By blowing out the Padres to sweep the Division Series and advance to the National League Championship Series against the Braves, the Dodgers were able to skirt the matter, but by now it’s apparent that for as strong as they have looked thus far in the postseason, they have a closer problem. Manager Dave Roberts has spent the past four weeks limiting Kenley Jansen’s exposure, even in save situations, and in Game 2 of the series, had to go so far as to pull the 33-year-old three-time All-Star because things were getting out of hand; in the end, the Dodgers barely escaped that game with a 6-5 victory. Because he had pitched two days in a row, Jansen was deemed unavailable for Game 3, but even with a vote of confidence, the question of how much longer he’ll be the automatic choice to shut the door will linger.

In the grand scheme, Jansen is an incredible success story, a Curaçao-born converted catcher who spent his first eight major league seasons utterly dominating hitters; for the 2010-17 span, he struck out 40.1%, walked 6.8%, and posted a 2.08 ERA and 1.84 FIP, numbers that put him on the same tier as Aroldis Chapman, Craig Kimbrel and nobody else as far as sustained success for the period. His recent seasons have been rocky, however. In 2018, he posted career worsts in ERA and FIP (3.01 and 4.03) in a season interrupted by a bout of atrial fibrillation and then issues finding the right level of medication; in late November, he underwent an ablation procedure. In 2019, as his velocity continued to wane, he set new career worsts with a 3.71 ERA and eight blown saves, three more than he had in the previous two seasons combined.

Jansen reported late to summer camp due to a positive test for COVID-19, but was ready in time to start the season, and in fact pitched well into early September. In his first 17 innings, he posted a 1.04 ERA and 3.01 FIP, with a 35.8% strikeout rate — higher than it had been since 2017 — while converting 10 out of 11 save chances. Then came an unsettling pair of outings. On September 8 against the Diamondbacks, he entered with two outs in the ninth inning of a tie game, escaped via a weird stolen base-error-baserunning blunder sequence by Tim Locastro, and after the Dodgers scored four runs in the top of the 10th, gave three back in the bottom of the inning before getting the final out. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees lost to the Rays for the second night in a row on Wednesday night to fall behind in the Division Series, two games to one, but Giancarlo Stanton continued his rampage. The 30-year-old slugger, who was limited to just 23 games this year due to a Grade 1 left hamstring strain, has now homered in all five of the Yankees’ postseason games, with a consecutive games steak that’s one short of the record.

Stanton’s latest blast, his sixth of the postseason, came in the eighth inning off Shane McClanahan, a 23-year-old lefty who in Game 1 became the first pitcher in major league history to debut in the postseason without having pitched in a regular season game. He got out of that one unscathed, but not so on Wednesday:

The homer, Stanton’s second hit of the night, came with a man on base and trimmed the Rays’ lead to 8-4, but the Yankees could draw no closer. To date, they’ve scored 18 runs in the Division Series, 10 of which have been driven in by Stanton with his four homers. He broke open Game 1 with a ninth-inning grand slam off John Curtiss, extending a 5-3 lead to 9-3:

Stanton followed that up with a pair of homers off Tyler Glasnow in Game 2, first with a game-tying opposite field liner in the second inning, and then a three-run blast — and I do mean blast — in the fourth, which cut a 5-1 lead to 5-4, though the Rays eventually pulled away for a 7-5 win:

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Bob Gibson, who died of pancreatic cancer on Friday, October 2 — the fourth Hall of Famer to die this year, after Al Kaline, Tom Seaver, and former teammate Lou Brock — was as tough and intense as they came. In 1967, about midway through his 17-year run with the Cardinals (1959-75), he was hit on the right shin by a Roberto Clemente liner. He pitched to three more batters before his already-cracked fibula snapped, sending him to the disabled list for over seven weeks. In the 13 months following his return, he was as dominant as any pitcher since the dead ball era, a run that included a 1.12 ERA during the 1968 regular season, still the lowest of any qualifier since 1914.

