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In the brief interludes between arguing whether the Cardinals do indeed have “the best fans in baseball” and if they should or should not be offended by Yasiel Puig, a popular discussion topic on social media has centered on St. Louis’ so-called “Cardinals Devil Magic,” i.e., the sense that everything always seems to go the Cardinals’ way in October.

Setting aside the obvious fact that it didn’t help them out much last year when they frittered away a 3-1 NLCS lead to San Francisco, you can understand why, really. The Cardinals are in their ninth NLCS since 1996 and are just a single game away from their fourth World Series in ten seasons, but they’re not really outplaying the Dodgers. Los Angeles has outhit the Cardinals in each of the four games of the series, and held them to just a .134/.190/.175 line through three games; cumulatively, the Cardinals have outscored the Dodgers by just a single run, 8-7. But it’s the Cardinals who are up three games to one, and the Dodgers who find themselves in a desperate position in Wednesday’s Game 5. Read the rest of this entry »

Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating this offseason a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2013-14 free-agent market.

Note that, this year, in addition to asking readers to estimate the years/dollars each free agent is likely to receive, FanGraphs is also requesting that readers make note of how much they’d pay each free agent were they, themselves, actual GMs.

In this edition: Josh Johnson.

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With Lance Lynn scheduled to start on Tuesday, it stood to reason the Cardinals would probably need a major contribution out of their relievers if they wanted to push the Dodgers to the brink of elimination. Indeed, the Cardinals did push the Dodgers to the brink, and indeed, the Cardinals did get a lot of help from their relief, with Seth Maness, Carlos Martinez, and Trevor Rosenthal holding the Dodgers scoreless from the sixth. But maybe the Cardinals’ most important reliever wasn’t a relief pitcher at all. Maybe it was another guy who handled the final four innings.

Obviously, the Cardinals had more visible heroes. Lynn himself pitched decently well into the sixth, all things considered. Matt Holliday hit a big dinger. Shane Robinson hit an insurance dinger. Matt Carpenter drove home the first run with a double. There was no one guy who allowed the Cardinals to win — a lot of different parts had to come together just right. Among those parts, though, was Pete Kozma, who helped his team in the playoffs in a much less surprising way than he did a year ago. Last October, for pretty much no reason, Kozma hit. Tuesday, Kozma just played the field.

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The impact advance scouting has had on the first three games of the American League Championship Series is hard to measure. We can make educated guesses based on what we’ve seen, but that’s all. We aren’t privy to what is happening behind the scenes.

We do know there is a lot of information being shared. The Boston Red Sox and the Detroit Tigers may not utilize advance scouting exactly the same way, but come playoff time, they leave no stone unturned. From pitch selection to defensive positioning, many decisions are influenced, if not determined, by data.

Prior to the start of the series, key personnel from both teams shared their perspectives on the process. Weighing in from the Detroit side were Dave Dombrowski, Jim Leyland, Tom Brookens, Alex Avila and Austin Jackson. Contributing from the Boston clubhouse were Ben Cherington, John Farrell, Torey Lovullo, Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Ryan Dempster. Dombrowski and Cherington also offered snapshot of their player development efforts and the use of analytics. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam discuss the latest action in a pitching-dominated postseason, then answer emails about power outages, platoon splits, and more.

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The Cardinals felt like they were in a good position, handing the ball for Game 3 to Adam Wainwright. The Cardinals lost, not because of Wainwright, but because they couldn’t score. The Tigers felt like they were in a good position, handing the ball for Game 3 to Justin Verlander. The Tigers lost, not because of Verlander, but because they couldn’t score. Verlander, on Tuesday, turned in one of the better postseason starts all-time, I’d say. Over eight innings he struck out ten and was made to pay for one mistake. But John Lackey and the Red Sox bullpen kept the Tigers shut out, with Koji Uehara slamming the door. And Uehara’s outing was not without its moment of interest.

It was bad for the Tigers when Miguel Cabrera struck out with two on in the eighth. It was bad for the Tigers when Prince Fielder struck out right after. But according to the play log, the worst play all game for the Tigers was Jhonny Peralta‘s ninth-inning double play. After Victor Martinez‘s leadoff single, the Tigers’ win expectancy was an estimated 35%. After the double play, it dropped to 5%. Hope was torn down as quickly as it was built up, and Alex Avila’s closing at-bat felt like a formality. The game effectively ended on Peralta’s grounder, and that grounder came on a pitch that followed a 1-and-1 fastball.

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Episode 389
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 all League Championship Series-es even harder.

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 27 min play time.)

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Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating this offseason a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2013-14 free-agent market.

Note that, this year, in addition to asking readers to estimate the years/dollars each free agent is likely to receive, FanGraphs is also requesting that readers make note of how much they’d pay each free agent were they, themselves, actual GMs.

In this edition: Ubaldo Jimenez.

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Over the weekend, the two most well regarded “clutch hitters” in baseball did their thing. Carlos Beltran won Game 1 of the NLCS with a 13th inning walk-off double, continuing his long trend of destroying the baseball in the postseason. On Sunday, David Ortiz hit a game tying grand slam in the 8th inning, capping a somewhat miraculous comeback when the Tigers seemed fully in control of the ALCS. Both players have been remarkably impressive postseason performers, and yesterday, Jeff wrote about their duel history of success in October.

Because of their recent and past playoff performances, it is easy to see Beltran and Ortiz in a similar light, and position them as two peas from the same pod. Joel Sherman does exactly that today in writing about the Hall of Fame worthiness of both players:

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