MLB second-half preview: Here’s everything you need to know, from the trade deadline to Paul Skenes’ Cy Young chances

The MLB season resumes Friday, with no shortage of threads to follow in a season that has already seen plenty of surprises.

Some teams have been surprisingly good (Cleveland Guardians) and unsurprisingly good (Los Angeles Dodgers). Others have been surprisingly bad (Toronto Blue Jays) and unsurprisingly bad (Colorado Rockies). Shohei Ohtani might win MVP without throwing a pitch, and the NL Cy Young winner might be a person drafted this time last year (more on that below).

Only a few teams are truly out of the playoff race at this point, so let’s go through all the biggest questions awaiting the baseball world as the second half begins.

What will happen at the MLB trade deadline?

The trade deadline is quickly approaching on July 30, with many teams facing hard decisions — and a few facing not-so-hard decisions.

Despite owning by far the worst record in baseball at 27-71, the Chicago White Sox have a few pieces many teams would be interested in, most notably All-Star pitcher Garrett Crochet, fellow standout pitcher Erick Fedde and outfielder Luis Robert Jr. The White Sox are not good this year, they will not be good next year, and they have no reason to keep any player around if he isn’t going to help the team beyond that.

The Blue Jays could also make a splash if they decide that their current window of playoff contention is truly over, with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette representing some very splashy names. A few All-Star relievers could also be available, including Tanner Scott of the Miami Marlins, Kyle Finnegan of the Washington Nationals and Kirby Yates of the Texas Rangers.

We will also soon find out if a team is willing to part with the likely king’s ransom it would take for the most dominant reliever in baseball, Mason Miller, to be traded from the Oakland Athletics.

Can Paul Skenes match Fernando Valenzuela?

To say Pittsburgh Pirates rookie Paul Skenes, the No. 1 overall pick of the 2023 MLB Draft, is meeting expectations would be to criminally understate what he has been doing. Let’s put it in different terms: The filthiest pitching prospect of a generation got drafted last summer, then added one of the best pitches in baseball and pitched his way into not just playing in but also starting the MLB All-Star Game.

Skenes is a buzzsaw. After 11 starts in MLB and 23 professional starts total, he already looks like one of the five best pitchers in baseball. He is the overwhelming favorite for the NL Rookie of the Year Award, and the bigger question is if he will take home the NL Cy Young Award as well.

Skenes has a chance to join Fernando Valenzuela as the only pitcher to win Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young Award in the same year. And he has a real chance of doing so, as he already ranks third among NL pitchers in Baseball Reference’s WAR, despite not making his debut until May 11.

Beyond Skenes and the Cy, there are a couple other award races shaping up to be legitimate fights. There is no shortage of candidates for the AL Cy Young, with maybe Tarik Skubal of the Detroit Tigers leading the field. AL Rookie of the Year is still wide-open.

As for the MVPs, it already looks like those awards are Ohtani’s and Aaron Judge‘s to lose.

Can the Mariners break through in the AL West?

The AL West was last year’s messiest division race, and we are shaping up for a repeat in 2024.

The Seattle Mariners have been in first place for most of the season but have watched what was a 10-game lead shrink to one game over the past month. That’s partially because the Houston Astros have shaken off a bizarrely bad start to win 17 of their past 23 games. The defending World Series champion Rangers are also sitting five games back at 46-50 but might sell at the deadline.

Houston clearly isn’t going to let its streak of six straight full-season division titles end without a fight. And the Astros will have a chance to grab the division lead right after the break, with a three-game series in Seattle beginning Friday.

Can the Dodgers get healthy?

Stop us if you’ve heard this before: The Dodgers have a ton of players on the injured list.

Even by Los Angeles standards, this year has been incredible when it comes to injury woes. Their list of starting pitchers currently on the IL: Clayton Kershaw, Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Walker Buehler, Dustin May, Tony Gonsolin and Emmet Sheehan. The relievers: Brusdar Graterol, Joe Kelly, Ryan Brasier, Michael Grove and Connor Brogdon.

And the injured position players are all starters: Mookie Betts, Max Muncy and Jason Heyward.

Some of those players are not coming back this season, but most should, some of them soon (Kershaw is on a rehab assignment and Glasnow is expected back shortly after the break). The question, however, is if they will stay healthy and be effective enough for the Dodgers to break through in the postseason, like so many expected them to do once they signed Ohtani.

After what happened last October, with the entire rotation falling apart against the Arizona Diamondbacks, there should be very real worries in Chavez Ravine these days.

The best division race in baseball is in the AL East, where the Baltimore Orioles and New York Yankees each own one of MLB’s four best records.

The Yankees got off to a scorching start before coming back to Earth, but they still employ Judge, Juan Soto and Gerrit Cole, who is in the process of finding his Cy Young-winning form after getting shut down due to elbow inflammation to begin the season.

The Orioles have rounded into form thanks to the fruits of their years of rebuilding, led by All-Stars Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman and Jordan Westburg. Corbin Burnes has also turned out to be exactly what the team needed atop the rotation.

The Orioles hold a one-game lead to start the second half, but the Yankees have the superior run differential. The teams are already at each other’s throats, and we still have two-and-a-half months to go.

You might have noticed a wealth of Phillies at Tuesday’s All-Star Game — an MLB-high eight, to be exact.

The Phillies were expected to be good this year after going 90-72 last season, reaching a second straight NLCS and bringing back basically their entire 2023 team for 2024. But not many people expected them to be this good, with a 62-34 record and +110 run differential, both the best marks in MLB.

It was a dream first half in Philadelphia, and now we’ll see if the Phillies are due for any regression in the second half. Fortunately, the team has spotted itself an 8.5-game lead in the NL East over the Atlanta Braves, who have dealt with devastating injuries this season.

Who will emerge from the muck in the NL wild-card race?

There are four NL teams that, barring disaster, should be in the playoffs: the Phillies, Dodgers, Milwaukee Brewers and Braves. The two spots after that … hoo boy.

Baseball Prospectus’ playoff odds currently identify four teams with playoff odds between 40% and 55%: the San Diego Padres, New York Mets, St. Louis Cardinals and Diamondbacks. That’s not the end of the field, though, as the Pirates, Cincinnati Reds, San Francisco Giants and Chicago Cubs are all within 3.5 games of the final wild-card spot and theoretically could load up at the deadline.

That makes eight teams that are maybe one good week away from moving into playoff position. This is the kind of chaos MLB wanted when it installed the second, and then the third, wild card.