The indomitable Gibson possessed a mental toughness as well, one founded in a reserve of self-confidence that was the equal of his 95-mile-an-hour fastball and menacing glare. He dealt in intimidation, asserting his ownership of the inside corner of the plate and taking pride in his ability to “mess with a batter’s head without letting him into mine.” In his 1992 autobiography, Stranger to the Game, he described his repertoire: “I actually used about nine pitches — two different fastballs, two sliders, a curve, a change-up, knockdown, brushback, and hit-batsman.”

“He’d knock down his own grandmother if she dared to challenge him,” Hank Aaron once counseled teammate Dusty Baker. In one oft-told story, Gibson plunked former roommate Bill White after he was traded from the Cardinals to the Phillies:

Bob Gibson on hitting his friend Bill White. pic.twitter.com/6jxLF2MB5e

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) October 3, 2020

“I wanted to own the outside part of the plate. And the only reason you throw in here is to keep a guy from going out there,” said Gibson. Read the rest of this entry »

The Padres and Dodgers submitted their rosters for the Division Series on Tuesday morning, a formality for most postseason series but one that this time around carried considerable intrigue. As was hinted by multiple reports in the 24 hours leading up to the deadline, the team has indeed included Mike Clevinger, who has pitched just one inning since September 13 due to issues with his biceps and elbow and who was left off the Wild Card Series roster, and furthermore, they have tabbed him to start Game 1. Dinelson Lamet, who similarly left his September 25 start with tightness in his biceps and missed the Wild Card Series, was not included.

To review: after throwing seven innings of two-hit shutout ball on September 13 against the Giants, Clevinger was scratched from his turn five days later against the Mariners due to soreness in his right biceps. After the team and the 29-year-old righty were reassured by a bullpen session on September 21, he started against the Angels two days later, and pitched a 1-2-3 first inning, striking out both David Fletcher and Mike Trout, but his velocity was down a bit, and he didn’t return for the second inning. The Padres said his biceps was bothering him again, and two days later, they revealed that he had been diagnosed with posterior elbow impingement (a side effect of inflammation) and given a cortisone shot.

Clevinger resumed playing catch on September 28 and then threw a 23-pitch bullpen session the next day, but was left off the Wild Card Series roster. After a higher-intensity bullpen session on Sunday, the Padres sounded notes of optimism that made their way into a handful of tweets suggesting he was likely to be added and to start Game 1. That is indeed the case. Read the rest of this entry »

Note: The Padres did indeed include Mike Clevinger on their roster, which was submitted on Tuesday morning, but not Dinelson Lamet. For more on the impact of both teams’ rotation and roster decisions, please see here.

Despite some nail-biting moments in their respective Wild Card Series, the Dodgers swept the Brewers and the Padres outlasted the Cardinals to produce a Division Series matchup that just so happens to pit the National Leagues’s two best teams by both won-loss record (the Dodgers went 43-17, the Padres 37-23) and run differential (+136 for the former, +84 for the latter) against each other. In that regard, it’s a pity the two teams only get a best-of-five series to settle things instead of a best-of-seven. With MVP candidates Mookie Betts, Fernando Tatis Jr., and Manny Machado — not to mention past MVPs Cody Bellinger and Clayton Kershaw — and perhaps some future Cy Young candidates, this one has the potential to be as entertaining as any later-round series.

The Dodgers, after playing at a 116-win pace during the regular season — not necessarily the best omen, mind you — never trailed the Brewers during the Wild Card Series. They didn’t exactly run away with things in their 4-2 and 3-0 wins, but none of their pitchers had to work back-to-back days. The Padres, who played at a 100-win pace but lost starters Mike Clevinger and Dinelson Lamet to arm injuries during the final week of the season, won their first playoff series in 22 years, beating the Cardinals despite not getting more than 2.1 innings from a starting pitcher in any of the three games. They lost Game 1 and had to climb out of a four-run hole in the later innings of Game 2, but won the rubber match via a nine-pitcher shutout, an unprecedented postseason showing. Four of their pitchers worked all three games, though none threw more than three total innings.

During the regular season, the Dodgers beat the Padres in six out of 10 games, and outscored them 60-48. A single 11-2 win on August 13 — during which Chris Paddack was shellacked for six runs in three innings while Julio Urías pitched 6.1 strong innings — accounted for the lion’s share of that run differential.

