A few surprising league leaders. Plus: When Howie Rose met Macca

AL EastBlue JaysOriolesRaysRed SoxYankeesAL CentralGuardiansRoyalsTigersTwinsWhite SoxAL WestAngelsAstrosAthleticsMarinersRangersNL EastBravesMarlinsMetsNationalsPhilliesNL CentralBrewersCardinalsCubsPiratesRedsNL WestDiamondbacksDodgersGiantsPadresRockiesScores & ScheduleStandingsPodcastsThe Windup NewsletterFantasyMLB ProspectsMLB OddsMLB PicksPower RankingsStarting Pitcher RankingsNewsletterA few surprising league leaders. Plus: When Howie Rose met MaccaAndy Pages has become an elite defender in center field. Harry How / Getty Images Share articleThe Windup Newsletter ⚾ | This is The Athletic’s MLB newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Windup directly in your inbox. Today: League statistical leaders, Howie Rose finally meets a Beatle and a Baseball Card of the Week. I’m Tyler Kepner, pinch-hitting for Levi Weaver (back next week) — welcome to The Windup! In last Tuesday’s newsletter, we looked at some standout teams in each division. Now let’s explore the individual leaderboards, where a lot of intriguing names take the top spots. (Figures are from right before last night’s games.) WAR position players: Andy Pages, Dodgers, 3.1 bWAR Whatever else he does in his career, Pages will always be remembered for his season-saving catch in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 of the 2025 World Series. He had just come off the bench as a defensive replacement, and look at the 25-year-old now. Fabian Ardaya has all the details on Pages’ breakthrough as an elite defender in center whose plate discipline and work habits have made him indispensable. OPS: Ben Rice, Yankees, 1.077 Like Pages, Rice also couldn’t make his team’s lineup in its final postseason game in 2025. In Game 4 of the Yankees’ division series last fall, Rice sat behind Paul Goldschmidt, eventually walking as a pinch hitter as the Blue Jays celebrated in the Bronx. Now, like Pages, Rice has become a star. He homered twice against the Mets over the weekend before the Yankees’ big divisional homestand this week. Batting average: Otto Lopez, Marlins, .344 Lopez is bidding to become the fourth Marlin to win a batting title, after Hanley Ramirez, Dee Strange-Gordon and Luis Arraez. Now 27, he took a circuitous route to Miami: The Blue Jays sold him to the Giants in February 2024, and the Giants lost him on waivers to the Marlins seven weeks later. He’s not up there to walk (just seven walks this season), and if you’re a “sinker/slider guy,” good luck — Lopez is hitting .371 off sinkers, and .363 off sliders. Stolen bases: José Ramirez, Guardians, 20 He’s topped 40 steals in each of the last two seasons, so perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising. But Ramirez turns 34 in September and has never led the league in stolen bases. If he does it this year, he’ll be the oldest player to lead his league in that category since teammate Rajai Davis in 2016. Ramirez has gone past 300 steals for his career (he’s at 307 now), and with eight more homers, he’ll have 300 of those, too. Ramirez would become the ninth player in that 300/300 club, joining Carlos Beltrán, Bobby and Barry Bonds, Andre Dawson, Steve Finley, Willie Mays, Alex Rodriguez and Reggie Sanders. Wins: Aaron Ashby, Brewers, 8 All in relief, too! With one more victory, Ashby — who has a nifty 2.17 ERA — would be halfway to the single-season record for wins by a reliever, set by Roy Face of the Pirates, who went 18-1 in 1959. For Howie Rose, two lifelong passions arrived in New York at perfectly formative moments. In 1962, when Rose was 8 years old, the Mets started up at the Polo Grounds. Two years later, when he was 10, the Beatles played “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Rose, 72, grew up to be the Mets’ cherished radio voice and a member of the team’s Hall of Fame. There may be nobody alive who has met more Mets than Rose, but his Beatle encounters was more fleeting. “About 20 years ago, at the Westbury Music Fair on Long Island, we saw Ringo at one of his All-Starr Band tours and I was sitting pretty close to the aisle that he came down,” Rose said by phone Monday. “He was almost within arm’s length, and that was just a fleeting second. But that had been, until Saturday, the closest I’d ever been in proximity to a Beatle.” On Saturday, during the Mets’ victory over the Yankees, Rose left the Citi Field broadcast booth early for an important meeting in Manhattan: He was going to see Paul McCartney perform on “Saturday Night