The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2023 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been expanded and updated. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

Despite being an outstanding hitter, Fred McGriff had a hard time standing out. Though he arrived in the major leagues the same year as Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro and was the first player to lead each league in home runs since the Dead Ball Era, he never matched the career accomplishments of either of those two men, finishing short of round-numbered milestones with “only” 493 home runs and 2,490 hits. The obvious explanation — that he didn’t have the pharmaceutical help that others did — may be true, but it was just one of many ways in which McGriff’s strong performance didn’t garner as much attention as it probably merited.

Which isn’t to say that he went totally unnoticed during his heyday, but some of the things for which he received attention were decidedly… square. Early in his major league career, McGriff acquired the nickname “the Crime Dog” in reference to McGruff, an animated talking bloodhound from a public service announcement who urged kids to “take a bite out of crime” by staying in school and away from drugs. He also appeared in the longest-running sports infomercial of all time, endorsing Tom Emanski’s Baseball Defensive Drills video, a staple of insomniac viewing amid SportsCenter segments on ESPN since 1991.

That those distinctions carry some amount of ironic cachet today is evidence that McGriff might have been just too gosh-darn wholesome a star for an increasingly cynical age. On the other hand, it’s far better to be remembered for pointing a finger in the service of a timeless baseball fundamentals video than accompanying sworn testimony in front of Congress. Read the rest of this entry »

Never let it be said that the National Baseball Hall of Fame can’t throw us a curveball now and then. On Monday, the institution announced the eight-man slate for the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot, and while it contained some of the expected names — including those of 2022 BBWAA ballot “graduates” Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Curt Schilling, whose candidacies now enter a new phase — it also omitted some and retreaded a few candidacies that have never gained much traction. This ballot has something to frustrate everyone.

I’ll get to the omissions below. The full ballot includes the aforementioned trio, whose 10-year tenures on the writers’ ballot ended in January, with all three falling short of the 75% needed for election, as well as two other candidates making their first Era Committee ballot appearances: Fred McGriff and Rafael Palmeiro. The other three candidates, Albert Belle, Don Mattingly, and Dale Murphy, have all previously appeared on multiple Era Committee ballots.

The Contemporary Baseball Era Committee is one of three created by the Hall in its latest reconfiguration of the process for considering players whose eligibility on the BBWAA ballot has lapsed, as well as managers, executives, and umpires. The changes were announced in April, replacing a system of four Era Committees (Early Baseball, Golden Days, Modern Baseball, and Today’s Game) that voted on a staggered basis within a 10-year cycle. The new system — the fifth different one put in place of the old Veterans Committee since 2001 — divides candidates into just two timeframes: those who made their greatest impact on the game before 1980 (Classic Baseball Era), including Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues Black players, and those who made their greatest impact from 1980 to the present day (Contemporary Baseball Era). While the Classic Baseball Era ballot can include non-players, those from the Contemporary Era will be considered on a separate ballot.

As if consolidating the pools of candidates didn’t already make it harder for a given individual to land on a ballot, the size of the ballot itself has shrunk from 10 candidates to eight, and the number of whom each of the 16 voters can choose has been reduced from four to three. It all feels like a heavy-handed reaction to the voting from last December, when two candidates from the Early Baseball period (Bud Fowler and Buck O’Neil) and four from the Golden Days period (Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Minnie Miñoso, and Tony Oliva) were elected.

The Contemporary Baseball Players ballot will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in San Diego on Sunday, December 4, and anyone elected will be inducted in Cooperstown on Sunday, July 23, 2023. Next December, the Contemporary Baseball ballot for managers, umpires, and executives will be considered, and in December 2024, candidates for the Classic Baseball ballot will get their turn, with the cycle continuing on a triennial basis — that is, if the Hall doesn’t decide to change things up yet again. Read the rest of this entry »

Dusty Baker is on the outside no longer. On Saturday night, the manager with the highest win total of any skipper never to pilot a World Series winner shed that distinction, as the Astros secured their championship by beating the Phillies, 4–1, in Game 6 at Minute Maid Park. After managing for 25 seasons — 12 of them with at least 90 wins — and reaching the World Series two other times (2002 and ’21), the 73-year-old Baker finally won one:

We are crying. ? #WorldSeries pic.twitter.com/DnUQ67bz25

— MLB (@MLB) November 6, 2022

Not that he hadn’t already tasted champagne as the All-Star left fielder of the 1981 Dodgers. That makes him one of seven men to win championships as a player and manager during the division play era (1969 onward), and one of 22 overall, not counting player-managers.

