By now, we imagine you have all heard about BLEPH. A few weeks ago, The Onion published an article that quoted FanGraphs contributor Derek Gardner extensively. In that article, Derek purported to be speaking on behalf of the entire analytics community in advocating for a new statistic called BLEPH. “We don’t care what it measures or how it’s calculated,” he said. “We just need something called B.L.E.P.H., and we need it now.” This is not the full truth, and we feel compelled to set the record straight.
First, we want to make it clear that Derek Gardner no longer works for FanGraphs. He was terminated for cause. Second, we take our stats seriously. We would never manufacture a new statistic just for the sake of creating a fun acronym. Because baseball analysis is already drowning in alphabet soup, we have a strict policy against creating new junk stats and acronyms unless we’re convinced that they’ll meaningfully expand the boundaries of sabermetric knowledge. We call it the Baseball Utility Terminology Threshold for Stopping Lighthearted Acronym Proliferation (BUTTSLAP).
This rigor is, in part, the reason that BLEPH became a national story in the first place. Before we get into the specifics, though, we should explain why we’re making all this public. In recent years, we’ve been inspired to learn that when we’re honest about our vision for the site and the challenges it faces, it can inspire a sense of camaraderie in our readers. All the same, that openness hasn’t normally extended to firings. Read the rest of this entry »
A couple years ago, I wrote an article about Amed Rosario. Rosario was just coming off the best season of his career, a 3.1-WAR 2022 campaign in which he’d posted a 104 wRC+ and manned shortstop for the Guardians. He’d led the majors with nine triples, but I was interested in another category where he’d not only led the league but also left everyone else in his dust. Statcast credited Rosario with 369 competitive runs. That was nearly 70 more than any other player in 2022, and it’s still the highest single-season total ever recorded.
As there’s no reason for you to remember what a competitive run is, let’s start with a refresher. In order for Statcast to do a good job of measuring a player’s average sprint speed, it needs to pick the right plays, when they’ll be running hard and reaching their maximum speed. If you hit a routine groundout to the shortstop and run down the baseline at a businesslike 80%, that’s not really a reflection of your top speed. You’re not running competitively. Statcast only assesses sprint speed on plays where a batter is running to first after a “topped” or “weakly hit” ball, or plays where they run two or more bases (except when they score from second on an extra-base hit). Those are competitive runs, and I’m going to quote from my old article to explain why I think they’re worth writing about:
I don’t know about you, but I think this is incredibly fun. Competitive runs is an incidental statistic. It’s just scaffolding for another stat, but there’s one person who plays baseball like competitive runs is his own personal pinball machine. The other reason I love it is that even though competitive runs exists only to serve a higher master, it’s still a descriptive stat in its own right. A player’s competitive runs total tells you plenty about the way they play the game.
In order to lead the league in competitive runs, you need to put the ball in play a lot, which means no striking out and, to a lesser extent, limited walking. You need to hit the ball weakly and on the ground, but you also need to reach base a lot so that you can make all those first-to-thirds and second-to-homes. Your offensive game needs to revolve around speed and ground-based contact. I’ve left out one other prerequisite, but already, it’s starting to sound like I’m describing one player in particular, right?
If you’ve been following the postseason closely, you probably know why every Guardians player celebrates a single by turning to their dugout and flashing their teammates a thumbs down. “When a Guardians hitter notches a single, he stands on first base, peers toward the dugout and flashes either two thumbs up or two thumbs down, depending on how hard he struck the ball.” That’s how The Athletic’s Zack Meisel described the celebration back in July, in an article documenting the remarkable way that Steven Kwan was turning things around after a dismal start to the season.
The celebration is actually more specific than that, though. The Guardians aren’t just indicating whether they hit the ball hard. They’re indicating whether it met Statcast’s official threshold for a hard-hit ball. Travis Bazzana explained the premise to some sort of FanDuel-affiliated Instagram influencer at the All-Star Game back in July:
“Yeah, so it’s funny. When you hit it hard, if you hit it over 95 mph, you’re supposed to give a thumbs up. And if you hit it a little soft, like dink hit or groundball, it’s a thumbs down. The joke in today’s game is you want to hit the ball hard, you want to hit the ball in the air. And so it’s like, ‘Oh it’s a bad hit if I hit it soft.’ It’s kind of a funny joke.”
