After watching the Cardinals and Braves compete for four games, it seems fitting that the series would be tied up 2-2. In three of the four games, the losing team had a win expectancy of at least 80% while in the fourth game, Cardinals ace Jack Flaherty allowed just a single run in the first inning before a homer in the seventh gave the Braves a 3-0 lead that proved too much for a mostly struggling Cardinals offense. In a series this close, the team that blows the lead will inevitably lament the moments they let the lead get away, but in Game 4, the Braves lost not because of a lead they relinquished, but because of a lead they failed to solidify. The Braves refused to put the Cardinals away, or alternatively, the Cardinals relievers came up big when they needed to, and now the teams head to Game 5 for a shot at the National League Championship Series.

Before we get to those blown chances, we should briefly discuss how the Braves got the lead in the first place. The Cardinals were limited to one run off Dallas Keuchel in the first game of the series as Keuchel went off-brand, throwing just 24 two-seam fastballs in his outing. Though Keuchel walked three and struck out none in four and two-thirds innings, he did enough to keep the Cardinals off balance and induced 10 groundball outs, plus two more outs on a double play, and the other two outs on liners. In the first inning of Game 4, Keuchel went back to relying heavily on the two-seamer, but the Cardinals laid off the pitch, even as a strike. Paul Goldschmidt took two sliders for balls, then a two-seamer for a 3-0 count. After a 3-0 sinker for a strike, he hit a changeup out of the park. Up next, Marcell Ozuna took a first-pitch sinker for a ball and then crushed an inside cutter to put the Cardinals ahead 2-0.

Atlanta got a run back in the third before Ozuna hit another homer in the fourth off a slider to give the Cardinals a 3-1 lead. Read the rest of this entry »

Before or during Jack Flaherty’s start today, viewers are likely to hear about his 0.91 second half ERA. It is the third-lowest second-half ERA since 1920. The second-lowest second half ERA belongs to Greg Maddux, who accomplished the feat in the strike-shortened 1994 season and pitched barely more than 50 second-half innings. The first belongs to Jake Arrieta, whose 0.79 ERA in the second half in 2015 propelled him to the Cy Young award. Of course, ERA alone doesn’t tell the whole story. For one thing, as with Maddux, it doesn’t show how many innings are being thrown. For another, different eras produce vastly different run-scoring environments. Pitching with a juiced ball or juiced players can make life more difficult for pitchers, rendering a lower ERA even more impressive. To that end, we can put Flaherty’s second half in perspective.

The easiest way to do so here at FanGraphs is to use RA9-WAR, which takes runs allowed, innings, and the run environment into account. Flaherty’s second-half RA9-WAR was 6.4, way out in front of Jacob deGrom’s second-place 4.8 mark. If you cut Flaherty’s RA9-WAR in half, he would still rank ninth in baseball since the All-Star Break. We have second-half splits going back to 1974; here’s where Flaherty ranks among the couple-thousand qualified second-half pitchers:

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Not every player is fortunate enough to be on a team that wins a World Series. In the last few years, Adrián Beltré and Joe Mauer retired after distinguished careers without a championship, and it shouldn’t lessen what they accomplished. On the other side of the coin, Carlos Beltrán closed out his career with a championship in Houston, the icing on the cake and the cherry on top of a career that was already great. As we head into this year’s Division Series, there are a handful of players who have had very good careers without winning a title. Choosing a playoff team to root for can be difficult if your preferred squad isn’t participating; cheering for a player who deserves to be on a championship team seems as good a reason as any
to pick sides this October.

We’ll start with the position players. Here are the highest WAR totals for position players without a championship in the postseason:

There aren’t any sure-fire Hall of Famers in this group, and there probably isn’t even a Carlos Beltrán type. Russell Martin will certainly merit some Hall of Fame consideration and his WAR total is well out in front of every other player. Giancarlo Stanton ranks third on this list and he still hasn’t played his age-30 season. Nelson Cruz has been incredibly close to a title before, while a group of Nationals have been on good teams, but never won. Josh Donaldson won an MVP in 2015; this will be his seventh playoff appearance with four different teams in the last eight years, but he has yet to play in the World Series. If we were to rearrange this list by plate appearances and include a few more players with under 20 WAR, it would look like this:

If you’re wondering how Nick Markakis has accumulated 2355 career hits, part of it is playing a whole lot of games. He’s made the playoffs with the Orioles and Braves, but never been that close to a title. Edwin Encarnación has played on winning teams in Toronto and Cleveland, but this is probably his best shot at a title. Ryan Zimmerman hasn’t contributed much this season, but got a crucial hit in Tuesday’s eighth inning rally and has been an important part of the Nationals franchise since he was drafted in the first round back in 2005.