Saturday’s victory made Baker the oldest manager to win a World Series, but he viewed the significance of his accomplishment differently. “I don’t think about being the oldest,” he told reporters after the victory. “I don’t think about my age. But I do think about being the third Black manager with Dave Roberts and my good friend Cito Gaston, who was responsible really for me as a kid when I first signed with the Braves.”

In a game that’s all too lacking in diversity at the leadership levels, Baker has remained mindful of his status. Prior to Game 6, he said, “I do know that there’s certain pressure from a lot of people that are pulling for me, especially people of color. And that part I do feel. I hear it every day… and so I feel that I’ve been chosen for this.”

As the manager who took over the Astros amid the fallout from their illegal electronic sign stealing, Baker was an inspired if counterintuitive choice. A commanding presence in the clubhouse and with the media, he helped deflect attention away from an owner who shirked responsibility and a squad whose star players seemed to go through the motions in apologizing for their roles in the scandal before swiftly pivoting to an us-against-everyone rallying cry. Though hardly averse to the use of sabermetrics in decision-making, Baker also brought a warmth and humanity to an organization whose commitment to analytics under general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch had often been described as dehumanizing even before the trash can banging scheme came to light.

Only five players remain from the 2017 squad whose World Series victory over the Dodgers was subsequently tainted by the revelations of their sign stealing: Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Yuli Gurriel, Lance McCullers Jr., and Justin Verlander. The combination of their minimal contrition and Major League Baseball’s decision not to discipline them (particularly the hitters) for their participation has made them villains in the eyes of many fans, booed everywhere but Houston. Baker indicated his belief that such treatment galvanized the team:

“The boos and the jeers that we got all over the country, it bothered these guys, but it also motivated them at the same time. And it wasn’t an us against the world thing. It was more of a come together even closer type thing.”

Perhaps, but anger toward the 2017 group — and anyone else in an Astros uniform — for what McCullers frankly termed “the whole cheating scandal” still runs deep. On social media, seemingly minor matters that arose during this World Series, such as Aledmys Díaz leaning into a pitch, Martín Maldonado using a grandfathered Albert Pujols bat, and Framber Valdez removing his glove on the mound and rubbing his hands together were taken as evidence that they were still cheating, somehow. On the one hand, the paranoia is quite silly, particularly as the Phillies didn’t seem to get too worked up about such matters. On the other hand, this is the price that the Astros and MLB must continue to pay for what transpired… and what didn’t. For many fans, Baker’s victory is the most, if not the only, palatable way to accept the Astros’ championship.

In winning the World Series, Baker has almost certainly secured himself a spot in the Hall of Fame. His resumé might have been enough without a championship, as he ranks fourth in playoff appearances (12, a product of the Wild Card era but also a reminder of his routine success), ninth in victories (2,093), 10th in games managed (3,884), and 15th in games above .500 (303). Wilbert Robinson (1902, ’14–31) and Al Lopez (1951–69), each of whom won two pennants but lost twice in the Fall Classic, are already enshrined, as is every manager with at least 2,000 wins save for Baker and the recently un-retired Bruce Bochy, who has a spot awaiting him given his three World Series wins:

From a childhood in Riverside and Sacramento through a 19-year career as a major league outfielder with the Braves, Dodgers, Giants, and A’s, and then a quarter-century as a manager, Baker’s road to Cooperstown has been a long one. As the only manager ever to guide five franchises to division titles (the Giants, Cubs, Reds, Nationals, and Astros), he already had an achievement that set him apart from his peers, albeit one that he didn’t quite feel was cause for celebration. “I don’t really think nothing, other than why was I on so many different teams,” he told reporters as the playoffs began last year. “I’m serious. I feel fortunate to have gotten that many jobs, but I feel unfortunate that I shouldn’t have lost jobs when I was winning.”