If you’re wondering why Bazzana felt the need to bookend the explanation with avowals that the joke was indeed funny, it’s because he delivered it with all the enthusiasm of a recently dissected frog. Clearly, life has taught Bazzana that if he wants someone to pick up on the fact that he’s telling them a joke, he’ll need to say so explicitly both at the beginning and end of that particular instance of hilarity. I would love to see him attempt stand-up comedy. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’re keeping score at home, the ALCS has now gone back and forth twice. On a frigid Saturday night in Cleveland, Tampa Bay’s big bats finally woke up. The Rays beat the Guardians, 7-3, to win Game 4 and even the series at 2-2. The game was originally scheduled for Friday night, but pouring rain destroyed that plan. The low temperature and a light west-southwest breeze kept multiple would-be homers in the ballpark, and the rain-soaked grass slowed down balls in the outfield. However, it didn’t stop the Rays from scoring more than three runs for the first time in the series. The Rays were more aggressive than the Guardians in terms of asking their best arms to get big outs. They countered a Cleveland bullpen game with a surprising amount of starting pitching, and they got big performances from Yandy Díaz, Junior Caminero, and Jonathan Aranda. The series is now guaranteed to end in St. Petersburg.
Both teams had the option to adjust their pitching plans after the rain banged Friday night’s game. The Rays could have thrown their ace, Drew Rasmussen on regular rest, rather than scheduled starter Nick Martinez. However, they knew they still would have needed Martinez later in the series, and it made sense for manager Kevin Cash to stick with his plan. Things were more complicated for Guardians manager Stephen Vogt.
With none of his most trusted starters available on normal rest on Friday, Vogt had no choice but to plan on a bullpen game, even though his bullpen was overworked. The postponement gave his relievers a much-needed game of rest. It also gave him the opportunity to hand the ball back to Game 1 starter Foster Griffin. Getting some length from Griffin would have been huge, because the postponement meant that if the series went seven games, the teams would play four games in a row, once again taxing the bullpen. However, Vogt stuck with opener Shawn Armstrong, and was cagey with reporters before the game when asked whether Griffin would pitch. It seemed like his plan for cobbling together nine innings was very contingent on how the game unfolded. Read the rest of this entry »
Whether or not you tuned in for Game 3 of the NLCS between the Brewers and the Dodgers, you surely know by now that the highlight of the game belonged to Jake Bauers. After working a back-breaking 12-pitch walk that hastened Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s early departure from Game 2, Bauers put the Brewers ahead with a homer in the seventh inning on the 11th pitch he saw from Blake Snell. Ben Clemens wrote about it in his game story. Michael Baumann wrote about it in his article about the perils of leaving a starter (particularly this starter) in too long. Over at Brewer Fanatic, Matthew Trueblood wrote about both it and the also-impressive walk that Andrew Vaughn worked immediately beforehand. This is the kind of of moment that deserves to be enjoyed from as many angles as possible. As such, what follows is a pitch-by-pitch breakdown of the at-bat, diving into the intention and execution behind each pitch.
Pitch 1: Slider, Called Strike, 0-1
That may look like a get-me-over slider, and that Snell assumed Bauers would be taking on the first pitch because he’d just walked the previous batter, but it’s not. In his first plate appearance, Snell had started Bauers with a four-seamer and Bauers had fouled it off. In his second, he’d thrown a first-pitch slider just below the zone, and Bauers had whiffed. He’d swung at the first pitch in both his previous times up, and as you can see, he wasn’t up there looking to take. He fired his hips and had to check his swing. In fact, although Bauers had one of the lower swing rates in the league this season, his 33% swing rate on the first pitch was actually slightly above the league average.
