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When Eric Hosmer misplayed an eighth inning chopper down the line, giving the Mets a 4-3 lead, the Mets had exactly what they wanted; the chance to watch Jeurys Familia finish off the final three outs of the game to preserve a lead. Given what they’ve seen from their closer over the last few months, having him hold a lead seemed like just about the surest thing in baseball.

As Jeff Sullivan noted two weeks ago, the recent version of Familia has been even better than his season numbers suggest. In mid-August, Familia added a split-finger to his repertoire after basically not throwing the pitch at all for the first four months of the year.

Familia didn’t throw a single splitter from May 21st through August 7th, then started working the pitch in pretty regularly starting with his August 10th appearance. His numbers since that date, including the postseason:

Familia Since August 10th

IP	H	HR	BB	K	ERA
34	21	1	8	39	1.06

In the equivalent of about half a season’s worth of work, Familia had been as good as any reliever in baseball, racking up five strikeouts for every walk while also inducing groundballs on 60% of his batted balls. With the splitter, he’d been the Mets version of Wade Davis, the kind of guy you just expect to blow every hitter away as soon as he steps on the mound. And after Salvador Perez grounded weakly to shortstop, a Mets victory felt inevitable.

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The World Series begins tonight, but given that you’re on FanGraphs this morning, you already knew that. In fact, you’ve probably read one (or more) of the numerous series previews that has been published by any one of the many members of the online baseball community, and are well aware of the fact that this series is a match-up of one of the hardest throwing pitching rotations against an offense that makes an historic amount of contact. This is a clash of styles, a team built around athletes going up against a club that is starting three infielders who probably best fit at third base.

There’s no way around it; the outcome of this series is going to be treated as a referendum on something. If the Mets win, it will be seen as validation that velocity trumps all in October, with a dominating rotation being the key to victory in the postseason. If the Royals win, it will be hailed as evidence that old-school baseball is still viable, and there’s wisdom in loading up on athletes who don’t strike out, since speed never slumps and all that jazz. Because of the significant differences in team construction, and the big stage the World Series is played on, the outcome of the next four to seven games will be required to mean something.

As humans, we like to attach meaning to things, and it’s a more interesting story if the end result has some kind of lesson that everyone can learn from, but just because it’s easy to do and makes for a better narrative doesn’t mean we should fall into that trap.

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Coming into game four of the NLCS, Lucas Duda was having the worst postseason of any hitter on any team who qualified for the postseason. During the playoffs, he had come to the plate 27 times and made 22 outs, 13 of them via the strikeout. All three of his hits were singles, and the only run he had knocked in came on a groundout. Things were going so poorly for Duda that, in game three, he attempted a bunt after Yoenis Cespedes led off the sixth inning with a single to right field. When your slugging first baseman is just trying to beat the shift to get himself on when the go-ahead run is already standing on first base, you know he’s not exactly abounding in confidence in his own abilities.

So when Jason Hammel watched Curtis Granderson steal second base during Cespedes’ first inning at-bat tonight, part of him had to be okay with that; it opened up first base, and with two outs and a slumping Duda on deck, pitching around Cespedes become the obvious course of action. It wasn’t officially an intentional walk, but Hammel wasn’t pound the strike zone, and seemed quite content to face Duda with men on rather than letting Cespedes get a real shot at driving Granderson in.

So, after four balls to Cespedes, up stepped Duda. Hammel, struggling with his command, fell behind 2-0, but then challenged him with a fastball right down the middle; Duda fouled it off. Of course he did. Hammel then came back with a curveball on the inner half, and Duda swung through that, pushing the count to 2-2. Hammel was just one strike away from getting out of the inning unscathed, and one strike away against a guy with a 49% strikeout rate in October.

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Last night, John Hirschbeck ejected Troy Tulowitzki from game three of the ALCS after Tulowitzki complained about Hirschbeck’s called strikes against him in his previous at-bat as he took the field for the top of the eighth inning.

It was a strange ejection, as you don’t usually see a guy on the field thrown out when he’s 50 feet away from the umpire who tosses him, and while we obviously don’t know what was said, there didn’t appear to be any kind of emotional reaction from the Blue Jays shortstop that necessitated an ejection. In his post-game comments, Tulowitzki asserted that the ejection was premature:

“I think it was obvious I didn’t agree with the called third strike,” Tulowitzki said. “And there were other pitches that were questionable. I’m walking out to the field, and he’s looking at me. And I told him that wasn’t a strike. And it was a quick trigger. Obviously he was either holding on to something or something was going on. But I didn’t think what I did was going to eject me from the game.

“Obviously, you don’t want to get ejected right there. Unfortunately, I was. But it will be interesting to see what he has to say.”

