Yesterday, I published the first half of my votes for this year’s Fielding Bible awards, which have now been released. This morning, I’m going to cover my ballots for the three outfield positions, pitchers, multi-positional defenders, and defensive player of the year. If you’re curious about the methodology I used, you can read all about it in yesterday’s article, but here’s a bite-sized refresher:

I used a weighted blend of DRS, FRV, DRP, and UZR (the four flagship public defensive metrics), with the weights based on how well each metric did at each position when it comes to reliability and consistency. I used different weightings based on recent effectiveness at a few position groupings: first base, non-first-base infield, catcher, and outfield. That gave me an initial rough order. From there, I used my own expertise, both in terms of deeper statistical dives on individual players and the copious amounts of baseball I watched this year, to assemble my final rankings. I deferred to advanced metrics when the gaps were huge – Patrick Bailey is the best defensive catcher by a mile, for example – but for close calls, I leaned heavily on my own judgment.

That’s the broad strokes of how I built a method for analysis, which is hopefully at least somewhat interesting. More interesting than that? The actual players who played the defense and got the awards. So let’s get right to my last six ballots. The award winners are noted with an asterisk after their name in the balloting section

Left Field
1. Colton Cowser
2. Riley Greene*
3. Lourdes Gurriel Jr.
4. Steven Kwan
5. Jackson Chourio
6. Alex Verdugo
7. Wyatt Langford
8. Ian Happ
9. Brandon Marsh
10. Taylor Ward

I thought that Cowser and Greene were the two easy choices for this award. They both played elite defense, with every metric above average and a few elite markers. (Greene was the best left fielder by DRS, Cowser by FRV.) They both exemplify what I’m looking for in a left fielder – namely, someone good enough that their team keeps playing them in center. In fact, if either were much better defensively, they might not qualify for this award; you have to play the plurality of your innings at a position to qualify, and they both played hundreds of innings in center.
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It was a great honor when Mark Simon of Sports Info Solutions asked me to vote for this year’s Fielding Bible Awards. If you haven’t heard of them before, they’re an alternative to Gold Gloves that were devised by SIS and John Dewan in 2006. A panel of experts votes for 10 players across the majors at each position, as well as a multi-position award and a defensive player of the year. The awards will be released tomorrow, October 24, at 2 p.m. ET. Update: they’ve now been handed out.

Imagine my surprise when I got asked to be one of those experts. I consider myself a strong analyst, but this is the big time: Peter Gammons is a frequent voter, and it’s downright terrifying to be compared to him. So if I was going to do this, I had to do it right. I did what anyone would do in my position: I had a long conversation with MLB Chief Data Architect Tom Tango about how to evaluate defensive systems.

Yeah, it’s good to have friends in high places, what can I say? One of the most pressing questions I had when I sat down to compile my ballot was how much attention to pay to the various defensive grading systems out there. There’s DRS and FRV, the two flagship options. There’s Baseball Prospectus’s DRP and the legacy system UZR. They all purport to measure defensive value, and they all do so with slightly different methodology. They don’t always agree. To give you an example, Taylor Walls is either 12 runs above average (DRS), two runs below (FRV), or somewhere in between (6.6 DRP, 3.8 UZR).
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I’m trying out a new format for our managerial report cards this postseason. In the past, I went through every game from every manager, whether they played 22 games en route to winning the World Series or got swept out of the Wild Card round. To be honest, I hated writing those brief blurbs. No one is all that interested in the manager who ran out the same lineup twice, or saw his starters get trounced and used his best relievers anyway because the series is so short. This year, I’m sticking to the highlights, and grading only the managers who survived until at least their League Championship series. Today, let’s talk about the first of that quartet to be eliminated: Stephen Vogt of the Cleveland Guardians.

My goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of the outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things — getting team buy-in for new strategies or unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable — but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but David Fry and Kerry Carpenter were also great this October. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Juan Soto is important because he’s great, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process. Let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »

Managing in the playoffs is all about balancing immediate payoffs and long-term sustainability. Not ultra long-term, mind you, but managing a bullpen for a seven-game series is trickier than simply pressing the same buttons every day until you win or lose. ALCS Game 4 featured three momentous bullpen decisions. The managers chose differently; they both paid the price. In the end, the Yankees got the better of the Guardians in a 14-pitcher, three-and-a-half-hour, 14-run shootout. But a few early decisions absolutely shaped the way the game went, and so they take center stage here tonight.

No Rest for Cade Smith

Cade Smith was one of the best relievers in baseball this year. If he didn’t play on the same team as Emmanuel Clase, we’d call him a lockdown closer. Instead, he’s a dominant fireman, capable of coming in whenever Stephen Vogt needs him to ice the opposition. And Vogt has needed him a lot. He pitched in all five games of the ALDS. He got the first game of this series off, but then he faced the meat of the Yankees lineup in Game 2 and Game 3.

