The league’s getting faster. Not the time of game — fastball velocity. And throwing some of the fastest fastballs in a league of fast have been the Cardinals, whose 92.6 mph average as a staff was good for third overall this year. The Red Sox did fine against a Tigers team that was only .3 mph short of that average, but going into this World Series, it’s still fair to say they will see some fastballs that are over 94 mph. And it’s fair to wonder how they’ll do against that added oomph.

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After several years of trying to fill the post-Manny hole in left field with the likes of Carl Crawford, Bill Hall (!), Scott Podsednik, & Jeremy Hermida, the Red Sox actually managed to put together a cost-effective and productive platoon situation in 2013.

Returnee Daniel Nava would hit the righties (and he did, with a .392 wOBA), and free agent acquisition Jonny Gomes would hit the lefties, which he did as well, putting up a .346 wOBA split. Including the surprising Mike Carp, who was acquired in February when the Mariners couldn’t find room for him and who shockingly hit everyone (.382 wOBA), the Red Sox left fielders put up the team’s most valuable season for the position since 2009, also known as “the last year Jason Bay was any good”.

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Yesterday, the names of the World Series umpires were released, with John Hirshbeck serving as the crew chief. Like I have done for the first two rounds in the playoffs, I will examine each umpire’s strike and ball calling tendencies. Overall, the group is pretty solid, with the exception of Bill Miller, who calls one of the league’s largest strike zones.

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Ben and Sam discuss the Dodgers’ and Tigers’ futures, then break down Tim Lincecum’s contract and answer listener emails.

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Hey there, deliberate or accidental viewers of FanGraphs, and welcome to the second part of probably the year’s last edition of The Worst Of The Best. Here’s Monday’s post, on the season’s wildest pitches. Here’s a full series archive. Some people have asked whether I’ll do an edition of this for the playoffs, and to be honest I haven’t decided yet. I mean, it’s baseball, important and trackable baseball, but reviewing the season also brings a certain finality and playoff stuff isn’t going to measure up. “We’ll see,” is the point. For now, if this is the last edition, I want to thank you guys for following along. I know these posts are long, and I know they can take a long time to load. I know they don’t quite feel FanGraphs-front-page appropriate, once you get past the PITCHf/x bits. I know these are a lot more silly and a lot less analytical. Thank you for accepting them, thank you for not complaining about them, and thank you for allowing me this occasional slide into the ridiculous. Baseball is pretty serious business, and we treat it as such, but even funeral homes have casual Fridays. I mean, probably, but I’m not going to call one.

What we’re going to do in this post is review the five wildest swings of the 2013 regular season, by which I mean the swings at pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone as determined by PITCHf/x and squaring and adding numbers. Excluded are checked swings, because at least those demonstrate an awareness, if sadly delayed. I only wanted to capture guys who went all-in. Also excluded, in theory, are swings during hit-and-runs, but I didn’t encounter one of those. I did encounter Andrew Romine throwing an attempted bunt at a wild pitch-out with a runner sprinting home from third. The bunt missed, the catcher missed, and the runner scored standing up. You won’t see that below, but you also don’t need to — how you imagine it is at least as satisfying as seeing it for yourself. Maybe more, and who am I to stomp on your imagination? Joe Saunders was pitching, incidentally. Remember Joe Saunders?

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This is the final article detailing my mechanical study of the best 50 Major League hitters from last season.  After this I will begin to apply this information to the vast library of amateur hitter video that I have acquired in the last few years.  Feels good to close the book on this monster.  For this portion I will focus on the moves of the lower half, again analyzing these athletes to create a baseline for examining less experienced hitters.  To get a full explanation of my methods and previous analyses, feel free to check out Part I and Part II of this study.

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Three at bats by Miguel Cabrera against Junichi Tazawa went a long way in determining the outcome of the ALCS. Had the Red Sox set-up man not gotten the better of baseball’s best hitter, there is a good chance the Tigers would be facing the Cardinals in the World Series.

Cabrera is known for hitting fastballs a long way. Tazawa got him out by working away with fastballs.

In Game 3, with runners on the corners and one out in the eighth inning of 1-0 game, Tazawa struck out Cabrera on a 94-mph fastball on a 1-2 count. The Red Sox held on for a 1-0 win.

In Game 5, with runners on the corners with none out in the seventh inning of a 4-2 game, Tazawa got Cabrera to ground into a 4-6-3 double play on a 94-mph fastball on a 1-0 count. The Red Sox hung on to win 4-3.

In Game 6, with runners on first and second with two out in the seventh inning of a 2-1 game, Tazawa got Cabrera to ground out to shortstop on a 94-mph fastball on a 1-0 count. The Red Sox rallied from the one-run deficit to win 5-2.

Tazawa features a splitter, which he utilized 28 percent of the time in the regular season, but all seven pitches he threw to Cabrera were fastballs. That was the game plan, and not just for the 27-year-old reliever. The Red Sox attacked the hobbled slugger with hard stuff the entire series. Read the rest of this entry »

The Detroit Tigers were really good in 2011, making it to the ALCS one year after finishing at just .500. Then 2012 went even better, where despite winning fewer regular season games they made it to the World Series, and 2013 was successful as well, going back to the ALCS. That’s a pretty excellent run of success, and they’re likely to be right back in the mix in 2014, since they return the majority of their core. But they still haven’t turned any of those seasons into a champion, and for a city that will next year be three decades past celebrating their last Tigers World Series winner, close isn’t good enough — and you start to wonder when this iteration runs out of chances.

That’s especially true for owner Mike Ilitch, who turned 84 this summer and has made it clear that he wants to see a winner in his hometown, for the first time since he purchased the club in 1992, while he’s still around to enjoy it. As if getting back to the ALCS (or beyond) for a fourth year in a row wasn’t going to be difficult enough, the Tigers find themselves contending with forces that make 2014 possibly their last best chance to get a championship out of this group. Read the rest of this entry »

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Episode 391
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he analyzes probably, like, every free agent.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 35 min play time.)

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