Look at Will Smith’s glove as Snell delivers the ball. He’s got it all the way down on the ground. The plan was to repeat the first pitch from the second plate appearance, getting Bauers to chase another low slider for a whiff or maybe even hit a double-play ball. Instead, Snell missed — badly. The ball ended up right over the heart of the plate. This is a meatball, and Bauers failed to make Snell pay for it because he was focused on getting a fastball. “I was looking for a fastball, and I didn’t want to miss it,” he said after the game. “I said I’ll adjust to anything else, but get a heater, don’t miss it.” That’s certainly a reasonable approach, seeing as Snell throws his fastball half the time, and he’d already started Bauers with one earlier in the game. But it cost Bauers a chance at unloading on a good pitch and put him behind in the count.
Pitch 2: Changeup, Ball, 1-1
You can understand why Snell threw a changeup here. Bauers had tipped his hand with that check swing. He was way in front of that slider because he was looking fastball. You don’t want to give him a fastball, and you don’t want to give him two sliders in a row (especially because the last one ended up in murder-me territory). You want to throw something that starts out looking like a fastball, which eliminates the curveball. The changeup is all that’s left, but let’s be clear about how unusual that is. Snell throws his changeup to lefties just 3% of the time, and never in this situation. Over the past 10 seasons, he’d thrown just one 0-1 changeup to a lefty in the regular season. One. In 10 years. But he had also thrown one just 10 days earlier, to Drake Baldwin in Game 2 of the NLDS. The pressure of the playoffs can change even the most deeply ingrained tendencies.
Once again, Snell missed badly. The pitch was supposed to start out a strike and then drop below the zone, but it started too low and ended up bouncing. It never looked like a strike, and Bauers isn’t the kind of guy to chase on 0-1. This year, 206 batters saw at least 200 0-1 pitches. Among them, Bauers’ 35% swing rate ranked 200th.
Pitch 3: Fastball, Ball, 2-1
If we were talking about any other pitcher, you’d say this was supposed to be a get-me-over fastball, an attempt to get back on track after failing to execute two pitches in a row. But Blake Snell is not the kind of pitcher who lives up and chucks a pitch down the middle. Smith’s target was at the top of the zone. Snell had been racking up chases up above the zone for either whiffs or fouls all night, and he wanted another one. It sure looks like Snell yanked this one to his glove side because he was trying to put some mustard on it to make sure he blew it by Bauers. Instead, it was another bad miss and another easy take. This was a remarkable at-bat from Bauers, and it started out with him in an 0-1 hole against one of the best pitchers in the game, but it also started with Snell missing badly on the first three pitches.
Pitch 4: Changeup, Foul, 2-2
Now this is a gutsy pitch. You just walked someone. You’re behind 2-1 because you failed to execute your last three pitches. Why not aim another left-on-left changeup right at the very center of home plate, and just hope that it finishes with enough arm-side run to make it to the edge? If it doesn’t break as much as usual, or if you miss to your glove side, then it’ll just kind of sit there out over the plate begging to be pounded.
Incidentally, we should probably mention Statcast’s run values per 100 pitches. Did you know that when he saw left-on-left offspeed pitches this season, Bauers’ run value was 1.5, and the only lefties with a higher mark (minimum 25 pitches) were Jac Caglianone, Juan Soto, Yordan Alvarez, Shohei Ohtani, Gunnar Henderson, Pete Crow-Armstrong, and James Wood? Sort of sounds like a list of the very best left-handed hitters on the planet, right?
Luckily for Snell, this pitch was perfect. It clipped the very edge of the zone, and Bauers, still looking fastball, was way out ahead of it. He just managed to hold back long enough to nick it. Smith extended the catcher’s mitt toward his pitcher to congratulate him on a perfect pitch. That made it 2-2, and under normal circumstances, that would be a big deal. The league as a whole had a wRC+ of 70 from 2-2 onward this season. Had Snell missed the zone yet again, he’d be 3-1, when the league wRC+ was 214.
