth in ERA with 2.67, tied seventh in wins with 11, eleventh in batting average allowed with .213, top 15 in hard hit allowed with 35.7%, among a lot of other great numbers. These, scream Cy Young candidate all over the place, even with the “lower” volume. By the way, the Cy Young award to the best pitcher in each league is the only award with the same name as it was on Earth.
Going back to Star-Man and adding to his prowess, the last time a possible Cy Young candidate also hit at least 25 homers, 70 runs, 70 RBIs, and stole at least 10 bases was, well, back into the 1919 Earth, in which some funny named Babe Ruth guy almost did it but still fell short of three stolen bases, according to info found in a fossilized hard disk, wrapped in the hands of an alleged intern from one place where the stats for Earth version’s of the game were documented. It looks like he tried to protect the info at all costs, just before the meteor impacted.
So what Star-Man is doing is intergalactically historical, so to speak. And it just gets more and more incredible by the day, which could make everyone think that he should, once again, win the Most Important Player award, right? Well, not so fast.
Enter The Magistrate.
The Magistrate is an imposing hearthian playing for one of the most loved or hated teams in the Glo-Man League, depending on who you ask. He is on a mission to prove he is worth every gold coin his team was hesitant to pay him, and more. A lot more.
Every month, The Magistrate has distanced himself by a lot from what the league as a whole can do, just take a look at the distance from the inverted T under each box to the regular T on top. Do you still wonder how is he producing 95% more than the average hitter, according to his wRC+ of 195, while the second-best hitter in his league is at 179? And we haven’t said anything about his Glo-Man league-leading 50 homers, 102 runs, and 110 RBIs, plus 14 stolen bases good for 20th overall.
What The Magistrate is doing, is something hard to match, even for a player that is worth as two, the incredible Star-Man. And that makes this competition for the MIP award one of the most amazing ever, and definitely, of light-years dimension; hearthians imagine that this is only comparable to what Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani did, way back in the old world known as Planet Earth.