10 Degrees: First-half awards feature Max Scherzer as king of the hill

The halfway mark of the season for most teams passed last week, and the era of serial mediocrity is upon baseball. The worst team in the American League came into Sunday on pace to lose 89 games. The best team in the AL is on pace to win 93. The worst team, the Oakland A's, have a plus-49 run differential. The best team, the Kansas City Royals, are at plus-46.

Throw out St. Louis and Philadelphia, the season's outliers of excellence and malodorousness, and the National League is a mighty similar wasteland of parity. Really bad teams, like the Milwaukee Brewers, are capable of ripping off eight-game winning streaks. And really good teams, like the Washington Nationals, can lose six straight one time and 11 of 14 another and still lead the East by 4 ½ games.

A million numbers exist to show the chasm between good and bad in baseball, measured in inches and not miles. It's why one general manager this week predicted a trade deadline sponsored by the mute button: "Everyone thinks they can be in it – and almost everyone is right."

The hallmark of this season, much as those in recent past, is pitching. And so rather than start the midseason awards with the MVP ballots, as is standard practice, the first degree is an homage to this time in baseball and the man who this year has defined it best. It's not that …

1. Max Scherzer is leaps-and-bounds better than the other pitchers in the game – Zack Greinke's ERA is more than a quarter-run better than Scherzer's – but the heights of his performance more than make up for whatever difference exists.

Scherzer at his best is the very best in baseball right now, and his back-to-back starts against Milwaukee and Pittsburgh cemented him the first-half Cy Young, even as Greinke works on a scoreless streak nearing 30 innings. While the top of the NL ballot is close, Greinke's higher groundball rate couldn't overcome Scherzer's superior strikeout and walk rates as well as the beyond-belief line of opposing hitters: .181/.212/.278. That is essentially rendering every hitter Rene Rivera for 452 plate appearances.

1. Max Scherzer
2. Zack Greinke
3. Gerrit Cole
4. A.J. Burnett
5. Shelby Miller

Leaving Jacob deGrom off the list was painful. He may well end up there by the end of the year. Remember: These are based on first-half performance, not second-half predictions. Otherwise …

2. Dallas Keuchel probably would be No. 2 on the AL ballot behind Chris Sale. Few would quibble if he ended up there right now. Despite Sale's run of late, his April was a mess, while Keuchel's consistency is outdone only by his groundball rate.

At 64.5 percent, he ranks behind only Brett Anderson, whose 68.4 percent would be the highest ever by a starter if he maintains it. The weak contact Keuchel induces shows with the lack of hits – only Sale and Clayton Kershaw have lower average exit velocities on batted balls and highlights his late-career breakout.

1. Dallas Keuchel
2. Chris Sale
3. Chris Archer
4. Sonny Gray
5. David Price

Last season, Keuchel got even stronger as the season went on. Unfortunately …

3. Miguel Cabrera doesn't have that opportunity, a calf injury keeping him out for the next six weeks. That is a shame because with AL MVP so wide open this season, Cabrera tops the list at the season's halfway mark.

1. Miguel Cabrera
2. Mike Trout
3. Josh Donaldson
4. Jason Kipnis
5. Manny Machado
6. Jose Bautista
7. Prince Fielder
8. Dallas Keuchel
9. Chris Sale
10. Stephen Vogt

No, Mike Trout ending up in second place here isn't a miracle. A 63-point difference in on-base percentage makes up for the difference Trout provides on the basepaths and in center field. Wins Above Replacement would argue otherwise, of course, but in an offense-poor environment, a hitter getting on base at a .456 clip is so rare, and so valuable, that it deserves recognition and reward when the two players' power is essentially equivalent.

Those who prefer Trout certainly have a strong argument. One for Donaldson or Kipnis could be made, too. Ultimately, the bat wins, which makes …

4. Bryce Harper the easy choice for NL MVP.

1. Bryce Harper
2. Paul Goldschmidt
3. Max Scherzer
4. Buster Posey
5. Zack Greinke
6. Todd Frazier
7. Giancarlo Stanton
8. Nolan Arenado
9. Anthony Rizzo
10. Joc Pederson

As resplendent a season Goldschmidt is having, Harper is putting up numbers not seen since Barry Bonds turned his body into a pharmacological experiment and rarely seen before that. At .344/.470/.719 with 25 home runs, Harper is doing the sort of things Trout hasn't and turning the debate back into a Mantle-vs.-Mays back-and-forth instead of the one-sided affair it had been for the last two seasons. When Harper can hit in a fashion that makes …

5. Joc Pederson look like he's having just an OK season, it's damn impressive. Pederson has been the most important Dodger on offense – look past the .234 average and at the on-base and slugging percentages that add up to .876 – and a vital cog in center field.

Whether he ends up atop the loaded NL rookie class remains a fair question. Kris Bryant actually is getting on base at a higher clip, bringing a thunderous bat as well and playing a serviceable third base. In a loaded group, he may well be the favorite, as good as Pederson has been.

1. Joc Pederson
2. Kris Bryant
3. Maikel Franco

The AL is an odd situation, because …

6. Billy Burns leads the race only on account of playing time. Carlos Correa is the best rookie in the AL. He has played the best of all rookies in the AL. Barring injury, he will win the award, probably unanimously. Hell, he should be starting the All-Star Game, because he's the best shortstop in the league.

All that said, playing time matters. Burns has played in more than twice the games of Correa. He's got nearly two and a half times as many plate appearances. He plays a position, center field, nearly as important as Correa. Burns is a tremendous base stealer, too, and while Correa's power makes him a far more potent hitter, Burns is slashing .318/.356/.424, a more-than-respectable number that seals this.

1. Billy Burns
2. Carlos Correa
3. Lance McCullers Jr.

Correa and McCullers may very well finish Nos. 1 and 2, part of the reason …

7. A.J. Hinch finds his Astros atop the AL West and himself in prime position to lock up Manager of the Year. Hinch's first go-around as manager with Arizona went about as disastrously as it could've. A season and a third and he was gone, replaced by Kirk Gibson. Hinch went back to the executive side – few people in the game can so seamlessly transition – before joining a group in Houston so well-suited for his acumen.

1. A.J. Hinch
2. Paul Molitor
3. Kevin Cash

The AL, frankly, has a number of great candidates this season, from Hinch, Molitor and Cash to Jeff Banister, Joe Girardi, Buck Showalter and Ned Yost. Any of the top three, in particular, could make a good case: Cash for implementing Tampa Bay's unique ideas, Molitor for making hay with a less-talented roster and Hinch for transitioning the Astros from losers to division leaders with a mixture of new players and farm-system promotions. It's a different deal than …

8. Mike Matheny with the St. Louis Cardinals, the juggernaut of baseball and favorite to win the World Series even with ace Adam Wainwright missing the entire season, first baseman Matt Adams half of it and outfielder Matt Holliday nearly a month. As great as Harper has been, the most incredible statistic of the first half is a team number.

With runners in scoring position, Cardinals opponents are hitting .195/.274/.275. The closest any team has come in a full season to the Cardinals' .549 OPS against in the last five years is the Nationals' .616 in 2012. That's 67 points, a staggering difference, and while Matheny himself isn't personally responsible for it, overseeing a team doing that – even if it does scream unsustainable – warrants an easy first-place vote.

1. Mike Matheny
2. Joe Maddon
3. Clint Hurdle

Typically, Manager of the Year goes to one of two types of managers: The one heading the overachieving team or the one in charge of the dominant team. Matheny falls squarely into the latter, and he finds himself among some amazing company historically. Now he just needs to win a World Series, something neither …

9. Prince Fielder nor Matt Harvey has done, either. Since neither seems likely to do it this year, either, giving them the Comeback Player of the Year awards would at least provide a little bit of solace.

Good competition exists for both. Alex Rodriguez is coming back not just from a steroid suspension but the depths of his own making, and with his 40th birthday approaching, he more than deserves a spot on the All-Star team. Fielder is certain to make it at first base and may well start with Cabrera's injury. His .346 batting average is second only to Cabrera's in the AL, and seeing as the game is an exhibition, any opportunity to see Fielder run the bases without anything at stake is something worth savoring.

(Wait. The All-Star Game determines what? Home-field advantage in the World Series comes down to a game in which the starting pitcher goes one, maybe two innings? And pretty much everyone gets a participation trophy? And Omar Infante was a half-million votes away from starting? If this weren't so asinine, so completely wrongheaded, so ridiculously unnecessary, it might actually be true. Cool joke.)

Harvey's return from Tommy John surgery hasn't proven as seamless as his first few starts might have foretold, but he's still one of the best pitchers in baseball, and his best competition – Cardinals starter Jaime Garcia – lasted seven starts before hitting the DL again. Staying healthy and pitching well isn't just a gift. It's a skill, one that …

10. Max Scherzer seems to have mastered. He last hit the disabled list in 2009, and since the 2010 season, only Kershaw and Felix Hernandez have more strikeouts than Scherzer's 1,220. His 177 game started are tied for fourth. And nobody has more wins than his 91.

And as much as individual wins tend to be an empty statistic, the leaders over the last 5 ½ seasons are Scherzer, Kershaw, Justin Verlander, Price, Jered Weaver, Greinke, C.J. Wilson, Gio Gonzalez, Jon Lester and James Shields. In other words, a lot of really good pitchers. (King Felix is No. 11, for the curious ones.)

Right now, Scherzer is the best of the bunch, making that $210 million contract look like it was worth every penny, even with the knowledge that the back end could get ugly. With Stephen Strasburg hurt again, Jordan Zimmermann and Doug Fister hitting free agency, and Gonzalez giving up more baserunners than ever, the Nationals need Scherzer to pitch like he's unhittable, and he has more than obliged them.

And so in this landscape of ordinariness, he and the rest of the award winners stand out, something special amid the lackluster, the stars in a galaxy of monotony. In a game where the World Series winner may well be in fourth place at the All-Star break, it's the individuals, and their excellence, that still make it great.