Throughout the playoffs, many of us baseball analyst type have spilled some pixels with regards to Madison Bumgarner’s fastball, because Madison Bumgarner’s fastball is great. It’s the main thing he used to pitch to the tune of a 2.98 ERA and 3.05 FIP this year, it’s the main thing he used to throw all those scoreless playoff innings you keep hearing about, and it’s the main thing he used last night to get the Giants one step closer to winning their third World Series championship in five years.

There are so many little, minute things about baseball that keep me endlessly fascinated. One of them is when a situation appears to be unbeatable. Think Mariano Rivera cutter. Think Miguel Cabrera hitting 0-2 pitches out of the zone for homers during his 2012 or 2013 seasons. Think Barry Bonds. Baseball is already a game of failure, and I just love when things get ramped up a notch from “I’m probably going to fail,” to, “I have no choice but to fail.”

Another one of those little, minute things that fascinate me is a slow curve. I wrote a whole post about them a couple months back, and now I’m writing another one. But more specifically than just the slow curve: the slow curve after a hard fastball. An isolated slow curve is neat. A slow curve after a series of fastballs starts to push into the “unbeatable” territory from above.
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I had slightly higher hopes for this post. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased with the final result. But when I first cooked this idea up, my plan was to utilize the Baseball Prospectus PITCHf/x leaderboards to pull velocity, horizontal movement, vertical movement, whiff rate and groundball rate to determine the nastiest pitches we’ll see in the World Series. But, there were a few problems.

While more velocity generally makes a pitch nastier, that’s not always true, especially in the case of offspeed pitches. More movement definitely makes a pitch nastier, but movement is hard to compare across a PITCHf/x leaderboard because a lot of it is dependent on arm slot and you get some funky values from guys who throw with funky motions.

So then, I was left with just whiff rate and groundball rate, but I actually kind of like that. Those are two of the best outcomes, and they’re the direct result of some of the things we weren’t able to capture, such as velocity, horizontal movement and vertical movement. The most dominant outcome of a pitch, for a pitcher, is a swing and miss. But not all guys dominate by getting whiffs, and so they don’t all pitch that way. Some guys dominate by getting weak contact, and ground balls yield the weakest contact of the three main batted ball types (grounders, flies and line drives). But the guys who really dominate are the ones who get the best of both worlds: whiffs and grounders.
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It was the year of the shift in major league baseball this season. It was also the year of the strikeout, the year of the position player pitching and, apparently, the year of the Royals – at least so far. But it was definitely the year of the shift.

As you are well aware, shifts were up across baseball this year. We saw them more than we’ve ever seen them in the regular season, and we’re seeing them more than we’ve ever seen them in the playoffs.

When we think of a defensive shift, we think of a second baseman positioned in shallow right grass against a left-handed hitter. Recently, we’ve seen three defenders positioned on the left side of second base become more common against pull-happy righties. But these aren’t the only kinds of defensive shifts. I mean, it’s right there in the name: defensive shift. A shift of the defense, away from standard positioning, to give your team a tactical advantage. Sometimes you see the corners hug the lines. Sometimes you see no-doubles in the outfield. Sometimes you see a third baseman creep in on the bunt. These are all ways we’ve seen teams shift against a batter. For the first time since perhaps Rickey Henderson, the Orioles shifted against a baserunner.
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If you were to ask yourself, “Who are the two most dominant bullpen weapons – that aren’t closers – in the MLB?” the next logical step would be to ask yourself, “Well, how could I find out?”

One way you could find out is to head over to the FanGraphs leaderboards and export a custom leaderboard to Excel with the saves, FIP-WAR and RA9-WAR totals of all the qualified relievers in baseball this season. Then, you could remove all the players with more than 10 saves and sort the ones that are left by a 50/50 split of the two WAR totals.

Guess what? You don’t have to think or do any of that because that’s exactly what I already did. Here’s the top 10:
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On Tuesday evening, Clayton Kershaw gave up a home run to Matt Adams. It was a big home run. Wanna know how I know it was a big home run? Because Matt Adams did this:

The graphic which appears during that replay is annoying, but also helpful, because it shows the real reason why Adams’ homer was a big homer. It was a big homer because it gave the Cardinals a 3-2 lead late in an playoff game with the opportunity to eliminate a team that had the best pitcher in the world on the mound. The Cardinals went on to win, of course, and the Dodgers’ season is now over.