Indeed, as I’ve noted before, at three of his previous four stops, Baker departed after seasons with at least 90 wins and postseason berths. In 2002, he won 95 games in guiding the Giants to their first World Series since 1989; it was the fourth time in six years his team had topped 90 wins, and third with a playoff berth. Yet the Giants didn’t offer him a contract after the 2002 World Series due to his strained relationship with managing partner Peter Magowan, and Baker landed with the Cubs. He nearly took them back to the World Series in his first season, only to be derailed by the Steve Bartman play and the Cubs’ sudden unraveling; by his fourth season in Chicago (2006), the team was 66–96 and in need of a new direction. The Cubs let his contract expire, the only time he left a losing team.

In 2008, Baker took over the Reds; after back-to-back, sub-.500 finishes, his team won 91 games and the NL Central in 2010, its first postseason berth since 1995. Following another sub-.500 season, he won 97 games and another NL Central title in 2012, but after 90 wins and a Wild Card berth in ’13, he was fired nonetheless. It took him two years to land another managerial job, and despite leading the Nationals to back-to-back NL East titles and seasons of 95 and 97 wins, the team let his contract lapse.

In 2019, Baker got as far as a second interview for the Phillies opening that went to Joe Girardi, whose team didn’t make the playoffs in either of the next two seasons. Girardi was fired after a 22–29 start in early June, but Rob Thomson guided them on an unlikely run that took them all the way to Game 6.

One team’s second choice is another team’s skipper, so it’s fortunate for the Astros that the then-70-year-old Baker was available when owner Jim Crane needed to make a quick but credible hiring to replace Hinch just a couple of weeks before pitchers and catchers reported for the 2020 season.

As we all know, the world shut down and the season was delayed by nearly four months. With Verlander lost to a forearm strain (he would eventually need Tommy John surgery), and Altuve, Bregman and Gurriel considerably less productive than before (ahem), the Astros went just 29–31 under Baker during the pandemic-shortened season. Even so, they finished second in a weak AL West and made the expanded playoffs as the sixth seed. There they caught fire, sweeping the Twins in the Wild Card Series, beating the A’s in a four-game Division Series, and taking the Rays to seven games in the ALCS before falling. Houston won 95 games last year, then knocked off the White Sox and Red Sox before losing to the Braves in a six-game World Series. This year, the Astros won an AL-high 106 games, then swept both the Mariners and Yankees to reach the World Series again.

Despite falling behind by losing Games 1 and 3, the Astros came back to subdued the Phillies by winning three straight; the first two of those came at Citizens Bank Park, where Philadelphia had gone 6–0 during the postseason to that point. Beginning with a combined no-hitter started by Cristian Javier, the Astros held the Phillies to three runs and nine hits over their final three games, a .101/.223/.180 showing.

In losing the aforementioned games, Baker drew criticism for sticking too long with the struggling Verlander and McCullers; the pair combined to allow 12 runs in 9.1 innings, and a quicker hook might have given the Astros a better shot at winning. Yet the Astros allowed just six runs (five earned) in the 44.2 innings thrown by their other pitchers in the World Series, and the team as a whole posted a 2.29 ERA over the course of the postseason. Baker rarely called a wrong number when it came to his bullpen, which pitched to an 0.83 ERA in 54.1 innings for the postseason. The Astros went 11–2 during their march to the championship, including 5–1 in one-run games. Baker may not have run the team flawlessly, but it’s hard to find much fault with his performance.

