I vowed to watch more baseball this season. And I’m doing it! Through the minefield of distractions that is March Madness, the NBA playoffs, the WNBA, the NFL Draft, the NBA Draft, Olympic qualifying, NCAA track and field, boxing, MMA, kickboxing, WWE, reality shows, and Tubi movies … I’ve still been pretty consistent with getting my money’s worth from the MLB.TV package.

Maybe it’s a middle-aged thing, or a busy dad thing, but I’ve discovered that watching baseball is just relaxing enough to become a habit. The pace of the game and the tone of the broadcast is almost golf-like. And I’m not just watching my Seattle Mariners. I’ve at least laid my eyes on pretty much every team, from the Astros to the Yankees (although thanks to MLB.TV’s maddeningly dumb blackout rules, most of the West Coast teams and literally half of Seattle’s AL West competition is unavailable to me).

So the MLB season is right at the midway point — through Wednesday’s schedule, every team has played between 84 and 90 games of their 162-game slate — and so far I’m keeping up. A couple of the divisional races feel like they’re pretty much over (NL West, NL East), and a couple seem like they’ll go down to the wire (AL West, AL East), all while the competition for wild-card spots remains wide open. Looking ahead, there’s the All-Star Game, the trade deadline, MVP and Cy Young races coming into focus, and some records and stat milestones up for grabs.

Headed down the stretch toward the playoffs, here are 10 players to watch (if you can watch them, despite the blackouts) that could shape the narrative of the rest of the season.

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Pete Alonso, 1B, New York Mets

The Mets are playing .500 ball and are 14 games behind the Phillies in the NL East, but they are very much alive for a wild-card spot. Keeping New York’s “other” team in the mix is a potent offense that ranks in the majors’ top 10 in total runs, hits, home runs, batting average and OPS. Headlining that offense is Alonso, the 29-year-old cleanup hitter with three All-Star selections and two Home Run Derby titles on his resume — the slugger who led the league in homers as a rookie in 2019 (he hit 53), and led the league in RBI in 2022, which was also the last time the Mets made the playoffs.

Alonso leads the Mets with 18 homers this season and is second on the team with 48 RBI. He’s been good, but he could be better. And we’re coming up on the All-Star break, which has become Alonso’s personal playground; another impressive Home Run Derby showing (assuming he enters) could be his launching pad for a big second half of the season.

Corbin Burnes, SP, Baltimore Orioles

The O’s look like they’re here to stay. One of the worst teams in baseball from 2018 to 2021 was patient and prolific in their rebuilding efforts, and now Baltimore is in Year 3 of being really good — through Wednesday’s schedule they’re 55-31, on top of the AL East, and have the most wins in the American League.

Baltimore has the third-best team ERA in the majors, the fourth-best WHIP, and have allowed the fifth-fewest total hits and fifth-fewest home runs. The anchor of that O’s pitching staff is Burnes, a newcomer to Baltimore who brought a Cy Young award and an ERA title (2021), plus a strikeout title (2022), with him from Milwaukee.

Burnes is 9-3 this year with a 2.26 ERA, 99 strikeouts and a 1.03 WHIP. Changing leagues and teams hasn’t slowed down one of the game’s best pitchers, who has the look of a No. 1 starter on a championship-caliber team.

Luis Castillo, SP, Seattle Mariners

The M’s were expected to be good this year, but even their biggest fans wouldn’t have predicted Seattle to flirt with a somewhat comfortable lead in the AL West throughout the season’s first half. Mainly because, even when the Mariners have been successful lately, their M.O. has been to start slow, fall behind in the standings, then put on a furious rally in the season’s second half to contend for a playoff spot. Running from the front is not a familiar position for this franchise.

Also working in Seattle’s favor is that their AL West rivals, the Astros and Rangers — the 2022 and 2023 World Series champs, respectively — have been surprisingly subpar this year. Assuming that those two can’t continue being bad all season long, it just feels like the AL West is still going to go down to the wire. If the Mariners hope to survive and advance, their vaunted starting rotation of pitchers is going to have to hold up, because my team has one of the worst offenses in the league.

Logan Gilbert has been the statistical stud of the staff so far this year, but Seattle’s ace on paper is Castillo — and he’s not exactly playing up to the Cy Young standard that’s been expected of him. Castillo’s 103 strikeouts rank within the league’s top 20, but he’s barely top 50 in WHIP and ERA, and he has a losing record at 6-9. If Castillo can be even better in the second half than he’s been in the first half — which would align with what the Mariners typically do — he could lead the team to a division title and just their sixth playoff berth ever in uncharacteristically easy fashion.

Elly Da La Cruz, SS, Cincinnati Reds

The towering (6-foot-5) shortstop has made speed fun (and dangerous) again in MLB, bringing back memories of the great baserunners from past generations. De La Cruz might be my favorite player to watch right now: I was introduced to the game while guys like Rickey Henderson, Vince Coleman, and Rock Raines were still active, and was always drawn to base-stealers. De La Cruz reminds me of them.

Da La Cruz is blowing away the rest of the field this year with 41 stolen bases and by the time he’s done he could put up numbers like the kind we used to see in the ’80s. On top of the steals, De La Cruz uses his speed (and smarts) to stretch should-be singles into doubles, should-be doubles into triples, and even has an inside-the-park homer this year. And he’s got power, too; he’s launched some monster shots among his 15 homers (the ones that left the park). The Reds aren’t good as a team, but Elly is worth watching by himself.