Bauers himself ran a wRC+ of 87 after reaching a 2-2 count. Oddly, though, he was up at 127 after getting to 2-2 against lefties, because he walked 24% of the time, the second-highest rate in baseball. Considering Snell’s above-average walk rate and Bauers’ unusual ability to draw a walk in this exact situation, a walk seemed very likely.
Pitch 5: Slider, Foul, 2-2 (again)
This was the slider Snell meant to throw on the first pitch. It was maybe an inch or two higher than he would’ve liked – if he got it down a little bit more, maybe Bauers would’ve missed it entirely rather than fouling it off – but Bauers was again way out in front and on top of it. Look at the way the ball comes off the bat, straight down and hooked so hard that bounces in the left-handed hitter’s batter’s box. That’s not something you see every day. Snell had thrown three pitches in the strike zone, and Bauers was way out in front on all three of them.
Pitch 6: Curveball, Foul, 2-2 (again again)
Oh right, Snell has a curveball. It was his second-best pitch this season, but this was just the second one he’d thrown Bauers all game, because Bauers was one of the best left-on-left curveball hitters in baseball this season. He ran a .458 wOBA against them and had just an 11% whiff rate. Most of the time, he took them for balls. But what else was Snell going to do? The curve is his best non-fastball pitch. He couldn’t seem to get a whiff on the slider, and he’d already risked two changeups to a guy who crushes them. The curveball was the only thing left that could surprise Bauers, and surprise him it did. He took a late, defensive hack, and met the pitch just 20 inches in front of his center of mass. He threw his mechanics out of whack in order to do so, and ended up with another odd foul, chopping it straight down only to bounce back up into his torso as he nearly fell backwards out of the box.
Here, we should stop and note something. This was Bauers’ third foul of the at-bat, and he would go on to foul off three more. In one sense, it shouldn’t be surprising that he has worked some impressive long at-bats in this series. He averaged just under 4.2 pitchers per plate appearances in 2026. Of the 205 players with at least 400 plate appearances, that ranked 24th, putting him in the 88th percentile. However, he didn’t get all the way up there because he’s a wizard at extending plate appearances. To do that, you need to be great at fouling off two-strike pitches and Bauers is actually well below average in that respect. He fouled off 20% of the two-strike pitches he swung at this year, which put him in just the 13th percentile. His plate appearances are long simply because he’s very passive. His 41% swing rate landed in just the sixth percentile. That’s all it takes, people. If you want to be one of the best hitters in baseball at working a count, just don’t swing much. Sometimes it’s a very simple game.
Pitch 7: Fastball, Ball, 3-2
Snell had been busting Bauers inside with fastballs all night. Five of the eight pitches he saw in his first two plate appearances were four-seamers, and he’d flied out and struck out. Bauers was ahead on soft stuff, but not so far ahead that he was whiffing entirely. Perhaps that meant that he was somewhere in between, and after seeing soft stuff for three straight pitches and five of the last six, it would be possible to blow one by him.
But Snell again missed his spot, this time to the arm side. Smith’s target was up again, but Snell was off the plate inside. It wasn’t a comfortable take for Bauers, who was finally seeing the pitch he’d been looking for, but it wasn’t easy either.
Pitch 8: Fastball, Foul, 3-2
There it is. That’s the elevated fastball Snell had been trying to throw. Nice and tempting, impossible to lay off. And at 98.2 mph, it was harder than the first two and with more induced rise than Snell’s average four-seamer. But Bauers wasn’t in between after all. With pinch-runner Christian Yelich breaking for second in the background, he still managed to get a piece of it. It was very high, and very definitely ball four. That’s a pitch designed to rack up whiffs. It was located 3.82 feet off the ground. This year, pitches that came in between 98 and 99 mph and between 3.8 and 4.0 feet had a 53% whiff rate. Maybe if he hadn’t just seen a fastball, Bauers would have been just that little bit farther behind, and Snell would’ve gotten the strikeout.
Perhaps we should acknowledge, though, just how good Bauers was against left-on-left four-seamers this season. He put up a .521 wOBA against them, second only to Ben Rice. His four home runs against them were tied for second. Snell was truly going strength against strength here.