This was a very different team from the won that one in 2017, as well as a reminder that the criticisms that were so easy to levy at Baker a decade or two ago no longer apply. Young pitchers thriving on his watch and handled with care? The 28-year-old Valdez (1.44 ERA in 25 innings) and 25-year-old Javier (0.71 ERA in 12.2 innings) were the team’s two best starters in October and November, and maxed out at 104 and 97 pitches, respectively; they helped compensate for Verlander and McCullers both posting ERAs above 5.00. Young position players getting playing time? Hello, Jeremy Peña, the first rookie position player to win World Series MVP honors, and at 25 years and 45 days old, the youngest position player to do so. Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker are less than a year older than Peña, and both are already grizzled veterans, with three postseasons of regular play under their belts. Sacrifice bunts? Nine all season, four by the light-hitting Maldonado, and just two in the postseason, one of which — the bunt by Peña in ALCS Game 3 — was part of a daring sequence where only an insurance run was at stake.

I suspect the baseball world outside Houston will remain salty when it comes to the Astros so long as Altuve and Bregman wear the blue and orange, and perhaps so long as Crane owns the team, given his longstanding reputation for avoiding accountability. Crane hardly seems like a delight to work for, and it has not escaped notice that neither Baker, who entered the season on a one-year contract, nor general manager James Click, who is in the final year of a three-year deal, have contracts for 2023. Neither is a lock to return, though it’s believed that Baker will receive an extension offer, and that he wants to continue his career. “I’ve always said if I win one, I want to win two,” he said. Even if the rest of the baseball world may prefer another team wear the crown, it’s very hard to wish anything but the best for Dusty.

2:01

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! And welcome to my first chat of November. That was one hell of a game last night. I wrote about Nick Castellanos’ ongoing struggles at the plate, something I had planned to do even before he wound up in the position to be the hero or make the final out. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/inevitably-game-5-found-the-slumping-nick-…

2:02	Jay Jaffe: (Elsewhere on the site, Davy Andrews has a look at Castellanos’ defense https://blogs.fangraphs.com/nick-castellanos-outshines-the-gold-glover…)

2:03	Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I had a look at the ongoing outsized impact of home runs in the constricted offensive environment we see in October/November https://blogs.fangraphs.com/no-hitters-are-great-but-the-long-ball-sti…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: and now, on with the show…

2:06

Jay Jaffe: Well, a lot would depend upon what the Yankees do to fill the void left by Judge’s absence, because it’s not like they’d go into the season without some other big bat or upgrades. But in terms of which team’s roster as it would stand looks the strongest  if they don’t retain their free agents, I suspect it might be the Blue Jays

Read the rest of this entry »

In a Game 5 that was an instant classic, Nick Castellanos‘ number came up. With the Phillies losing 3–2 and down to their final out, Ryan Pressly hit Bryce Harper on the right foot with a slider, putting the tying run aboard and bringing up Castellanos, 0-for-3 with a walk for the night and just about the weakest link in the Phillies’ lineup during their amazing October run. Castellanos fell behind 0–2, chasing a low slider and then fouling off a juicy center-cut one, but he laid off three low-and-away pitches to draw the count full. Pressly then threw a hanging slider, but Castellanos could only hit a grounder to shortstop Jeremy Peña, a routine play that produced an anticlimactic ending to an absolute nailbiter that swung the series to three games to two in favor of the Astros.

It was the latest rough night in a postseason run that’s had its share of them for the 30-year-old slugger. Castellanos is 3-for-20 with a walk and eight strikeouts in the World Series, and while he has company there (both Rhys Hoskins and J.T. Realmuto are 3-for-21, albeit with homers), his .197/.246/.262 line through 65 postseason plate appearances gives him the lowest wRC+ (43) of any Phillies regular, though Bryson Stott (45 wRC+, via a .140/.260/.233 line) has the slightly lower OPS, .493 to .508. Castellanos has had a few big moments at the plate and has made some surprisingly stellar defensive plays, but he’s one or two games away from the end of a frustrating season in which he batted just .263/.305/.389 (94 wRC+) with 13 homers in the first year of a five-year, $100 million deal he signed in March. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball is a funny game, a remarkable and even ridiculous one for the way it can produce such radically different games on consecutive nights as in Games 3 and 4 of this year’s World Series. On Tuesday, Bryce Harper and friends hit five home runs at the expense of Lance McCullers Jr., accounting for all of the runs in the Phillies’ 7-0 romp. On Wednesday, Cristian Javier and three Astros relievers produced the first combined no-hitter in postseason history while winning 5-0, with all five runs coming within a seven-batter span in the fifth inning. From talk about how devastated the Astros might be and the possibility of the Phillies closing things out at home, the conversation turns to whether the Phillies can bounce back before the series, now knotted at two games apiece, shifts back to Houston.