Worth noting: this series will be played in the Globe Life Field, the brand new home of the Texas Rangers. It’s covered, and has artificial turf, and with outfield dimensions of 329′-372′-407′-374′-326′ from left to right, it’s shorter to the power allies but deeper to center field than its predecessor. It plays as a pitcher-friendly venue, and could help the more fly ball-oriented Padres staff more than the Dodgers. The 66 homers hit there this year ranked 22nd in the majors, so for all the power these two teams showed during the regular season, there may not be as many fireworks. Read the rest of this entry »

If Major League Baseball awarded MVP honors for the Wild Card Series, then Max Fried, Ian Anderson and the rest of a Braves pitching staff that held the Reds scoreless for 22 consecutive innings would have rightly claimed it, but Freddie Freeman played a significant role in the Braves’ advancement as well. In the bottom of the 13th inning of Game 1, more than four and a half hours into a scoreless standoff that set a postseason record, the 31-year-old first baseman’s single up the middle brought home Cristian Pache, his latest big hit in a season that for all of its brevity has been full of them.

Since the ballots have been cast, that hit won’t affect the voting, of course, but Freeman’s regular season performance has given him a shot at becoming the first first baseman to win an MVP award since Joey Votto in 2010. His performance was all the more amazing given that he tested positive for COVID-19 in early July, and feared for his own life as he battled high fevers. Thankfully, he not only recovered and regained his strength but did so in time to be in the Braves’ lineup on Opening Day. Remarkably, he played in all 60 games, one of 14 players to do so (not counting Starling Marte, who squeezed in 61 while being traded from the Diamondbacks to the Marlins). Freeman hit a sizzling .341/.462/.640, placing second in the National League in all three slash stats and wRC+ (187) behind Juan Soto, who played 13 fewer games due to his own COVID-19 battle.

Big hits? Freeman batted .423/.583/.885 in 72 plate appearances with runners in scoring position, good for a major league-best 264 wRC+ in that capacity. While he finished second in the NL behind teammate Marcell Ozuna in RBI (56 to 53), he led the majors in Win Probability Added (3.17), more than a full win ahead of the 10th-ranked Ozuna. Read the rest of this entry »

Within the context of the abbreviated 2020 season, both Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado produced electrifying highlights and eye-opening numbers while helping the Padres to the National League’s second-best record. But with the team on the verge of elimination against the Cardinals in the best-of-three Wild Card Series, the two MVP candidates spent the first five innings of Thursday night’s game unable to get the big hit that would take a tattered pitching staff off the hook. And then with two swings of the bat, the pair’s fourth set of back-to-back home runs this season changed everything, erasing a four-run deficit. Additional fireworks followed — enough to summon the ghosts of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, even — and ultimately, the Padres outlasted the Cardinals for an 11-9 win, forcing a Game 3 to be played on Friday.

For the first five and a half innings, this one had the feel of déjà vu. Already without Mike Clevinger and Dinelson Lamet due to arm injuries suffered during the final week of the regular season, and having gotten just 2.1 innings from Chris Paddack in Game 1 as they fell into a 6-2 hole from which they never escaped, the Padres fell behind early. Sinkerballer Zach Davies simply could not get the Cardinals — who finished in a virtual tie with the Padres for the lowest swing rate in the National League (43.6%) — to play his game by swinging at pitches below the strike zone. During the regular season, nobody threw a higher percentage of such pitches:

In two innings of work totaling 55 pitches, Davies got just 19 swings. Just four were whiffs, while seven were foul balls; of the eight put into play, four were hit for exit velocities in excess of 100 mph, three of them hits in the second inning. Read the rest of this entry »

By the time Shane Bieber recorded his first out in Tuesday night’s American League Wild Card Series opener, the Yankees had already done what teams failed to do in seven of the 25-year-old righty’s 12 starts in 2020: score two runs. With a DJ LeMahieu bloop and an Aaron Judge blast, the Yankees staked themselves to an instant lead, and they continued to beat up on the presumptive AL Cy Young winner, cuffing him for seven runs before chasing him in the fifth inning. The marquee matchup between Bieber and Yankees ace Gerrit Cole turned into a one-sided rout, with the Yankees rolling to a 12-3 win in Cleveland.