Clearly, the bar for what constitutes an ejection should be higher in the postseason; the stakes are so high, the last thing the league should want is a game being decided by backups forced into the game because an umpire had a short fuse. So it would be interesting to hear Hirschbeck’s side, and his rationale for why he had to eject Toronto’s shortstop from the game. Unless he provides a compelling alternate version of events, this event won’t help his reputation as an umpire with too quick of a hook.

But, without defending the ejection, it should be noted that Tulowitzki was wrong about the pitch that ultimately got him ejected. In fact, the Blue Jays complaints about the strike zone seem pretty weak when you actually look at the balls and strikes Hirschbeck called last night.

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Back in July, the Royals and Blue Jays added big name stars to load up their rosters for a deep postseason run. Looking at their team, Kansas City decided they needed a #1 starter, and so they gave up a trio of good young pitching prospects to bring Johnny Cueto over from Cincinnati. The Blue Jays also landed an ace of their own in David Price, but they didn’t stop there, also making a big move to bring Troy Tulowitzki north of the border to take over at shortstop and bolster their offense.

To this point, neither player has quite lived up to expectations. Cueto ran a 4.76 ERA after coming over to the American League and his first round playoff performance was a mixed bag. Tulowitzki, meanwhile, didn’t hit for the kind of power he’s known for, and after missing most of the final season due to a shoulder injruy, he’s been overmatched by the high quality pitching teams have thrown at him in the playoffs.

So in the third inning of the third game of the ALCS, the two July acquisitions met in a moment that looked like it might define the 2015 postseason for one or the other. The Blue Jays already led 3-2 and had a couple of runners on base, but they’d seen the Royals come storming back before, and with Marcus Stroman looking hittable, building a big lead early was going to be important. For Cueto, a double play or strikeout that could let him squash another rally would give him a chance to turn his outing around, as he did after a poor early start in the deciding game of the division series.

And given how poor Tulowitzki has looked in the playoffs, the Royals had to like their chances. A big part of Tulo’s excellence has been his ability to avoid strikeouts in an era where everyone swings and misses with regularity. In 32 postseason plate appearances this year, however, Tulo had already struck out 10 times, and on Sunday, he looked like he just didn’t want to swing. Despite his pedigree, Tulo hadn’t exactly struck fear into anyone’s heart with his recent at-bats.

So, in the biggest at-bat of the game, Cueto decided to go after him. He threw a first pitch cut fastball at 88 mph at the top of the strike zone, and Tulo fouled it off. Perhaps emboldened by the shortstops inability to get around on a pitch below 90, Cueto decided to challenge him with a 93 mph heater, going even higher up the ladder, to see if he could get a swinging strike to get the count to 0-2. Only, this happened.

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Last night, the Cubs saw their ace, Jake Arrieta, give up four runs in five innings in their Game Two loss to the Mets. Given how recently he seemed completely impossible to hit, it was bit jarring to see Arrieta struggle, and multiple observers noted during the game that his velocity appeared to be down from what he was throwing during the regular season. Jesse Rogers post-game recap on ESPN was even headlined “Jake Arrieta’s velocity dip spelled doom for Cubs…”

In discussing the issue with various Cubs after the game, Rogers noted that Joe Maddon saw it as well.

“In the game there, if that [radar] gun was correct on the field, he might have been down a mile an hour or two, that’s what I saw,” Cubs skipper Joe Maddon said. “And when that happens, the breaker, the commitment to the breaking ball is not as definite from the hitter’s perspective, because they’re able to see everything better.”

Arrieta himself noted that he knew his stuff wasn’t as good.

“I knew the high-end velocity wasn’t necessarily there tonight,” he said. “Threw quite a few changeups to offset that.”

He’s not kidding. After throwing just one change-up total in his previous two postseason starts, Arrieta fired off 10 change-ups against the Mets last night. The change-up isn’t a pitch he features much, as only about 5% of his total pitches this year were changeups. The fact that 11% of the pitches he threw were change-ups last night does suggest he didn’t trust his normal repertoire as much, and was looking for ways to get outs without his best stuff.

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The postseason always provides some surprising storylines, but this year, nothing has been more unexpected than Daniel Murphy turning into Babe Ruth. The Mets second baseman is mostly known for his extremely high rate of contact — he posted the lowest strikeout rate of any hitter in Major League Baseball this year — but has turned into a super slugger in the playoffs, hitting five home runs in the Mets first seven postseason games. While the team’s pitching staff is their greatest strength, Murphy’s success against the best pitchers in baseball is a big reason why the team is two wins away from reaching the World Series.

But even given his recent power surge, his home run off Jake Arrieta in the first inning of game two remains something to marvel at. Not just because hitting a home run off Jaker Arrieta is impressive, but because the home run was one of the least likely we’ve seen all year.

First, watch the home run for yourself.

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