Combined or not, the no-hitter is The Big Story, and rightly so, as it’s just the second of any kind in World Series history after Don Larsen‘s 1956 perfect game, and the third in postseason history, with Roy Halladay’s 2010 Division Series no-hitter the other. Halladay did so for the Phillies, at Citizens Bank Park, against the Dusty Baker-managed Reds, by the way. Of course there’s the fact that Javier, the majors’ toughest pitcher to hit in terms of both batting average (.169) and BABIP (.228) among those with at least 140 innings pitched, had already done the heavy lifting in a combined no-hitter on June 25 of this year against the Yankees.

What you might not have noticed about Wednesday’s game was that the Astros won without the benefit of a home run, a feat that hadn’t happened since October 15, when the Guardians and Padres both won Division Series contests (Game 3 for the AL, Game 4 for the NL) while keeping the ball in the park. Read the rest of this entry »

Say this for the Cardinals: They do a very good job of keeping the band together. On Wednesday, the news broke that Adam Wainwright will return to the team for his 19th and final major league season. On Saturday, St. Louis revealed that Nolan Arenado has declined to exercise the opt-out clause in his contract, meaning that he will remain in the fold through 2027, making $144 million (much of it deferred) for the five-year period.

In his second season with the Cardinals, the 31-year-old Arenado set career highs in WAR (7.3) and wRC+ (151) — numbers that ranked second and fourth in the NL, respectively — and hit .292/.358/.533 with 30 homers. He made his seventh All-Star team and is a finalist to win a 10th Gold Glove; if he does win the award, he’ll tie Mike Schmidt for the second-highest total behind only Brooks Robinson (16). As he also led the NL in bWAR (7.9), and therefore edged teammate Paul Goldschmidt in both versions (Goldy had 7.1 fWAR and 7.8 bWAR), he stands a reasonable chance of winning the NL MVP award. But whether or not he does, the Cardinals couldn’t have asked for anything more from their third baseman.

When Arenado signed his eight-year, $260 million extension with the Rockies in February 2019, his contract included no-trade protection as well as the ability to opt out after the 2021 season. His relationship with the organization began to sour quite quickly after that deal came together, however, and he was traded to St. Louis in February 2021 along with $51 million in guaranteed and conditional payments. As part of the trade, he agreed to defer about $50 million, payable over the 2022–41 timespan; accepted a guaranteed salary of $15 million for 2027; and received an additional opt-out after the 2022 season. By opting out either after last year or this one, he could have saved Colorado about $20.57 million from that $51 million figure, but because he’s staying, his old team is on the hook for that money, which includes $5 million annual payments from 2024 to ’26. He’s the gift that keeps on giving to the Rockies’ beleaguered front office. Via Cot’s Contracts, he’ll receive $35 million for 2023 and ’24, and subsequent salaries of $32 million, $27 million, and $15 million. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday night, Justin Verlander will take the next step in his remarkable season by starting Game 1 of the World Series against the Phillies. For all that he’s accomplished in a career that will likely gain him first-ballot entry into the Hall of Fame, success in the Fall Classic has eluded him, but not for lack of opportunity. He does have a World Series ring from the Astros’ 2017 championship (tainted though it is by subsequent revelations of the team’s illegal electronic sign-stealing), but on a personal level, his Series history has combined some bad luck with a few real clunkers.

A nine-time All-Star with three no-hitters and two Cy Young awards under his belt (with a third probably on the way), Verlander is the active leader in wins (244), strikeouts (3,198, 12th all-time), and S-JAWS (64.0, 20th all-time). That’s the resumé of a surefire Hall of Famer, and we’re talking about one who’s still near the peak of his powers. At 39 years old, he’s coming off an historic season (the best for any Tommy John surgery recipient in the back half of his 30s), and that after missing nearly two full seasons. Despite losing 18 days late in the season to a right calf injury, he led the AL in ERA (1.75), xERA (2.66), and WAR (6.4), ranking third in FIP (2.49) and fifth in K-BB% (23.4%). After getting tagged for six runs and 10 hits by the Mariners in the Division Series opener, he dominated the Yankees by strking out 11 and allowing just one run in six innings in the ALCS opener. He’s still lighting up the radar gun at 98 mph when he needs it.