Bieber, for as otherworldly as he was this year — he not only won the AL pitching triple crown by leading the league in wins, strikeouts, and ERA, but also led in FIP, WAR, K%, and K-BB% — did allow seven home runs, as if to hint that he was merely human. Two of those were on fastballs, one in the center of the strike zone, hit by the Reds’ Eugenio Suárez on August 4. In fact, that was the only hit out of the 28 fastballs Bieber threw down Broadway, just 11 of which were put into play. Judge didn’t have to know how rare it was for Bieber to leave one there to do business with it:

The home run — 108 mph off the bat, with an estimated distance of 399 feet — was Judge’s first since August 11, the same day on which he strained his right calf muscle. To that point, he led the majors in homers, but he landed on the Injured List a few days later, and re-injured the calf in his first game back on August 26. Since the initial injury, he hit just .205/.326/.231 in 46 plate appearances spread out over 47 days. While his exit velocity remained respectable, he didn’t elevate the ball with the same consistency, or come close to doing the same kind of damage:

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As the final day of the season dawned, there were no fewer than six possible matchups for this series, with the Twins, White Sox, and Indians all having paths to second place in the AL Central and the number four seed, and likewise for the Yankees and Blue Jays in the AL East and the number five seed. The Yankees fell to the Marlins, 5-0, their sixth loss in the past eight games, but because the Blue Jays blew a 4-1 lead and lost to the Orioles, New York finished 33-27, barely holding onto second. Meanwhile the Indians dug their way out of a 6-2 hole against the Pirates, and only when the White Sox’s comeback from a 10-1 deficit stalled at 10-8, with the tying run at the plate in the bottom of the ninth on a questionable called strike was this matchup set.

The Indians finished with the better record, going 35-25, but a slightly worse run differential (+39 versus +45), but how the two teams got there is very different. The Yankees led the AL in scoring (5.25 runs per game) and wRC+ (116) while ranking sixth in run prevention (4.50 runs per game). The Indians, on the other hand, tied for second-to-last in the AL in scoring (4.13 runs per game) and were second-to-last in wRC+ (86), but they were the stingiest team in the AL, allowing just 3.48 runs per game. As this series will be played entirely at Progressive Field, the Yankees’ offensive advantage may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

Worth noting: Indians manager Terry Francona has been sidelined by gastrointestinal and blood clot issues for most of the season, managing just 14 games, during which his team went 8-6. First base coach Sandy Alomar Jr. has been serving as acting manager since mid-August and will likely remain in that capacity through the postseason, though Francona has entered the bubble to keep that option in play. The team has gone 28-18 on Alomar’s watch.

Rotations

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Over the past two days, the playoff picture has begun to come into full focus. The Marlins, Reds, and Astros all clinched playoff berths on Friday night — the last of those not with a victory of their own but one by the Dodgers, of all teams — while the Rockies and Angels were eliminated. On Saturday, the Mets bit the dust as well. Thus as we head into the abbreviated season’s final day, the eight AL teams have been decided, albeit not all of the seedings, while 10 NL teams remain alive.

In the NL, the top four seeds have been secured: the Dodgers, Braves, Cubs (who clinched the NL Central on Saturday night), and Padres will be seeds 1-4 in that order. Still at stake are the middles of the NL East and Central standings:

In the NL Central, with the Brewers splitting Friday’s doubleheader with the Cardinals and then winning on Saturday as well while the Reds lost, the three teams enter Sunday separated by a game, with St. Louis hosting Milwaukee and Cincinnati at Minnesota on Sunday. Apparently, I missed a memo regarding the potential make-up doubleheader involving the Cardinals and Tigers; they would play one or two games in Detroit on Monday only if it they have the potential to give the Cardinals home-field advantage (no longer the case) or determine whether they’re in or out; if it’s seeding in the 5-8 range, they’ll be judged on winning percentage. Read the rest of this entry »