He’s been pitching nearly every day, which hurts. He’s facing the same batters over and over, which hurts. But what are you going to do, not use your best option against a team that has two MVP-level bats stacked together in an otherwise navigable lineup? Juan Soto had already homered and the Yankees were up 3-2 when the top of the order came up in the sixth inning. On came Smith, for the third time in four days. Read the rest of this entry »

At my old job, my boss occasionally held idea sessions. He wanted everyone to participate, and the point wasn’t to come up with something actionable, just to brainstorm. No suggestion was too ridiculous – sure, it might get picked apart in discussion, but the whole point was to suggest weird stuff and see what came out of it. Still, I can safely say that none of those judgment-free-zone ideas sounded quite as zany to me as “let’s intentionally walk the guy in front of Aaron Judge.”

That didn’t stop Stephen Vogt on Tuesday night. With runners on second and third base and one out in the bottom of the second inning, Vogt didn’t let Juan Soto hit. He put up four fingers to send Soto to first. His reward? A bases-loaded encounter with Judge, the best hitter in baseball. Obviously Vogt had a reason for his decision. I ran the math to see how well that reason agrees with theory.

In a vacuum, it’s pretty clear why this intentional walk was bad: It loaded the bases with only one out, increasing the chance of a big inning, and it did so with the presumptive American League MVP at the plate. But there were two reasons to do it. First, it took the bat out of Soto’s hands, and Soto is himself a phenomenal hitter, particularly against righties. Second, it created the chance for an inning-ending double play, which would have been a huge boon to the Guardians’ chances (they already trailed by two). If you squint, you can kind of see it; maybe these two choices are equal. It didn’t matter in Game 2, because the Yankees won going away, but if the Guardians come back to win the series, they’ll be facing New York’s best hitters in important spots again, so what Vogt chose to do Tuesday night might help us guess what he’ll do in the future. Read the rest of this entry »

“One of the best hitters in baseball – last three years, batting titles with three different teams.” That’s the first thing viewers heard about Luis Arraez this postseason, a quote from the bottom of the first inning of the Padres-Braves Wild Card series. Arraez singled and promptly scored on a Fernando Tatis Jr. home run. It was just how you’d draw it up, and San Diego won a 4-0 laugher. That’s the promise of Arraez – a near-automatic baserunner completely immune to strikeout pitching.

“He’s a tough dude to face… He could set the tone just like Ohtani could set the tone for their respective clubs.” That one comes from the last game Arraez played this postseason, as he was mired in a deep slump. After that first single, he went 2-for-8 with two more singles the rest of the Atlanta series. Then he went a desultory 4-for-22 (all singles) in the NLDS against Dodgers. He fulfilled plenty of the Arraez-ian promise we expect – just one strikeout in 31 plate appearances – but he simply couldn’t buy a hit.

It’s hard to learn much from a down series like that. Obviously, Arraez wasn’t contributing to the Padres offense – no one contributes when they post a 27 wRC+. But hidden in that statement is an unstated counterfactual: When Arraez goes, it is implied, the Padres go. His single-hitting prowess is the straw that stirs the drink for a fantastic offense that ranked eighth in the majors in runs scored this year despite playing in one of the toughest offensive environments out there.

There’s just one problem with that statement: It’s not true. Arraez didn’t stir the drink for the Padres this year, even as he cruised to his third straight batting title. That sounds crazy, but it’s true. There’s just something about that shiny batting average that messes with our ability to evaluate players. Read the rest of this entry »

The magic of baseball is that every pitch counts and no game is ever truly over. There’s no victory formation, no garbage time with two minutes left in a 30-point blowout. If you have outs left, you can string together hits ad nauseam and win the game. But while that’s technically true, the game doesn’t really work that way in practice. Most games boil down to a few key moments, where the stakes are heightened and the outcome is truly uncertain. Win those moments, and you generally win the game.

In Game 2 of the NLCS on Monday, there were three such moments. You could use leverage index to tell you that. You could also just watch the game and count when there were a lot of runners on. The Mets won 7-3 to even the series at one game each, but if those three moments had broken differently, the game could have too.

