NEW YORK — During the regular season, the Yankees went 27–2 in games in which their two towering sluggers, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, both homered. The tried-and-true recipe worked once again in the fifth and deciding game of the Division Series against the Guardians, with Stanton smacking a three-run homer in the first inning off starter Aaron Civale, keying an early departure, and Judge adding a solo blast in the second off reliever Sam Hentges. The long balls gave starter Nestor Cortes, who was working on three days of rest, an early cushion, and he cruised through five innings, allowing just just one run before yielding to the bullpen, which locked down a 5–1 victory.

“Incredible,” Cortes said in describing Stanton’s homer. “I knew from that moment on, all I had to do was throw strikes and be able to get us as deep as possible…. I didn’t know how far I was going to go. I didn’t know what my pitch count was. It was basically how I looked out there. And for him to give us that three-run lead in the first from the get-go to was huge for me and calmed me down to go out there and do what I do.”

Pushed to the brink of elimination when their bullpen collapsed in the ninth inning of Game 3, the Yankees will now move on to face the Astros in the American League Championship Series, which begins Wednesday in Houston. This will be the fourth time in eight seasons that the two teams have met in October; the Astros won the 2015 Wild Card Game at Yankee Stadium and beat the Yankees in a seven-game ALCS in ’17 and in a six-game ALCS in ’19.

The Yankees, who hit twice as many homers as the Guardians during the regular season (a league-leading 254 to a 14th-ranked 127), out-homered them nine to three in the series, with Judge and Stanton each going deep twice and Harrison Bader doing so three times. Game 5 marked the fourth time Judge and Stanton both homered in the same postseason game, a total tied for second behind Carlos Correa and George Springer, both of whom have since departed Houston.

Rafael Devers/J.D. Martinez
Carlos Correa/Jose Altuve
Max Muncy/Joc Pederson
George Springer/Jose Altuve
Manny Ramirez/David Ortiz
Lance Berkman/Carlos Beltran
Jim Thome/Kenny Lofton

— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) October 18, 2022

The Yankees’ homers went a long way figuratively (if not always literally) in a low-offense series. The Guardians collected 44 hits to the Yankees’ 28, but power and patience (a 17–9 edge in walks) produced a .643 OPS (.182/.273/.370), which outdid the Guardians’ .626 (.247/.289/.337), and they outscored Cleveland by a combined score of 20–14. While the Guardians collected 12 hits with runners in scoring position to the Yankees’ five, New York handily outproduced them there as well via a .926 OPS (.227/.296/.636) and 11 RBIs to Cleveland’s .535 (.255/.280/.255) with 10 RBIs. As my former Baseball Prospectus colleague Joe Sheehan likes to say, “Ball go far, team go far.” Read the rest of this entry »

They ran roughshod over the league for six months thanks to an elite offense, great pitching, and exceptional defense, posting a win total that hadn’t been seen in decades. Yet a stretch of a few bad days in October sent them home, consigning them to the status of historical footnote and cautionary tale. Somebody else would go on to win the World Series.

Such was the fate of the 2001 Mariners, though everything above applies to this year’s Dodgers as well, who won 111 games — the most by any team since those Mariners, and the most by any NL team since the 1909 Pirates — but were bounced out of the playoffs on Saturday night. A Padres team from whom they had taken 14 out of 19 games during the regular season beat them three games to one in the Division Series because they got the clutch hits they needed while the Dodgers didn’t. The combination of an 0-for-20 streak with runners in scoring position that ran from the third inning of Game 1 to the third inning of Game 4 — after which they began another hitless-with-RISP streak — and some puzzling bullpen choices by manager Dave Roberts doomed them.

There’s been plenty of that going ’round. The Padres, who won 89 games this year, were facing the Dodgers only because they first beat the 101-win Mets in the best-of-three Wild Card Series. Earlier on Saturday, the defending champion Braves, who claimed the NL East title with 101 wins this year and like the Dodgers played at a better-than-.700 clip from June through September, were ousted by the Phillies. On Saturday evening, the 99-win Yankees let a two-run lead in the ninth slip away against the 92-win Guardians, pushing them to the brink of elimination, though they rebounded on Sunday night, pushing the series to a decisive Game 5 in New York.

