Officially, now, the Indians are going to the World Series, representing the American League. When they get there, they’re going to be fully rested. Some will speculate that they might be too rested. That’s for then. For now, it’s another celebration in Cleveland, which is a weird thing to write.

So how did the Indians manage to pull this off, doing away with the Blue Jays in five games? Let’s be honest. You already know the answer.

The Indians aren’t going to the World Series because of Michael Brantley. The star outfielder has been of just about zero use this year, owing to a messed-up shoulder. They’re not going to the World Series because of Carlos Carrasco. He helped them plenty during the year, but then he got knocked out. They’re not going to the World Series because of Danny Salazar. Like Carrasco, he also helped plenty during the year, but he hasn’t pitched in over a month.

And this is important, in the little picture: They’re not going to the World Series because of the offense. The offense has been underrated this season, and in the playoffs it’s been fairly timely. But in the ALCS, in which the Indians outscored the Blue Jays just 12 to 8, the Indians had a .544 OPS, to the Blue Jays’ .534. By wOBA, the Blue Jays were actually better, by a margin of .237 to .231. The hitting in the whole series sucked. The Indians’ lineup was the offensive equivalent of Ryan Goins. The Blue Jays’ lineup was the offensive equivalent of J.B. Shuck. The teams didn’t hit. The Indians just hit at a few more of the good moments.

The pitching has carried the Indians. The bullpen has carried the Indians. We’ve already been over this, but it worked perfectly again on Wednesday.

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You might’ve noticed there hasn’t been much in the way of hitting lately. As always in the playoffs, the samples are small, but numbers are numbers, and I was thinking about putting together a post on the subject. Then Dave put together a post on the subject! He addressed a lot of what I wanted to address, so, go ahead and read that. Relative to the regular season, playoff hitting has so far come in surprisingly low. Or, maybe not so surprisingly low, if the image you have in your head when you think about the playoffs is the face of Andrew Miller.

When I was thinking about my original post, I envisioned a plot much like the one Dave included. What I did instead was dig a bit deeper. In reality, you can’t so easily just compare playoff teams to teams in the regular season, because the teams and players alive in October belong to subgroups. What if you just examine the subgroups? So, that’s what this is.

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When there’s only one or two games on the television every night, every decision a manager makes gets blown up from all directions. Already this postseason, we’ve had the Zach Britton Decision, and Andrew Miller in the Seventh, and Kenley Jansen in the Seventh, and the Max Scherzer Decision. This past weekend begat us one more signature event: the Walk Chris Coghlan Decision. The interim has seen rabid takes defending both sides of the issue.

Despite having occurred four days ago now, the choice by Dodgers manager Dave Roberts to intentionally walk Coghlan — and, consequently, pitch to Miguel Montero — remains relevant for tonight’s Game 4 in Los Angeles. The Dodgers are still playing the Cubs. Dave Roberts is still their manager. There are still decisions for him to make. And there are still opportunities to be second-guessed. For the moment, I’ll attempt to decide whether Roberts’ logic was suspect — or, alternatively, if he made the best choice he could given the information available to him.

To return to that moment: with two outs and two on in the eighth inning of a tied NLCS Game 1 in Chicago, Roberts elected to intentionally walk Chris Coghlan to get to Aroldis Chapman’s spot in the lineup. Pinch-hitter Miguel Montero then stepped in and stroked a grand slam off of Joe Blanton to put the game out of reach for the Dodgers. Immediately, the second-guessing began.

Let’s try to run through the decision-making process up to that moment, because it’s actually a little complicated, and not at all clear-cut.

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The story of this postseason has been the dramatic change in the attitude towards relief pitcher usage. It’s been most notable in Cleveland, where Andrew Miller has been used anywhere from the 5th through 9th inning, but basically all of the teams still left have been utilizing their best relievers as often as possible, and relying more on their bullpens than ever before.

Yesterday, over at FiveThirtyEight, Rob Arthur showed that this isn’t just our perception, but that teams really are pulling their starters earlier than ever this year. Below, I’ll borrow a neat graphic from his post.

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Left-hander Julio Urias starts for the Dodgers tonight in Game 4 of the NLCS against the Cubs. Here’s something you probably already know about him: he’s really young. Urias turned 20 on August 12 of this year. For the purposes of websites such as this one (which use July 1 as a cutoff), that places Urias in the midst of his age-19 season. When Urias pitched in relief during Game 5 of the NLDS, he became the fourth-youngest pitcher in major-league history (Bert Blyleven, Ken Brett, Don Gullett) to pitch in the postseason, per Baseball-Reference Play Index — and he’s already pitched more innings than Brett and as many as Blyleven. With his first pitch today, he’ll become the youngest pitcher in postseason history to record a start. By comparison, consider that most of the players on both the Cubs and Dodgers had never even appeared in a professional game at the same age Urias ascends to the spotlight.

Only seven players in history have started a playoff game at an age younger than Urias, and they were all position players. They are, in declining order of age at playoff debut: Justin Upton, Claudell Washington, Bryce Harper, Mickey Mantle, Andruw Jones, Phil Cavarretta, and Freddie Lindstrom. 

That’s one way to frame Urias’s accomplishment. Another? By means of this brief timeline concerning the distinction Urias is about to receive:

• On October 9, 1913, Bullet Joe Bush started for the Philadelphia Athletics in the third game of the World Series. he pitched a complete game as the A’s beat the New York Giants 8-2. Bush was 20 years and 316 days old. Bush would hold the record until…
• October 3, 1984, when Bret Saberhagen started for the Kansas City Royals in Game 2 of the ALCS against the Detroit Tigers. The Tigers won 5-3. Saberhagen was 20 years and 175 days old.
• Urias is 20 years and 68 days old today.

Urias’s age is not remarkable solely for how it relates to his postseason appearance and playoff start. His regular-season performance this year, even in limited innings, represents one of the better seasons in history for a player his age. In 77 innings this season, Urias put up a 3.39 ERA and 3.17 FIP, which was good enough to produce a 1.8 WAR. Over the last 40 years, only seven players, position players included, have recorded a better WAR number in a season at 19 years of age or younger: Read the rest of this entry »

Listen, we can all be adults here. We all understand what’s going on, in that none of us understand what’s going on. The Cleveland Indians are a few hours away from playing Game 5 of the ALCS, a game that could advance them to the World Series, and they’ll be handing the ball to Ryan Merritt in the first inning. Ryan Merritt, a 24-year-old who’s faced all of 37 batters in his major-league career, which began with a mop-up relief appearance against the Texas Rangers back in May of this year. Ryan Merritt, a lefty whose fastball sits at 87 mph and tops out at 90. Ryan Merritt, who has never appeared within the top 10 of an Indians prospects list.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’m some Ryan Merritt expert. Who is? About 48 hours ago, I knew as much about Ryan Merritt as the rest of you. What follows is simply a collection of more or less public information compiled from data, film, and scouting reports. Let’s get to know Ryan Merritt.

The biographical information is always a good place to start. The Indians selected Merritt in the 16th round of the 2011 draft. That’s not a very high round! He was picked 488th overall. He doesn’t have a particularly imposing frame, at 6-foot-0, 180 pounds, though BaseballAmerica’s 2015 scouting report calls it an “athletic frame.” He cracked Double-A last year, and pitched well, to the tune of a 3.51 ERA and 3.25 FIP in 141 innings. In 143 Triple-A innings this year, he ran a 3.70 ERA and 3.82 FIP.

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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 giant and large 2016-17 free-agent market.

Below are links to ballots for five of this year’s free agents, all starting pitchers.

Other Players: Pedro Alvarez / Erick Aybar / Jose Bautista / Carlos Beltran / Billy Butler / Andrew Cashner / Bartolo Colon / Rajai Davis / Ian Desmond / R.A. Dickey / Edwin Encarnacion / Doug Fister / Dexter Fowler / Carlos Gomez / Jeremy Hellickson / Matt Holliday / Austin Jackson / Jon Jay / Matt Joyce / Brandon Moss / Mike Napoli / Angel Pagan / Steve Pearce / Wilson Ramos / Colby Rasmus / Josh Reddick / Michael Saunders / Kurt Suzuki / Mark Trumbo / Justin Turner / Chase Utley / Luis Valbuena / Neil Walker / Matt Wieters.

Rich Hill (Profile)
Some relevant information regarding Hill:

• Has averaged 48 IP and 1.7 WAR over last three seasons.
• Has averaged 6.9 WAR per 200 IP over last three seasons.
• Recorded a 3.8 WAR in 110.1 IP in 2016.
• Is projected to record 6.9 WAR per 200 IP**.
• Is entering his age-37 season.
• Made $6.0M in 2016, as part of deal signed in November 2015.

*That is, a roughly average number of innings for a starting pitcher.
**Prorated version of final updated 2016 depth-chart projections available here.

Click here to estimate years and dollars for Hill.

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Maybe you know who Carl Edwards Jr. is. Maybe you’re a Cubs fan, or remember him from prospect lists. Maybe you wondered who that 120-pound dude with the 95 mph fastball was one day and did some light googling. Maybe you, like me, have stared at this list of top four-seam fastball spin rates in the league so long you know by heart that he’s got the second-most spin in baseball.

Or maybe you don’t know who he is, and you’re just now getting acquainted. One of the first things you should maybe know about are his hands.

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Much has been made of Cleveland’s bullpen usage during the postseason. The attention has been focused primarily on two things: Terry Francona’s willingness to deviate from traditional relief roles, and the lights-out performances of Cody Allen and Andrew Miller.

Not much has been said about the limited looks hitters have been getting against Indians pitchers.

Through seven games, an Indians starter has yet to face an opposing hitter four times in the same game. They’ve faced a hitter three times on just 25 occasions, and 19 of those belong to Corey Kluber. Third-time-through-the-order penalties haven’t been injurious. Red Sox and Blue Jays batters are a combined 3-for-22 with a pair of walks and a hit-by-pitch in their third look. Francona has been masterful at pulling his starters at the right time.

He’s applied a similar approach with his management of Cleveland’s relievers. In Monday’s bullpen game, Francona flip-flopped what has been his postseason convention by using Cody Allen in the seventh, followed by Andrew Miller in a closing role. He had a reason. Read the rest of this entry »