While there might not be a ton of big names on the position player side, there are a few likely future Hall of Famers on the pitching side still chasing a ring:

Unlike the position player list, almost everyone above is still a positive contributor this season. The only players below two wins are Kenley Jansen and Rich Hill. We’ve got two, and possibly three, Hall of Famers topping the list above. Kershaw and the Dodgers’ troubles in the postseason are well known, as the club has come so close the last few years. His former teammate Zack Greinke is looking for his title with Houston, as is Gerrit Cole. Max Scherzer has multiple Cy Young awards but no title. The entire Nationals playoff rotation is in the top seven, here. Two years ago, Justin Verlander ranked highly on this list before he helped the Astros and himself win a title for the first time. Jansen is the only reliever on this list, but if we look at all players with at least 400 games or 1,000 innings, we see a few more:

Brett Cecil could technically be on this list, but he hasn’t played this season. Fernando Rodney is still going, while a handful of mid-30s relievers are all trying to achieve postseason success. Adam Ottavino was on the Cardinals in 2010 and was in the organization in 2011, but spent the entire season in the minors.

There’s no one right way to watch baseball or cheer for particular players or teams, but if seeing team accomplishments line up with great careers matters to you, you might consider pulling for the Dodgers, Nationals, and Astros. They all feature great pitchers with long careers still looking for a ring.

After winning their respective divisions, the Atlanta Braves will face off against the St. Louis Cardinals starting on Thursday. This series looks evenly matched, with our Depth Charts projections (53%) and ZiPS (55%) both seeing the Braves as slight favorites. Before we get to the meat of the preview, let’s lay out the schedule. All games will be televised by TBS.

When and Where:

• Game 1: Thursday, October 3, 5:02 PM EST in Atlanta
• Game 2: Friday, October 4, 4:37 PM EST in Atlanta
• Game 3: Sunday, October 6, time TBD in St. Louis
• Game 4 (if necessary): Monday, October 7, time TBD in St. Louis
• Game 5 (if necessary): Wednesday, October 9, time TBD in Atlanta

What We’ll Be Watching For:

Injured Players
Ender Inciarte will remain out for this series, at least, after a hamstring injury struck him down in mid-August. Matt Joyce and Adam Duvall have platooned some with Inciarte out, though the Cardinals have no lefty starters, so the 35-year-old Joyce could play a big role in the series. He hasn’t shown a ton of power the last few years, but he’s walked 15% of the time against righties since the beginning of 2016 with a decently low 21% strikeout rate. Inciarte’s replacement in center actually meant an upgrade as Ronald Acuña Jr. took over, but the Braves’ star outfielder has injury concerns of his own; an apparent hip injury was classified as a groin strain and it is unclear how that injury might affect his superb baserunning or his defense in center field.

The health worries don’t end there for the Braves. Freddie Freeman has a bone spur in his right elbow, which he is still favoring, and though he played over the weekend, he struck out four times in 11 plate appearances and didn’t come up with an extra base hit. It was only the third three-game stretch all season during which Freeman struck out that often and didn’t get an extra base hit. All three stretches have come in the last six weeks. Every player is going to have sporadic, three-game down stretches, but given what we know about Freeman’s elbow, look for a lot of inside pitches to test whether the injury will continue to hobble the Braves’ first basemen. Josh Donaldson sat out the last game of the season after being hit on the hip with a pitch, but that injury appears less severe. Donaldson, Acuña, and Freeman have accounted for half of the 27.9 WAR accumulated by Braves’ position players this season (Ozzie Albies is the only other position player with more than 2.1 WAR); Atlanta would be a completely different team without that trio at full strength. Read the rest of this entry »

Anthony Rendon and Ketel Marte have both had very good seasons, but all year long they’ve been a few beats behind Christian Yelich and Cody Bellinger. With only a few days left in the regular season, Marte has already been shut down and Rendon would need a historic week to match the two favorites. While Yelich’s season is unfortunately over, his work already done clearly puts him, along with Bellinger, in the top two for the MVP. With the numbers on offense creating a substantial edge for Yelich, who deserves MVP comes down to a question nobody really likes answering: How much better is Cody Bellinger on defense than Christian Yelich?

It’s possible some voters will ding Yelich for his injuries and playing time lost, though it didn’t stop Mookie Betts and Mike Trout from finishing 1-2 in the AL MVP last year, or keep Josh Hamilton from winning in 2010 when he missed almost all of September. Historically, there haven’t been very many MVPs with around 130 games and 600 PAs, though that likely has less to do with voters being unwilling to vote for players who have missed some of the season and more to do with it just being incredibly difficult to be the best player in the league when other candidates have an extra three weeks to compile numbers.