The first inflection point in the game came early. The Dodgers went with a modified version of their plan from last Wednesday: a Ryan Brasier-fronted bullpen game. Landon Knack came in for the second inning this time, which makes sense to me as an armchair manager. The Dodgers were going to need at least one less-trusted reliever to throw, because Alex Vesia got hurt in Game 5 of the NLDS and was left off the roster for this series, and Daniel Hudson apparently wasn’t even available on Monday. Why not get Knack in early, against the bottom half of the Mets lineup, and see whether he had it or not? A scoreless outing would set the Dodgers up to aim high-leverage options at the top of the New York order the rest of the day. A bad outing? They could pull the ripcord and keep everyone fresh. Better to find that out in the second inning than the seventh.
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Forget second-guessing — I first-guessed Dave Roberts as the fifth inning of Game 5 ended. It was partially his hugging form – a little too hands-off-y for my tastes – but mostly, it was who he gave the hug to. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is the highest-paid pitcher in baseball history. Eleven months ago, he pitched the game of his life in the biggest spot of his career. His complete game, 14-strikeout masterpiece in Game 6 of the Japan Series was one of the great playoff performances of the 21st century. Against the Padres, he looked nearly untouchable. He rolled through five innings on just 63 pitches, and he seemed to be picking up steam as the game wore on.

Roberts didn’t agree. The top of San Diego’s order was due up for a third time the following inning, and Yamamoto has exclusively turned in short outings since returning from injury in September. He simply hasn’t had a ton in the tank, and the Padres had roughed him up in Game 1 of the series. The Dodgers bullpen has been dominant, and had just turned in nine shutout innings to force this deciding game.

Maybe Roberts felt like he had no choice. Yamamoto’s counterpart, Yu Darvish, was no slouch himself. He’d allowed a second-inning home run to Enrique Hernández, but other than that, he’d given up pretty much nothing. He did it with smoke and mirrors – or, to be more specific, a curveball that vanished like smoke into the night every time the Dodgers took a swing. He threw that hook a whopping 19 times, more than any other pitch, and the Dodgers managed to put exactly one into play, a harmless groundout off the bat of Mookie Betts. Read the rest of this entry »

Who would you pitch in a pivotal Game 4? Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that your best starter is available on three days’ rest, and he didn’t throw a full complement of pitches in his last start. He could pitch tonight’s game – or he could pitch a potential fifth and deciding game on full rest. But if resting him and letting him go in the next one seems like the obvious answer, let’s add another wrinkle: There’s no one else available to start. If your ace doesn’t go, it’s all bullpen, all the way.

The Padres and Dodgers both faced that decision Wednesday. They chose differently – the Padres sent Dylan Cease to the mound, while the Dodgers countered with reliever Ryan Brasier. The decision wasn’t exactly identical, but it was nearly so. The Dodgers used three relievers in Game 3, while the Padres used four. The relievers San Diego used were better – but then, their bullpen is better overall. Both teams had good full-rest options for Game 5 even if they opted to use their aces on Wednesday, with Yu Darvish set to take the ball for the Padres and Jack Flaherty available to do so for the Dodgers if Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched Game 4 on short rest. (Dave Roberts said after the game that he has not yet settled on a Game 5 starter, with everything from Yamamoto, Flaherty and another bullpen game on the table depending on how everyone is feeling after Thursday’s workout.)

Cease came out with what seemed like the kind of adrenaline you’d expect from a guy trying to knock the Dodgers out of the playoffs. His first fastball to Shohei Ohtani was 99.6 mph. The slowest fastball he threw in the first inning was 97.5 mph, half a tick faster than his average fastball this year. His slider had more hop. His sweeper had more sweep. Oh yeah – he also hung a fastball middle-middle that Mookie Betts launched for a solo home run.
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Riley Greene has never seen the ball like this before. You never know how someone will react to their first postseason experience – players have been known to press or freeze up – but Greene has done no such thing. He’s chasing pitches outside the strike zone about as frequently as he did in the regular season. Meanwhile, he’s locked in when pitchers challenge him. He’s swinging at 85% of pitches in the strike zone, up from about 66% during the regular season. And when he gets one right down the middle, he’s going for it: He’s taken 13 swings at 15 such pitches, also an 85% swing rate, up from 73% before October.

Just one problem: Greene is hitting .133/.278/.200 in the playoffs. He’s walking at about the same clip, and his strikeouts are barely down. Meanwhile, his power has completely disappeared. He has one extra-base hit, a double. He hasn’t barreled up a single ball. His bat speed is down two ticks from the regular season, and down nearly 2.5 mph from his second-half mark. He’s making more weak contact and less hard contact. These things don’t quite make sense together. Are we looking at a fluke of batted ball luck or a trend?

Now, let’s be honest with ourselves. It’s probably at least partly a fluke of batted ball luck. We’re talking about four games here, 18 plate appearances. You’re not supposed to read too much into samples that small, and if you do, you should focus on the most stable indicators you can find. On-base percentage? Slugging? Heck, strikeout rate? We haven’t seen nearly enough to take those at face value. But I do think something’s wrong, so I thought I’d dig a little deeper. Read the rest of this entry »