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This is a story all about how an umpire flipped-turned a playoff game upside down.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming the outcome of Saturday night’s marathon game between Washington and San Francisco entirely on fourth-year umpire Vic Carapazza, working in his first MLB postseason. I would never do that. Despite what disgruntled fans might lead you to believe, the blame for a team’s loss can never be placed on the shoulders of one individual. Especially not in a game that lasted 18 innings.

There are countless factors that played into Washington’s loss, and that’s been reflected in the media’s coverage of this game. The offense went scoreless for 15 innings after taking a 1-0 lead in the third. Many have focused on manager Matt Williams‘ decision to remove starting pitcher Jordan Zimmermann after a walk in the ninth. Some have focused on… the male genitalia? But a lot of attention has turned to Carapazza, who had a shaky strike zone and ejected Williams and shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera in the bottom of the 10th for arguing balls and strikes.

Cabrera and Williams need to keep their cool in that situation, but, boy, did Vic Carapazza have himself a rough night.
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So, bullpens. We can all agree they’re pretty important, yeah? In the postseason, the importance of the bullpen is magnified. It’s on national television, everything is magnified. Every pitch seems more important. Every swing seems more important. Every decision made by a manager seems more important. Each of these things inches a team one step closer to a having World Series title, or one step closer to having tee times.

But also, as our own Dave Cameron has pointed out, the importance of the bullpen is magnified in the postseason because, strategically, the role of a bullpen simply becomes more important the more times you work through a batting order. Relievers are often the most effective pitchers on a team and, at this point in the season, it doesn’t make sense to save or protect your arms. You use what you’ve got when you need outs.
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The regular season is over. While that is sad in many ways, it’s also exciting in a few other ways. One of those ways: We have postseason baseball! That’s the best kind of baseball. Another lame, nerdy way: We have complete data sets! Yes, this is something I actually get excited about. Leading up to the conclusion of a regular season, everything is “projected,” “on pace,” or “so far for the season.” Now, everything is final. While, at the All-Star Break, I could only give you the Most Extreme Home Runs of the First Half, now I can replace “first half” with a definitive “2014.”

Before we begin, I’d like to give a shoutout to both ESPN’s Home Run Tracker and, of course, BaseballSavant, for making this glorious research possible.
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Late last night after dropping a second consecutive game to the Kansas City Royals, the Cleveland Indians’ playoff odds slipped to 0.0% for the first time this season. That means two things. For starters, the Cleveland Indians will not be making the playoffs. But also the Kansas City Royals, barring a complete collapse and miraculous run by the Seattle Mariners, will be making the playoffs.

The Royals haven’t made the playoffs since 1985, so that’s a pretty big deal. Congrats, Royals! You guys did it. Enjoy playoff baseball, you’ve earned it. That the Royals even made the playoffs is noteworthy in and of itself. What might be more noteworthy, though, is how this team got there.
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Jose Altuve’s career is notable because he is a 5-foot-5 man from Venezuela making a living as a professional athlete in America. Jose Altuve’s season is notable because of hits. Lots and lots of hits.

Total number of hits isn’t typically something at which we look to evaluate a player’s performance or ability, because not all hits are created equal. 150 hits is not always better than 130 hits. We all know this. But when a player begins to approach or exceed 200 hits – regardless of what those hits are – they’re having a good season. They’re having a season worth celebrating.

Altuve, as of this writing, is at 220 hits. That’s the most ever by a player from Venezuela. That’s the most ever by a player for the Astros. That’s the most by a player in the MLB since Ichiro in 2009. Ichiro racked up 225 that year. Altuve, with six games remaining, is projected to finish with 228. If he does indeed surpass that total of 225, you’ll have to go back to 2007 when Ichiro had 238 hits to find a player with more than Altuve. No matter what happens, the point remains: Jose Altuve has had a remarkable season.

Granted, Altuve is running a .365 batting average on balls in play. We tend to look at BABIP as a measure of how lucky or unlucky a player might have been. Only Starling Marte and Christian Yelich have a higher BABIP than Altuve, so it would be easy to point to Altuve’s BABIP and deem him lucky and due for regression. Which, in part, is true. Altuve’s career BABIP prior to this year was .317 and, really, anyone who has a single-season BABIP over .350 or so experienced some sort of good fortune. But there are things a player can do to help sustain a high BABIP. There are things Altuve has done to help sustain a high BABIP. Let’s see how Jose Altuve got to 200 hits.
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