But while he’s pitched some postseason gems in his career — including a complete-game, four-hit shutout against the A’s in the deciding game of the 2012 Division Series; a 13-strikeout, one-run complete game against the Yankees in Game 2 of the 2017 ALCS (the last postseason complete game); and five other starts with at least 10 strikeouts and at most one run allowed — he’s never come close to a dominant World Series start. In fact, he’s 0–6 with a 5.68 ERA in seven starts totaling 38 innings, with a whopping nine homers (2.1 per nine) allowed. Those numbers stand out for all of the wrong reasons.

For one thing, those six losses are more than any other World Series pitcher besides Whitey Ford, who lost eight times, albeit in a record 22 starts, and the Chairman of the Board offset that with 10 wins, also a record. You know how we feel about pitcher wins and losses around here; they’re imperfect barometers of performance that greatly depend upon the support one receives from their offense, defense, and bullpen. But they are a subject of discussion in this context.

As you can probably surmise, Verlander has the most World Series starts of any pitcher without a win:

That list has some pretty good pitchers, but no Hall of Famers; Brown is probably the closest besides Verlander, but for all of the work he did in helping the Marlins and Padres get to the World Series (four postseason wins in six starts including a two-hit shutout in NLCS Game 2 in 1998), three of his four stats there were ugly. Newcombe had a great debut in 1949 (eight innings, 11 strikeouts, one run) but wound up on the wrong end of a 1–0 score and thereafter made it past the fourth inning just one time in four tries. Root gave up Babe Ruth’s “Called Shot.” Williams was one of the eight players permanently banned from baseball for helping to fix the 1919 World Series.

Meanwhile, Verlander has the eighth-highest ERA of any pitcher with at least 20 innings in World Series starts:

My, but that’s a lot of Dodgers; six of the 15 highest starter ERAs are linked to the franchise, including four from their 1947–56 run of six pennants. They lost five of those World Series (1947, ’49, ’52, ’53, and ’56) but won in 1955, with Newcombe, Erskine, Craig, and Loes all making one start; only Craig’s netted a win or was any good. It was left up to Johnny Podres, whose two starts included a Game 7 shutout, to play the hero.

Note that several of these pitchers also made relief appearances that aren’t included within the data above, including Kershaw, whose four shutout innings under desperate circumstances in Game 7 of 2017 (after Yu Darvish was chased) lowers his overall World Series ERA to 4.46. It took two very good starts in the 2020 World Series, where he was instrumental in securing that elusive World Series ring, to get him down from 5.40 — a reminder that so much of this is just a matter of repeated opportunities, not an inability to perform at his peak at this level.

For as bad as the overall numbers are, not all of Verlander’s World Series starts have been dreadful. Here’s the game log, followed by a quick summary of each start.

2006 Game 1, Tigers vs. Cardinals

After debuting the previous September, the 23-year-old Verlander won AL Rookie of the Year honors (17–9. 3.63 ERA), but he was erratic in the postseason — able to hit triple digits but lacking in command. He scuffled in his Division Series start against the Yankees and ALCS start against the A’s, lasting 5.1 innings in both and allowing a total of seven runs. Facing the Cardinals, who had gone just 83–78 but who had a star-studded lineup, he needed 18 pitches to get through the first inning, striking out Albert Pujols to end it. He surrendered a solo homer to Scott Rolen in the second, and Pujols exacted revenge with two-run homer in the third, that after Chris Duncan had doubled home a run. Verlander didn’t retire any of the three batters he faced in the fifth, allowing one run before departing (via a Jim Edmonds single) and getting charged with two, one unearned, after leaving. Not pretty.