Pitch 9: Changeup, Foul, 3-2 (again)
After throwing two fastballs in a row, and with Bauers clearly hunting velocity, Snell surely thought he’d set Bauers up so that he’d be out ahead of something soft. This changeup was much closer to where he wanted it, just an inch or so from the bottom of the zone. This time, though, Bauers didn’t look like he had to hold himself back for dear life. He was still very much ahead of the pitch, but by significantly less. You can tell because of the fact that he took a full, healthy hack, and Statcast backs it up; he made contact four inches deeper than he had on the first changeup.
Snell is no stranger to deep counts, but this is where things got scary. Bauers had been ahead of all the soft stuff he’d thrown at him. He took a defensive hack at that 2-2 curveball to stay alive. But then he got a piece of that absurdly high fastball, and on the very next pitch, a changeup down (though not quite as down as Snell would’ve liked it), he looked more comfortable. Look at the way he finishes his swing with a hop. This is what people mean when they say someone looks hitterish. That’s concerning.
Pitch 10: Slider, Foul, 3-2 (again again)
And we’re now escalating from concern to alarm. For Snell, it probably seemed like there was no right pitch to throw at this point. Even when he chased a fastball at his eyes, Bauers (like Vaughn before him) got a piece and stayed alive. He looked all too comfortable against the changeup, and how many left-on-left changeups can you really throw in one plate appearance? Until the playoffs, Snell had only once thrown more than one left-on-left changeup in a single game. The curveball might have made sense, but it also offered the least difference from the previous pitch in terms of velocity and movement profile. Snell had only followed a changeup with a curveball once all game, and it was to Vaughn in the previous plate appearance. The slider was the pitch Bauers had seen least recently, and sometimes it might just be that simple.
Regardless of the reasoning behind it, the pitch was nearly catastrophic. It was meant for the outside corner, and instead it ended up belt high out over the plate. Here’s a heat map that shows Bauers’ isolated power when he put the ball in play this season.
All the red and pink are up and out over the plate, right where this pitch was located. And it wasn’t just about the location. The location was a byproduct of the fact that this pitch was a hanger. Snell’s average slider this year had 7.2 inches of induced rise and 3.7 inches of glove-side break. This pitch had 9.4 inches of rise and 0.5 inches of horizontal break. It didn’t drop enough, and it basically didn’t slide at all. Snell hanged it and Bauers banged 305 feet — just foul. Whichever person at Dodger Stadium was caught on mic screaming for their life as this ball zoomed toward the foul pole was exactly right.
Pitch 11: Fastball, Home Run
Clearly, Snell wasn’t going back to the slider. At a certain point, the game theory starts to get too complicated to track. Sometimes you need to just throw your best pitch. Man cannot live on breakers alone. Snell threw Bauers his best pitch, and once again he couldn’t locate it. It ended up in almost exactly the same spot as the first pitch of the at-bat, and you should take that very literally. Pythagoras tells us that the ball crossed the plate a mere 0.87 inches closer to the very center of the zone than that first meatball. Bauers, who had been fighting to stay ready for the fastball throughout the entire at-bat, finally got one to hit. This was the ninth fastball Snell had thrown Bauers on the night. You don’t need to squint to see what’s different about it.
Aside from that one overthrown four-seamer earlier in the at-bat, every single one of those fastballs had been buried inside. Snell threw his second meatball of the at-bat, and Bauers was ready to dig in.
This was truly an impressive at-bat. Although Snell, at the end of a brilliant performance, failed to execute several of his pitches, most of his misses were either well out of the zone or within an inch or two of the edge. He threw Bauers every pitch he had, even the changeup. He changed speeds and eye levels. Across 11 pitches, he only threw the same pitch in a row once, and he only repeated the same two-pitch sequence twice. Bauers looked more and more comfortable as the at-bat went on, and when Snell missed over the fat part of the plate, he crushed the ball, twice. He went from taking defensive hacks to stay alive to punishing mistakes. It would be hard to ask for much more on an October evening.