Upsets in short postseason series are practically as old as postseason series themselves. In 1906, in the third modern World Series, the 93-win White Sox, a/k/a “The Hitless Wonders,” took down their crosstown rivals, the 116-win Cubs, four games to two. In 1954, the 97-win Giants beat the 111-win Indians in the World Series. In 1987, the 85-win Twins bumped off the 98-win Tigers and then the 95-win Cardinals. Last year, the 89-win Braves felled the 106-win Dodgers in the NLCS, then the 95-win Astros in the World Series.

Such unexpected wins are a cornerstone of baseball history. As MLB.com’s Anthony Castrovince noted, in terms of the gap in winning percentage between the underdogs and the favorites, the Padres trail only the aforementioned 1906 White Sox in the annals, with a 136-point gap (.549 to .685) compared to the Chicagoans’ 147-point gap (.616 to .763). In third place is the 122-point gap from the 2001 ALCS between the Yankees and Mariners (.594 to .716), and in fourth is the 107-point gap from last year’s NLCS between the Braves and Dodgers (.547 to .654). The 86-point gaps between the Nationals and Astros in the 2019 World Series and between the Braves and Phillies in this year’s Division Series are tied for seventh. By that measure, seven of the top 11 upsets have happened in this millennium. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — When the season began, 24-year-old Oscar Gonzalez was at Triple-A Columbus, waiting for a shot at the majors. Six months later, he’s Cleveland’s Mr. Clutch, the man who has collected game-winning hits in extra innings in two of the Guardians’ three postseason wins. Last Saturday, his walk-off home run in the 15th inning against the Rays ended a four-hour, 57-minute epic and clinched the Wild Card Series for the Guardians. On Friday afternoon, he continued his postseason heroics by driving in the go-ahead run in the 10th inning against the Yankees via a bloop single, helping the Guardians to a 4–2 victory in Game 2 that evened the Division Series at one apiece.

The Dominican-born Gonzalez, a 6-foot-4, 240-pound slugger with huge power and arm strength, hit 31 homers last year between Double-A and Triple-A but was notably absent from Eric Longenhagen’s Top 48 Guardians Prospects list due to an approach that he described to me as “literally the most aggressive swinger in the minors.” Not only was he additionally unranked by Baseball America and MLB Pipeline, but the Guardians didn’t even protect him on their 40-ma roster ahead of the Rule 5 draft last winter, and he went unselected. He debuted with the Guardians on May 26 and hit a robust .296/.327/.461 (122 wRC+) with 11 homers in 382 plate appearances, but his 3.9% walk rate and 48.4% chase rate — the latter mark the majors’ third-highest among players with at least 300 PA — jibed with Eric’s reservations.

“He has the ability to hit the ball out of the ballpark, like he did the other day. But he also has the awareness to shorten up enough,” said manager Terry Francona afterward, referring first to Gonzalez’s series-winning drive and then to the 1–2 count in which he found himself against Jameson Taillon. “Getting the bat on the ball gives you a chance. And he’s young and he’s still learning.”

Gonzalez’s hit was just 58.9 mph off the bat and launched at a 39-degree angle into short right field, where the converging Anthony Rizzo and Aaron Judge had no chance. “[Taillon] threw the ball right by Gonzie his first two pitches and then he hit it. Didn’t hit it hard but he hit it. He got rewarded for it,” Francona said. Read the rest of this entry »

A flourishing youth movement was the major reason why Cleveland went from sub-.500 also-rans in 2021 to runaway division winners in ’22. By Baseball-Reference’s measures, the Guardians were the youngest team in the majors, with a weighted average age of 25.9 years old for their position players and 26.3 years old for their pitchers. But while rookies Steven Kwan and Oscar Gonzalez played significant roles in their turnaround, the biggest surprise on the team was second baseman Andrés Giménez, who after a rough 2021 season broke out and became an All-Star. He not only edged out José Ramírez for the team lead with a 140 wRC+ but also finished a whisker behind him with 6.1 WAR, good for fifth in the AL.