2006 Game 5, Tigers vs. Cardinals

Verlander got the ball again with the Tigers trailing three games to one, and he certainly pitched better than in the opener, but he couldn’t hold out against the team of destiny and was outpitched by former Tiger Jeff Weaver. The Cardinals singled the rookie into submission, with David Eckstein driving in a run in the second and another in the fourth, the latter of which gave St. Louis a 3–2 lead. Before that run, a Verlander throwing error on a fielder’s choice off the bat of Weaver — his second error of the series and the fifth by a Tigers hurler — kindled a Tim McCarver lecture about the importance of pitcher fielding practice that some say is still going.

2012 Game 1, Tigers vs. Giants

After allowing just two runs in 24.1 innings across three starts in the first two playoff rounds against the A’s and Yankees (with pitch counts of 121, 122, and 132), Verlander had a full seven days of rest before his World Series start after the Tigers swept the Yankees. Maybe the rust was to blame for this one. He served up a solo homer to Pablo Sandoval in the first, then a two-run shot to Sandoval in the third after Marco Scutaro drove in a run. In the fourth, opposite number Barry Zito even drove in a run. Sandoval would homer again to complete the trifecta, but it came against Al Alburquerque in the fifth, with Verlander having already hit the showers. He never got a second chance in this series, as the Tigers were swept.

2017 Game 2, Astros vs. Dodgers

Traded to the Astros on August 31 after a 12-year run with the Tigers, Verlander was stellar down the stretch, pitching to a 1.06 ERA in five starts and striking out 43 in 34 innings. He carried that momentum in to the playoffs, even winning ALCS MVP honors against the Yankees by allowing just one run in 16 innings, striking out 21.

For the first time, Verlander pitched pretty well in a World Series game, retiring the first nine Dodgers and not surrendering a hit until Joc Pederson’s solo homer in the fifth. He found trouble with two outs in the sixth, walking Chris Taylor and then yielding a two-run homer to Corey Seager before departing on the short end of a 3–1 score. The Astros got him off the hook, scoring runs off Kenley Jansen in the eighth and ninth, and wound up winning a wild one — featuring a total of five homers in the 10th and 11th — in 11 innings.

2017 Game 6, Astros vs. Dodgers

After the Astros won Game 5, 13–12, Verlander took the mound with a chance to clinch a championship. He hung zeroes through the first five frames, with a second-inning single by Yasiel Puig the only blemish. Meanwhile, George Springer’s homer off Rich Hill put the Astros up 1–0. But after Austin Barnes led off the sixth with a single, the Dodgers’ lineup went to town in its third look at Verlander. After Chase Utley was hit with a pitch, Taylor hit a game-tying RBI double, and Seager followed with a sacrifice fly to give the Dodgers the lead. Verlander departed after stranding Taylor at third, but the Dodgers held on to win, 3–1, and extend the series to Game 7.

2019 Game 2, Astros vs. Nationals

This time around, Verlander reached the World Series after two very good and two not-so-good starts in the Division Series against the Rays and ALCS against the Yankees. He got off on the wrong foot here, as the first three Nationals reached safely, with Anthony Rendon smacking a two-run double on an 0–2 pitch to put Verlander in the hole immediately. Alex Bregman‘s two-run homer off Stephen Strasburg tied the game in the bottom of the first, and while Verlander didn’t throw a 1-2-3 inning until the sixth, he did his part to keep the game tied until serving up a solo homer to Kurt Suzuki to lead off the seventh. He departed after walking Victor Robles, which kindled a five-run rally on Ryan Pressly’s watch. The game ended as a 12–3 rout, but for those first six innings, it was a tight one.

2019 Game 6, Astros vs. Nationals

After the Nationals won Games 1 and 2 on the road, the Astros went to Washington and took the next three, so Verlander once again took the mound with a chance to clinch. As in Game 2, Rendon plated a first-inning run, this time with an RBI single. The Astros answered with two runs off Strasburg in the bottom of the first, but Verlander gave up the lead with solo homers by Adam Eaton and Juan Soto in the fifth and left trailing 3–2. Again, the Nationals broke the game open in the late innings, winning 7–2 and forcing a Game 7. Astros manager A.J. Hinch ruled out using Verlander, who had thrown 93 pitches, in relief but did not rule out using Game 5 starter Gerrit Cole. He didn’t get the call either as the Astros fell.