Since 1931, there have only been 22 position player seasons of at least 7.5 WAR and fewer than 600 plate appearances. Of those 22 seasons, only 10 topped the league in WAR. Six of those 10 players won the MVP that season. In 2009, the under-appreciated Ben Zobrist topped the league in WAR, but Joe Mauer, behind by 0.3 WAR, won the trophy. In 1989, Lonnie Smith played in 134 games and tied Will Clark for the league lead in WAR at 8.1, but it was Clark’s teammate Kevin Mitchell and his 49 homers that took home the MVP. In 1985, Pedro Guerrero topped the NL in WAR at 7.8, but Willie McGee’s 7.1 WAR won him the award thanks in no small part to a .353 batting average. Finally, way back in 1954, Ted Williams topped the AL in WAR, but the Yankees’ Yogi Berra won the vote. Yelich’s situation isn’t unprecedented, but it is fairly rare; players in his position have won MVP around half the time. Read the rest of this entry »

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With a four-game sweep that took Chicago’s playoff odds from likely to long-shot, the Cardinals put the Cubs’ season in the trash like an uneaten commemorative cake. Due to the Cubs’ recent run of success, and the painful way the club lost four, one-run games at home (while holding the lead or being tied in the ninth inning in three of those games), their fall is the most-attention grabbing aspect of the series (and we’ll get to that). But the sweep was massive for the Cardinals in its own right. Look at the Cardinals’ odds to win the division in the second half:

While the Cardinals still have some work to do, the division title is very likely theirs after failing to make the playoffs the last three seasons. At the beginning of the series, the team had some ground to cover, with a 58% chance at the division. Losing the first game of the series likely would have taken those odds below 50%. Despite the Brewers winning four straight, the Cardinals were able to push their chances upward due to their three-game lead over Milwaukee with just six games to go, while also eliminating their rival from division contention. The series might be viewed as microcosm of the season for St. Louis. The Cardinals offense was typically inconsistent, scoring nine runs in one game, and just nine total runs in the other three. Jack Flaherty pitched fantastically, continuing his run as the NL’s best pitcher in the second half. The bullpen was solid despite multiple short starts from the rotation, and the defense played its part, turning seven double plays.

A year ago, the Cardinals played the role of the Cubs. After going 39-23 in the second half after firing Mike Matheny just before the All-Star Break, the Cardinals got their playoff odds up to 79.5% with series against the Brewers and Cubs to close the season. But the Brewers swept the Cardinals in St. Louis, dropping the team’s playoff odds down to 19.6%. When they dropped the opener to the Cubs, those odds fell under 1% and their season was essentially over in four games. Speaking of a season essentially ending after four tough games:

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We probably don’t need to re-litigate the trade that sent Gerrit Cole from the Pirates to the Astros two years ahead of free agency. This post isn’t about what the Astros did to transform Cole or what the Pirates failed to do. This post is, to a certain extent, about who Gerrit Cole was, and who he is now, but it is less about how he’s changed and more about how he’s the same.

Every pitcher makes adjustments to try and get better and be more effective at getting hitters out. Some work better than others. Pitchers make these changes while staying in the same organization or while jumping to a different team. Injuries can sometimes derail development, as can trying strategies that just don’t work out. We know Cole wasn’t great with the Pirates in 2016 and 2017, and he’s been great with the Astros in 2018 and 2019. Hopefully this post serves as a reminder of how great Cole was in 2015 and how what he’s doing now is meeting incredibly lofty expectations his performance set for himself five seasons ago.

In 2015, Cole put up a 2.66 FIP, a 2.60 ERA, and 5.1 WAR, ranked 10th among all pitchers and first among pitchers 25 years old and younger, beating out Madison Bumgarner, Sonny Gray, Shelby Miller, and Carlos Martinez. Cole was just 24 years old at the time. To find some age-based comparisons, I looked at 24-year-old starters since 1990 within half a win of Cole. Read the rest of this entry »

Over in the American League, there’s a pretty clear top tier of Cy Young contenders in Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole, followed by a solid group of candidates likely to garner down-ballot support. In the National League, there looks to be a top tier of Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom followed by a cascading set of secondary candidates, but that first look doesn’t quite tell the entire story.

To provide some idea of the statistical disparities voters must contend with when making their decision, I looked at our FIP-based WAR as well as the RA9-WAR also available here at FanGraphs, Baseball-Reference’s WAR, and Baseball Prospectus’ WARP. I included for consideration any player in the top five of any of those lists. That search returned nine pitchers for the potential five slots on a Cy Young ballot. Those players are listed below, with a mix of traditional and advanced statistics:

We have Scherzer and deGrom in first and second by about a win over the next-best candidate, with deGrom pitching tonight. After those two, we have a lot of innings from Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin, and fewer innings, but better peripherals, from Walker Buehler. After those three, we have four candidates who haven’t thrown a ton of innings, but all have much lower ERA’s than FIPs. As for how these candidates came to be considered, here are their WAR totals:

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