The 24-year-old Giménez was one of four players acquired from the Mets in the January 2021 blockbuster that sent Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco to the Big Apple, along with current shortstop Amed Rosario (who himself had a very solid season), and two lower-level prospects (outfielder Isaiah Greene and righty Josh Wolf). Even for a franchise that had endured the departures of All-Stars such as Michael Brantley (free agency in October 2018), Trevor Bauer (traded to Cincinnati in July 2019), and two-time Cy Young winner Corey Kluber (traded to Texas in December 2019) as ownership slashed payroll, the Lindor trade was a bitter pill to swallow. He had been drafted and developed by the team, becoming a perennial All-Star who was already laying tracks toward Cooperstown.

Lindor, who would have been a free agent following the 2021 season, agreed to a 10-year, $341 million extension with the Mets just before Opening Day, but followed up with a modest-by-his-high-standards 4.2-WAR season, during which he was limited to 125 games by injuries. If that was a bit disappointing — and in the context of the Mets’ 77–85 season, it was, particularly when paired with Carrasco’s 12-start, 6.04 ERA slog — then the other side of the deal wasn’t much to write home about, either. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — When Gerrit Cole signed his nine-year, $324 million deal with the Yankees in December 2019, he no doubt envisioned starting big playoff games in the Bronx in front of a packed house full of screaming fans. But while he’d taken the hill four times for the Yankees in the previous two Octobers, until Tuesday night’s Division Series opener against the Guardians, he’d never gotten to do so while wearing the home pinstripes. In his long-awaited postseason debut at Yankee Stadium, Cole shook off a recent rough stretch, dodged trouble early, found a groove, and turned in an impressive performance, allowing one run over 6.1 innings in a 4-1 victory.

Facing a contact-centric Cleveland team that posted the majors’ lowest swinging strike rate (9.1%) and strikeout rate (18.2%), Cole collected 19 swings and misses from among his 101 pitches (18.8%) and punched out eight hitters (29.6%). He allowed just four hits, including a solo homer by Steven Kwan, walked one and hit one batter. If it wasn’t an overpowering performance, it was nonetheless a rewarding one.

“It was very special for me,” said Cole of leaving the mound to an ovation from the 47,807 fans in the seventh inning, by which point the Yankees had come from behind to secure the lead. “The game’s not over, I left with traffic [on the bases], so it’s not the most comfortable time to acknowledge the crowd, but I certainly felt it and appreciated it… What a wonderful experience to have them behind us.” Read the rest of this entry »

Will the real 2022 Yankees please stand up? Projected to win 91 games, they spent the first half of the season looking a whole lot stronger than that, winning 61 of their first 84 (a .726 winning percentage and a 118-win pace) and building a 15.5-game lead in the American League East. Injuries and a disappearing offense — besides Aaron Judge — led to an epic slump as the team went 18-31 (.367) from July 9 to September 3 while that lead dwindled to four games. They righted the ship by going 20-9 the rest of the way, finishing 99-63 with their first division title since 2019 (and just their second of the past decade). While Judge set a franchise and American League record with 62 homers and several injured players returned, major questions linger as they attempt to win their first World Series since 2009.

Meanwhile, before issuing a two-game sweep to the Rays in a Wild Card Series capped by Oscar Gonzalez’s 15th-inning walk-off home run, the Guardians — the majors’ youngest team, with a weighted average of 26 years — surged down the stretch as well, going a major league-best 23-6 from September 5 onward. At 92-70, they ran away with the AL Central and were the division’s only team to finish above .500. Of course, as I’ve noted before, there’s very little correlation between a team’s September performance and their October success:

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Despite spending 175 of the season’s 182 days atop the NL East, building a 10.5-game lead by the end of May, and winning 101 games, the New York Mets lost out in the division race to a red-hot Atlanta Braves team that has played at a .696 clip since the start of June — and lost out via a tiebreaker, a 10-9 season series disadvantage. Now they’ll have to take the long route through the new postseason format, one that includes a potential matchup with the top-seeded, 110-win Dodgers if they advance beyond the Wild Card Series.

That can’t be taken for granted. Even with Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom available to start in this best-of-three series, all of which will be played at Citi Field, they can’t overlook the Padres, who can offer some top-notch starting pitching themselves and who beat the Mets in four of the six meetings between the two teams. Not that such results are predictive — and it’s worth noting that the aforementioned pair combined for one start in the six games (Scherzer in a 4-1 loss opposite Yu Darvish on July 22) — but they do illustrate the range of possibilities here. The ZiPS Playoff Odds pegged this as the biggest mismatch of the Wild Card round, narrowly edging out the Mariners-Blue Jays series, but with the Padres still having a 42.4% chance of scoring an upset.