When you manage a big league ballclub, life is unfair. You’re always one bad season, maybe just one really bad month, from getting fired. Even when you’re doing a good job, a vocal contingent of your fellow citizens is likely still agitating for your ouster, mostly because they just kind of like the way they sound when they’re agitating for someone to lose their livelihood. Writers you’ve known for years will one day fire up their laptops and pen a thousand words about why you no longer have what it takes. And on top of all that unrelenting judgment, whenever you’re out there doing your job during the game, a camera is trained directly on your face. Any time you react to what you see, you’re likely to wind up on television, often in slow motion, slamming your hand in frustration or launching an F-bomb.
For that reason, managers tend to at least try to maintain a stoic front. Some are better than others, but I’ve always enjoyed watching Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy in particular. He seems to feel the game more than most managers. He’s constantly checking his notes, or scribbling more notes, or retreating a few steps into the tunnel that feeds into the dugout to think things through. Also, he tends to snack a lot. But on Monday night, as the Brewers took care of business against the Dodgers in Game 2 of the NLCS, I noticed that one emotion seemed to show as clear as day on Murphy’s face every time the camera found him. All night, it seemed to me, no matter how well things were going on the field, Murphy looked pissed off. Read the rest of this entry »
It wasn’t how manager Stephen Vogt drew it up, but after stealing Game 1 in St. Petersburg, the Guardians have won four in row and they now find themselves in the driver’s seat of the ALCS. On paper — on pretty much any surface you can think of — the Rays held the advantage coming into the series. They were the better team all season long. They dominated the Yankees in the ALDS, while the Guardians nearly fell to the White Sox. They were rested, while the Guardians had completely worn down their pitching. They had fearsome bats, and they had their rotation lined up the way they liked it.
Drew Rasmussen was coming off one of the most dominant playoff starts we’ve ever seen, throwing eight scoreless innings against the Yankees in Game 1 of the ALDS while allowing just one hit and striking out 10. What’s more, the Rays staked him to an early lead against Cleveland. But these Guardians just don’t seem to quit. After coming back from two games down in the ALDS, the Guardians came back from two runs down to beat the Rays on Monday. Then they poured it on, scoring in each of the last four innings to earn a 7-3 victory.
From the first pitch of the game, Rasmussen looked much less sharp than he had against the Yankees. His velocity was down compared to his regular season average. In each of the first two innings, he allowed two singles and notched just one whiff. Thanks to some help from his defense – catcher Nick Fortes threw out a stealing José Ramírez in the first and Victor Mesa Jr.’s rocket arm held Nathaniel Lowe to a single on a tailor-made double in the second – he escaped those two frames without surrendering a run. He allowed another single apiece in the third and fourth, but kept the Guardians off the board. His velocity ticked back up, but he didn’t throw a clean inning until the fifth. It would be his only one. Read the rest of this entry »
Pope Leo XIV may not have quite as much pull with The Man Upstairs as Chicago fans had hoped. After obliterating the Astros in the Wild Card Series and jumping out to a 2-0 lead in the ALDS, the White Sox dropped three in a row to end their miracle 2026 season. On the back of a brilliant performance from starter Gavin Williams, the Guardians defeated the White Sox, 2-0, in Game 5. They’ll now head to St. Petersburg to face the Rays on Monday night, making their second ALCS appearance in three years.
So many things about this series were odd. Both managers pulled every lever they could get their hands on. The first four games featured 49 pitchers and just 54 hits. Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt continued the trend in Game 5. He shook up his lineup, sitting catcher Austin Hedges in favor of Patrick Bailey, who homered in Game 4. Angel Martínez, who went 0-for-15 in the first four games of the series, got benched in favor of Petey Halpin, who ran a 66 wRC+ in the regular season. But after all the mixing and matching and overthinking, the rubber match was a genuine, old-fashioned pitcher’s duel. If you’re a fan of gaudy strikeout totals and teardrop curveballs pouring into the strike zone, this was the game for you.