In all, that’s not a great track record. Verlander sometimes struggled early, and sometimes was dealing until he wasn’t. He’s made three quality starts out of seven and lost a fourth one by lingering past the sixth. He hasn’t gotten an out in the seventh or later in any of those starts and has only topped 100 pitches twice. To be fair, he also hasn’t had much margin for error, as his teams have scored just 20 runs in his seven starts; the one time they scored more than three (Game 2 in 2017), four of the runs came in extra innings. That he’s never left a World Series game with a lead isn’t entirely his fault.

The good news for Verlander is that he gets another shot; having another chance to pitch in a World Series is no doubt one of the reasons he re-signed with the Astros in the first place. If Reggie Jackson’s line, “When you have the bat in your hand, you can always change the story,” is true for a hitter in a big spot, then same thing is true for a pitcher taking the mound in a World Series opener. Just by doing so, Verlander, at 39 years and 250 days old, will become the fourth-oldest pitcher to start Game 1 of the Fall Classic:

Another rough start won’t break Verlander’s legacy any more than a great one will make it. He’s one of the all-time greats, regardless of what happens against the Phillies, but his career will feel that much more complete if he pitches up to his potential.

Though the short and ugly starts of Bailey Falter and Mike Clevinger in Game 4 of the NLCS put a small dent in the numbers, thus far in the postseason we’ve seen a welcome rebound when it comes to starters preventing runs and pitching deeper into games relative to recent years. After two postseasons in which relievers threw more than half of all innings, starters have reclaimed their rightful spot atop the marquee. Even so, when it comes to October, the relievers we’ve seen have been stingier and more dominant than at any time in recent years. Thankfully, we’re seeing fewer of them — meaning fewer pitching changes and less dead time — but that’s of cold comfort to both the Mariners and Yankees.

As you can probably guess, that’s because Houston’s relief corps has been so overwhelming thus far. The Astros are 7-0 in this postseason, and while their starting pitching has been a major part of the story, their relievers have held opponents to just three runs in 33 innings (a 0.82 ERA) and a .127/.207/.227 line, with a 34.7% strikeout rate. As old friend Mike Petriello wrote recently, the staff — not just the bullpen — doesn’t have a weak link, even without having a late-inning lefty. Read the rest of this entry »

With a routine 73-mph comebacker off the bat of Aaron Judge, the Yankees’ season ended not with a bang but a whimper as the Astros completed their ALCS sweep to advance to the World Series for the second straight season, their third out of the last four, and their fourth out of six. Though two of this year’s ALCS games were decided by one run and another by two, the final result — the Yankees’ first time being swept out of a series since the 2012 ALCS — was a lopsided one, and it had an all-too-familiar feel.

Indeed, the Yankees have set a record by losing in five straight ALCS appearances (2010 by the Rangers, ’12 by the Tigers, ’17, ’19 and this year by the Astros). Including their 2015 AL Wild Card Game loss to the Astros, they’ve been bounced by Houston in four straight postseason meetings, an imbalance not unlike their own recent dominance of the A’s and Twins:

most consecutive times eliminating single opp in head-to-head playoff series:

2003-19 NYY over MIN: 6**
1923-62 NYY over NYG/SF: 5*
1941-53 NYY over BRO: 5
2015-22 HOU over NYY: 4**
1981-2018 NYY over OAK: 4**
1986-2008 BOS over LAA: 4

*=active
**= active + every PS H2H series

— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) October 24, 2022

Back in July, Yankees manager Aaron Boone spoke of the need for his team to surmount the Astros, saying, “Ultimately, we may have to slay the dragon, right?… The narrative’s not to going to change until you beat them in the playoffs, if that day comes.” But with another series loss, their season has ended in disappointment. Even if it’s by way of a short series — one of just four (out of 10) in which the team with the better regular season record triumphed — it’s a blow that has sent the Yankees reeling. Read the rest of this entry »