Both deGrom and Scherzer looked all too human last weekend during the Braves’ division-s(t)ealing sweep, combining to allow five home runs and seven runs in 11.2 innings. If there’s good news, it’s that manager Buck Showalter didn’t have to send deGrom to the hill in Game 162 in hopes that the Mets would win and the Braves would lose, because that would have ruled him out of the Wild Card round had they lost. Read the rest of this entry »

All eyes were on Aaron Judge as he took the pursuit of his 62nd home run to Globe Life Field Monday night (the slugger went homerless), but it was Luis Severino who stole the show. In his third start back following a 10-week absence due to a strained latissimus dorsi, Severino threw seven no-hit innings before his pitch count forced him from the game. The Rangers did collect two hits in the eighth inning, but Severino’s outing offered the Yankees some reassurance regarding the oft-injured 28-year-old righty as the postseason approaches.

Facing the Rangers — a team that had already lost 92 games and that entered Monday ranked 10th in the American League both in batting average (.239) and wRC+ (98, tied with the Guardians) — Severino allowed just one baserunner. He retired the first seven batters he faced before walking Josh Smith, who was immediately erased via a 101-mph double play groundball off the bat of Bubba Thompson. Only once after the third inning did Severino even yield a hard-hit ball, a 99-mph fourth-inning drive by Corey Seager that had a .480 expected batting average based on its exit velocity and 25-degree launch angle (but not its direction). None of the 12 other batted balls he allowed had an xBA higher than .340. Read the rest of this entry »

Sunday wasn’t Charlie Morton’s best night, though it was hardly his worst. Fresh off the announcement of a contract extension for next season, and with nothing less than the Braves’ full control of their own destiny in the NL East race on the line against the Mets, the 38-year-old righty bent but didn’t break before manager Brian Snitker pulled him with a 4–3 lead and one out in the fifth inning. His performance was still better than opposite number Chris Bassitt, who was chased in the third inning. And for the third straight night, the Braves got home runs from both Dansby Swanson and Matt Olson and a save from Kenley Jansen. Their magic number to clinch the division and the NL’s second seed is down to one.

With victories over Jacob deGrom on Friday and Max Scherzer on Saturday, the Braves had taken a one-game lead in the NL East race — their largest of the season — and evened the season series with the Mets at nine games apiece. A victory on Sunday night meant that they would possess not only a two-game lead with three games left to play but also the upper hand in a tiebreaker scenario via their 10–9 record in head-to-head games. Under the new postseason format, so long as they do anything but lose all three of their remaining games against the Marlins in Miami along with the Mets winning their three against the Nationals at home, the Braves would get a first-round bye and face the winner of the best-of-three Wild Card series between the Cardinals and the sixth seed (currently the Phillies, who have a magic number of one over the Brewers). The fourth-seeded Mets would face the fifth-seeded Padres, with the winner moving on to face the top-seeded Dodgers in the Division Series.

So there was a lot riding on Sunday’s contest, to say the least. As a 15-year veteran who’s pitched for teams that have been to the playoffs in eight of the past nine seasons (plus this one) and who has appeared in three of the past five World Series (most notably closing out Game 7 for the 2017 Astros), Morton is no stranger to big games. It appears that he has more in store, not only because the Braves are playoff-bound but also because on Saturday they announced a one-year, $20 million extension with the righty, with a $20 million club option (and no buyout) for 2024. It’s essentially a rollover of Morton’s previous deal, in that he’s making $20 million this year and had a club option for $20 million next year. Read the rest of this entry »

Picking up where I left off from Thursday’s installment, while starting pitchers born in the 1960s are better represented in the Hall of Fame than those born in the ’50s or ’70s — but still far below levels from earlier decades — the period produced a handful of standouts who aren’t in. Some are outside because they didn’t have longevity in their favor due to injuries and other interruptions. They all went one-and-done on BBWAA ballots because they were far short of 300 wins at a time when the writers were only electing such pitchers. “Traditional” JAWS didn’t favor them either, but some of them look like much stronger candidates via S-JAWS, most notably the pair featured here, Kevin Brown and David Cone.

From the previous piece, here’s how they stand among the pitchers born in the Sixties:

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