The game also looked like it might be impacted by weather. Rain started falling before first pitch, with the intensity picking up in the bottom of the second. By the third, the television broadcast was cutting to Guardians fans wearing ponchos and the cleat cleaner was getting significant air time. The grounds crew replaced the cleat cleaner after the third, and just like that, the rain calmed down. By the fifth, it had all but stopped. Read the rest of this entry »
Come on in. Thanks for coming all the way up on short notice, and, uh, sorry about the mess. I really should’ve saved Mr. Splash for later in the day. I’d never seen him fire that water gun in anger before, but he is remarkably accurate. Did you know he was a Green Beret? Anyway, have a seat. I have some difficult news for you.
Oh jeez, I didn’t think about the tail feathers. You can stand, whatever. You can stand.
So as you know, we have been forced to make some prettysubstantialcuts. And believe me, it’s the last thing we want to do. We consider everyone who works here family. But there comes a time within any family when you have to identify your least productive family members, cut them out of your life forever, and leave them without any way to support themselves, at which point they’re not family anymore. They’re just strangers who know things about you that you’d rather not become public. Unfortunately, that includes you. Are – are you following any of this?
We’re going to have to let you go.
I realize that you’ve been with us for – wow – coming up on 50 years now, and I want to assure you that we are grateful for everything you have given to the Baltimore Orioles organization. You’ve brought happiness and joy to so many people. Unfortunately, it has been determined that keeping you on staff would be a suboptimal allocation of resources, because according to a report from this latest round of consultants – you know, I think you deserve to know the truth, so let me get my glasses so I can quote this accurately – “Happiness and joy don’t make the cash register go ka-ching.” So really, our hands are tied. Read the rest of this entry »
After cruising through the NLDS with a gentleman’s sweep, the defending-champion Los Angeles Dodgers are headed to the National League Championship Series for the third year in a row. A day after Yoshinobu Yamamoto silenced Atlanta’s bats in Game 3, the Braves and Dodgers ran out the finest Tylers they had to offer, and both pitchers excelled. The difference largely came down to the bullpens. With a bevy of rested options to choose from, Dave Roberts went and got his pitchers at the first sign of trouble. In contrast, Walt Weiss, who ran a bullpen game in Game 2 and needed four innings from his ‘pen in Game 3, stretched his pitchers a bit further than they could manage, and although it took seven innings, he finally paid for it. The Dodgers took the game 4-1 and the series 3-1. They now await the winner of the Brewers/Padres series in the NLCS, but you have to imagine they’re not too worried either way.
If you were the Braves, you might have circled Tyler Glasnow’s start on the postseason calendar. This Dodgers rotation has about as many soft spots as the four horseman of the apocalypse, but Glasnow missed much of the season with back spasms, hadn’t pitched in 13 games, and had underperformed his peripherals in a major way. Since he returned from the IL, Glasow had run an excellent 2.14 FIP because he was striking out nearly 13 batters per nine, but his ERA was an unsightly 4.46. When your other options are Yamamoto, Tarik Skubal, and Blake Snell, you’ll take it.
The Braves manufactured the first run of the game. More specifically, leadoff man Michael Harris II manufactured it almost single-handedly. Glasnow started Harris with a 96-mph fastball right at the top of the zone, and Harris was all over it, shooting a low liner through the right side of the infield at 107 mph. With basestealing guru Antoan Richardson in the first base coaching box, Harris got out to a huge vault lead and easily stole second base two pitches later. He could have had third as well, but he didn’t see Will Smith’s throw continue into center field. Harris made it there eventually, advancing on a Matt Olson groundout. Three pitches later, Glasnow spiked a 1-1 curveball to Ozzie Albies, and Harris didn’t hesitate for a second. He broke as soon as he read the pitch’s downward angle. It bounced well in front of the plate, and Smith did well to block the high bounce, but he couldn’t keep it close. Harris scored easily. With their season on the line, the Braves had a 1-0 lead. Read the rest of this entry »