Bryce Harper, 1B, Philadelphia Phillies

The two-time National League MVP is working on a third trophy, as he’s led the Phillies to the best record in baseball through the season’s first half. The best-player-on-the-best-team argument is strong enough, but Harper also helps his case by being clutch and purely entertaining on the field.

Harper is batting .303 with 20 home runs; he’s in the top 10 in average, homers, RBI, total bases, walks, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, and WAR. Meanwhile, his Phillies are 57-29 and running away with the NL East crown, and their plus-125 run differential is the biggest in the majors. Harper has done almost everything there is to do as a ballplayer — this year the odds are good that the future Hall of Famer collects his first World Series title.

Aaron Judge, OF, New York Yankees

The biggest big bopper in baseball, the 6-foot-7, 280-pound Judge is leading the majors with 32 home runs as the Yankees are battling neck-and-neck with the Orioles for the top spot in the AL East.

If he keeps up this pace, Judge will lead the league in home runs for the third time in his career, and crack the 50-homer barrier for the third time. He could even challenge the American League single-season record of 62 homers (which he already owns). Judge is on the shortlist of the most TV-friendly athletes in American sports, up there with the Patrick Mahomeses and LeBron Jameses of the world. He’s one of the few baseball players for whom every at-bat feels like a must-see event.

Shohei Ohtani, DH, Los Angeles Dodgers

For as many headlines that were made about Ohtani before this season began — i.e., the historic $700 million contract he signed to join the Dodgers, his shrouded-in-mystery departure from the Angels that preceded the contract signing, and the gambling scandal that ensnared his former interpreter and friend Ippei Mizuhara — things have been relatively quiet regarding the superstar slugger since the balls and strikes started flying officially. And yet, Ohtani has still been a force.

The two-time American League MVP is fully in contention to claim the NL version in 2024: Ohtani leads all players in batting average (.319); he’s second in home runs (27), total runs, OPS, and slugging percentage; and top-five in hits, WAR, and RBI. He’s the most feared hitter in a scary Dodgers lineup, propelling a team that’s 7.5 games ahead of the NL West through Wednesday and has the second-most wins in the National League.

Given his past production and that massive salary, plus the extra spotlight that comes with playing in L.A. for a legacy franchise, expectations were sky-high for Ohtani going into this season, and he continues to live up to the hype. (And keep in mind, he’s not even pitching this year while he recovers from elbow surgery. When and if he steps back on the mound, he’ll be one of the best pitchers in the game as well.)

Chris Sale, SP, Atlanta Braves

The Braves lost the best player on their roster — arguably the best player in the world — for the rest of the season when Ronald Acuna Jr. tore his ACL in May. And so last year’s most dominant regular-season team and its powerhouse offense is understandably less imposing without last year’s National League MVP, plus the Phillies are in full control of the NL East right now.

But the Braves are holding onto the first wild-card spot in the NL despite being nine games back in their division, and that’s in large part due to the pitching staff holding things down. The rotation got a huge boost with the offseason addition of Sale, the seven-time All-Star and World Series champion whose prime years were spent with the White Sox and Red Sox. At 35 years old, the left-hander is throwing as good as ever, with an 11-3 record, 127 strikeouts, a 2.71 ERA, and an 0.91 WHIP that ranks second in the league.

Atlanta’s offense has been middle-of-the-pack in 2024, following a season in which it was record-setting in its dominance. The team can still get into the playoffs and make some noise if the pitching is strong, and Sale is helping make that happen.

Marcus Semien, 2B, Texas Rangers

The reigning World Series champions don’t look it right now. The Rangers are 39-47 through Wednesday’s schedule, third place in the AL West and eight games out of the final wild-card spot. It’s not super rare for a World Series winner to miss the postseason altogether the next year — it’s happened a few times in recent years — but it’s still a massive disappointment whenever it happens.

Any chance Texas has of turning this season around and giving itself a shot to repeat depends heavily on Semien, the man who finished third in American League MVP voting in 2023 while leading the league in WAR. In 2024, Semien leads the Rangers in hits, runs, and RBI, but he’s batting only .231 (compared to .276 last year) and his OPS is .680 (down from .826 last year). He can’t fix all of Texas’ problems by himself, but the star infielder can play a big role in whatever second-half surge this team might have in itself.

Bobby Witt Jr., SS, Kansas City Royals

The Royals haven’t had a winning season since 2015, the same year they just happened to win the World Series. Three times since then, they’ve lost 100-plus games in a season — including in 2023 when their 56-106 record was the second-worst in the majors.

Kansas City hit the free-agent and trade markets hard this past offseason to upgrade its pitching staff, benefited from some progressive improvement by its returning players, and now the Royals are competing for a playoff spot. Through Wednesday’s schedule they are 48-40, seven games back in the AL Central but clinging to the third wild-card spot in the American League. One of the biggest in-house improvements has come from Witt, who’s made the leap from borderline All-Star to MVP candidate at just 24 years old. (Witt signed a reported 11-year, $288 million contract extension in the offseason.)

Witt leads K.C. in batting average, total hits, doubles, triples, steals, on-base percentage, OPS, and WAR — and he ranks in MLB’s top 10 in a lot of those categories, too. The second overall pick from the 2019 draft debuted in 2022 and was an instant-impact player; now he is the face of the league’s most improved team.