Live” — and meet him at the after-party. It was past 2 a.m. on the morning of Sunday’s day game when he saw him standing there, on the floor over the ice rink at Rockefeller Center. To Rose, it felt nothing like his usual celebrity encounters. “We get the opportunity to meet people, within the sports context, that we might have grown up idolizing as players, or maybe just meet the biggest stars in the sports world,” Rose said. “That’s nothing to me, and objectively, maybe this shouldn’t have been as overwhelming as it was. But there’s no one I’ve waited 62 years to meet, believe me.” It was not an intimate setting, not the place for many questions, and for a man who uses his voice for a living, Rose struggled to find the right words. “I like to think of myself as reasonably articulate, and there I am, trying to say something pretty simple like, ‘Thank you for everything you’ve meant in my life,’ and I just tap-danced and stumbled over those words in so many different ways,” he said. “It couldn’t have made any particular sense.” But it was a lifelong goal fulfilled, another special milestone in the final season of Rose’s broadcast career. He calls only home games now, and the Mets left for a road trip after Sunday’s thriller over the Yankees. That gives Rose a chance to reflect on an experience that must have felt like the middle eight in “A Day In The Life”  — somebody spoke and I went into a dream. “I’m still kind of buzzed from it,” Rose said. “Actually, I’m glad to have this week off so I can get back down to Earth.” The Reds visit the Phillies this week, and like all rational people, my mind flashes back immediately to Bo Díaz. Díaz was the catcher for the NL champion Phillies in 1983, when I was 8 years old and nothing mattered more to me than my hometown baseball team. Díaz was my brother Tim’s favorite player, and when the Phillies traded him to the Reds in 1985, Tim was heartbroken. He still curses the name Tom Foley, the infielder the Phillies got in return, even though I’ve told him Tom, who coached many years for the Rays, is actually a really nice guy. Anyway, this card is a beauty and a rarity for mid-1980s Topps for several reasons. Almost every photo was taken in daylight then, but this is a night game. Also, Topps put aside the airbrush and hustled to get a picture of Díaz in his new uniform, even though the August trade left just two months to do so. It’s also fun to see a play you can pinpoint through the magic of Baseball Reference. In this card, Díaz applies a tag to Tommy Herr of the Cardinals. Díaz is wearing the Reds’ gray road uniform, meaning the game must have been at Busch Stadium. The Reds played one series there with Díaz in 1985, in early September. Herr is pretty clearly out, meaning the moment Topps depicted could only have happened in the first inning on Sept. 4, 1985. Terry Pendleton singled with the bases loaded to score Vince Coleman, but the Reds’ left fielder threw to Díaz to nail Herr at the plate. The left fielder’s name: Max Venable — the father of Will Venable, now the manager of the surging White Sox. You’ve gotta love baseball, where everything from today can be tied back to … well, yesterday. In this week’s power rankings, where the Braves hold steady at No. 1, our crew looked at the one player or thing each team is missing this season. (And Atlanta just got another spark: Ronald Acuña Jr. is back from the injured list.) Jim Bowden checked in with all 30 teams today, ranking their performances at the quarter mark and assessing trade deadline outlook. Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong said he regrets an ugly exchange he had with a White Sox fan Sunday. Two bits of Nationals news: They’re giving Dylan Crews, the No. 2 pick in the 2023 draft, another shot after he showed marked improvement at the plate in Triple A in recent weeks, and optioning third baseman Brady House back down. The Mets are riding the rookie train. With a pair of rooks already thriving, the team is set to promote outfield prospect Nick Morabito from Triple A. Yankees manager Aaron Boone said “it’s on the table” that Gerrit Cole could make his season debut this weekend. More details here. This week’s MLB mailbag routes your toughest questions directly to our expert beat writers and analysts. Submit questions here, and some of them will appear in this newsletter. Most-clicked yesterday: Shohei Ohtani’s inside-the-park home run. 📫 Love The Windup? Check out The Athletic’s other newsletters. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms