Travis Shaw was a dangerous hitter early in the season. Heading into Memorial Day weekend, the Red Sox third baseman was slashing .302/.365/.527. He had seven home runs — and a firm hold on a position that opened up when Pablo Sandoval underwent shoulder surgery. Then he began to struggle.

The 26-year-old Kent State product put up a .586 OPS in June, and by the end of the season his slash line had fallen to .242/.306/.421. His power numbers weren’t bad. Shaw finished with 52 extra-base hits, including 16 home runs. He was streaky throughout, though. Prior to an abysmal final two weeks that cratered his numbers — and lost him his job — Shaw was productive. Then, from August 29 to September 14, he went 13-for-35, with three doubles and a pair of home runs.

Shaw had a chance to be a hero on Monday. After coming off the bench and singling in his first postseason at bat, he faced Indians closer Cody Allen with two on and two out in the bottom of the ninth inning, his team down a run. He flew out to right field, ending his — and the Red Sox’ — season.

Shaw talked about his mental approach to hitting — including how he goes in and out of slumps — at the tail end of his September hot stretch.

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Shaw on seeing the ball and battling slumps: “I was with [hitting coach] Rich Gedman at every single level, and he constantly said, ‘Keep your head on the ball, keep your head on the ball.’ You hear that from the time you’re young, but you don’t really think much of it. But if you look at video when you’re struggling, sure enough, instead of your head being down on contact, it’s pulling out just a tad. If you concentrate on what he said — just seeing the baseball — everything slows itself down and you put yourself in a better position to hit. Rich was constantly on us about that in the minor leagues.

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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 of them center fielders or something like center fielders.

Other Players: Erick Aybar / Rajai Davis / Mike Napoli / Wilson Ramos / Kurt Suzuki / Justin Turner / Chase Utley / Luis Valbuena / Neil Walker / Matt Wieters.

Ian Desmond (Profile)
Some relevant information regarding Desmond:

• Has averaged 655 PA and 3.0 WAR over last three seasons.
• Has averaged 2.7 WAR per 600 PA* over last three seasons.
• Recorded a 3.3 WAR in 677 PA in 2016.
• Is projected to record 2.3 WAR per 600 PA**.
• Is entering his age-31 season.
• Made $8.0M in 2016, as part of a deal signed in February.

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

Click here to estimate years and dollars for Desmond.

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Zach Britton has recently found himself at the forefront of baseball consciousness for a lot reasons, mostly positive, some negative, albeit through no fault of his own. He had a supremely excellent season in a tightly tailored, typical closer’s role for the Orioles, and his non-usage in last week’s wild-card game has almost become a caricature, a metaphor for outdated laissez-faire managerial strategies.

He will certainly receive many, many Cy Young votes, and might even walk off with the award. In my piece here last week, I compared his 2016 performance to some of the top seasons produced by AL starters, utilizing granular batted-ball data, and found that, while Britton does at least belong in the conversation, he didn’t deliver as much production to his club, in a year that is admittedly without a runaway choice among starting pitchers. What if I told you, however, that Britton didn’t even have the best season among AL relief pitchers?

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This probably has to be said up front; Bruce Bochy has historically done a masterful job of running his pitching staff in the postseason. It’s one of the main reasons — well, along with Madison Bumgarner anyway — that he has three world series championships, and is almost certainly going into the Hall of Fame someday. Over the long run, I don’t think bullpen management has been a weakness of Bochy’s Giants.

But there’s one thing about this Giants second half bullpen meltdown that I’ve never really been able to understand, or seen explained with solid reasoning. And this thing was only magnified during the season-ending bullpen meltdown in the ninth inning of the NLDS; why doesn’t Bochy trust Will Smith?

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The 2015 season represented the worst of John Lackey’s career in terms of facing left-handed batters. He rectified that split this year, which is probably just because the balls bounced differently. But it’s also notable that the Cubs’ Game 4 starter changed his approach against lefties this season. He’s mimicking a strategy he last used in 2011, the worst year of his career. Strangely, it’s working.

This lefty problem has always been a thing for Lackey — he’s just better against righties (.309 wOBA career) than lefties (.325) because of platoon splits and also because his best secondary weapon is his slider — but last year, the problem was worse than usual. He recorded a 4.84 FIP against lefties and a 2.69 FIP against righties in 2015. It was also the year he threw the most fastballs, the fewest curves and changeups.

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It should be said that it’s players who win and lose baseball games. Jake Arrieta, Ty Blach, Kris Bryant, Madison Bumgarner, Aroldis Chapman, and Conor Gillaspie: all had a greater impact than Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon on the outcome of last night’s thrilling 13-inning, 6-5 San Francisco victory. Because players are often forced to make decisions quickly, however, it’s difficult to question the wisdom of those decisions. Telling Hunter Pence not to swing at a 102-mph fastball several inches out of the zone, for example, ignores the reality the situation. There’s no time for deliberation. The same isn’t necessarily true for managers.

Managers, too, make difficult decisions — decisions which, given the wealth of information they possess relative to the general public, are also frequently difficult to critique responsibly. But their thought process is easier to decipher and their decisions are less physical — excepting those that come from the gut. In Game 3 of the Division Series against the Giants, a crazy game that might have been over many times, Maddon made a number of decisions. Most, especially the successful and inconsequential, went unnoticed. What follows is a review of the less successful, less inconsequential decisions.

Using Aroldis Chapman in the Eighth

While this choice is likely to get the most attention, given that Chapman came in and blew the save, using Chapman in the eighth is pretty close to a no-brainer. When Chapman entered the game in the eighth inning and no outs, the Cubs were leading by one run. With runners on first and second and nobody out, however, the Giants actually possessed the higher win expectancy (51%). The leverage index was a massive 5.13. For comparison’s sake, when David Ross came to the plate in the top of the 13th with runners on first and second and one out, the leverage index was a very high, but less light, 4.62. At no point in last year’s 12-inning, World Series-concluding game did the leverage index ever reach 5.0. And actually, after Chapman struck out Hunter Pence, the leverage index even increased to 5.44 for Conor Gillaspie’s plate appearance. Using your lights-out pitcher in this situation is certainly the right move.

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I don’t think anyone expected that. Sure, the Indians always had a chance against the Red Sox, and having a chance means a shot at a series win, but no one would’ve forecast the Indians to move on with a sweep. The Indians produced against Red Sox pitching, scoring 15 times in three games. At least as importantly, the Red Sox didn’t produce against Indians pitching, scoring seven times while batting .214. The Indians, you remember, lost two of their three best starters toward the end of the year, and that seemed to spell almost certain doom.

But really, it shouldn’t have been taken that way. No one would want to lose Carlos Carrasco. No one would want to lose Danny Salazar. Both those guys would make the Indians a stronger playoff ballclub. But we just can’t get out of the habit of over-valuing a starting rotation. Especially come playoff time. Even though we all know the game in October is different, we just can’t quite get it to sink in. So the Indians’ playoff pitching staff was going to be underrated.

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Here on FanGraphs, we host live, interactive win-expectancy graphs for every game, and they usually don’t look like this:

It’s rare for any one of these graphs to stretch 13 innings. It’s rare for the team in complete control for innings six through eight to wind up losing the game. It’s rare for the biggest play in regulation to read “J Arrieta Home Run.” It’s rare for there to be such a large and sudden spike at the end. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that parabolic shape in the middle before.

Game 2 of the National League Division Series between the Giants and Cubs was bonkers. Let’s address all 10 times it looked like it might be over.

No. 1 – First inning

If you’re an extremist, this thing might’ve looked over before it started. Sure, the Cubs were up two games to none in the series and had clearly looked like the better team thus far, but this is Madison Bumgarner we’re talking about, whose soul exits the body and watches over its human figure pitching from above during the postseason. I don’t know why that little box is showing regular-season stats over on the right. The more compelling graphic would’ve been the postseason version, which just consists of “as many as there are” in the games and innings columns and a bunch of zeros in the rest.

Actual win expectancy: 54%, Giants

Perceived win expectancy: EvenYearBumgarner%, Giants
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The Dodgers, of course, announced that they’re going with Kershaw today. But I’d still have gone the other way.

It’s becoming an October tradition; as the Dodgers head into game four of the NLDS, they are considering whether to bring back Clayton Kershaw on three days rest. As I sat down to talk about their decision on who to pitch today, I realized this is the third time in four years we’ve written this same post.

Back in 2013, Jeff Sullivan wrote about the decision between starting Kershaw or Ricky Nolasco. In 2014, Jeff again wrote about the call to pick Kershaw over Dan Haren. Last year, apparently we got distracted by Chase Utley’s slide or something, because we didn’t appear to write about the Dodgers using Kershaw in game four of the series against the Mets, but that happened too; the Dodgers have thrown Kershaw in games one and four of the division series three straight years, bringing him back on three days rest each time.

This year, though, I think they should do it differently. I think they should start Julio Urias today.

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