The Astros took a two-games-to-none lead over the Yankees in the American League Championship Series on Thursday night, as Alex Bregman’s three-run homer backed seven strong innings by Framber Valdez, whose two runs allowed counted as unearned due to his two-error play on a Giancarlo Stanton chopper. It was the second night in a row that an Astros starter stifled the Yankees, as Justin Verlander held them to one run over six innings while striking out 11.

The Yankees had Verlander on the ropes, forcing the 39-year-old righty to throw 66 pitches in the first three innings, during which he allowed six baserunners including a solo homer by Harrison Bader. Verlander got the strikeouts he needed to escape those big jams, however, and soon he went on a roll, striking out six straight hitters (tying a postseason record he already shared) and nine of his final 11 — reclaiming the all-time postseason strikeout lead along the way — before yielding to the bullpen, which continued to dominate Yankees hitters in a 4-2 victory in the ALCS opener.

Even given that he got knocked around for six runs and 10 hits in four innings by the Mariners in his Division Series start, Verlander probably had a longer leash than most due to his Hall of Fame resumé and manager Dusty Baker’s trust in him. He also had the wind at his back, so to speak. On the heels of a regular season in which per-game scoring fell 5.5% (from 4.53 runs per game to 4.28), in which the league-wide OPS decreased for the third straight season (from .758 in 2019 to .740 in ’20, .728 in ’21, and .706 this year), and in which starting pitcher usage increased for the second year in a row, starters are working deeper into games in the postseason than at any time since 2015. Read the rest of this entry »

For the sixth consecutive season, the Astros are in the American League Championship Series, and for the third time in that span, they’ll face the Yankees for a chance to play in the World Series. They beat the Yankees in seven games in 2017 before advancing to defeat the Dodgers, victories now tainted by the subsequent revelations regarding their use of illegal electronic sign stealing (which, yes, included the postseason). Amid further allegations of sign-stealing, they beat the Yankees in six games in 2019 before losing to the Nationals in the World Series. Suffice it to say, this is not a friendly rivalry, though the Yankees have publicly downplayed its relevance as it pertains to this matchup.

Both of the Astros’ ALCS victories over the Yankees came with A.J. Hinch at the helm, but Dusty Baker has taken over since. He’s trying to take them back to the World Series for the second season in a row — they lost to the Braves in six games last year — and secure the first championship of his 25-year career as a manager. The 73-year-old Baker would surpass 72-year-old Jack McKeon as the oldest manager to win a World Series, but first things first, the Astros have to get there. After winning an AL-high 106 games and securing home-field advantage for as long as they’re still playing, the Astros swept the Mariners in a Division Series much closer than its three-games-to-none outcome suggests, with the games decided by a total of four runs and the two bookend games won in Houston’s final half-inning; the finale extended to 18 innings and ended with a 1-0 score via Jeremy Peña‘s home run. Yordan Alvarez was the big star in the series, hitting a walk-off three-run homer in Game 1 to complete a comeback from a 7-3 deficit and then a two-run, go-ahead shot in Game 2; his seven RBIs accounted for more than half of Houston’s 13 runs. Alvarez (4-for-15), Alex Bregman (5-for-15 with a double and a homer) and Yuli Gurriel (6-for-15 with a homer) together accounted for 15 of the Astros’ 28 hits, masking Jose Altuve’s 0-for-16 performance. Meanwhile, a dominant Astros’ bullpen combined to allow just one run and nine hits in 20.1 innings, with a total of eight relievers combining to strike out 23 batters while walking only five.

Where the Astros swept their way into the ALCS, the 99-win Yankees not only had to go the distance against the Guardians but needed an extra day to do so because rain on Monday night forced the second postponement of the series. Stellar work from Gerrit Cole in his two starts, a strong start from Nestor Cortes on three days of rest, some very good work by a banged-up bullpen, and a 9-3 advantage in home runs — including three by newcomer Harrison Bader and two apiece by Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton — helped to elevate the Yankees past the upstart Guardians. They didn’t have much time to celebrate on Tuesday night; inside of an hour after the final out, the plastic sheets protecting the clubhouse from the spray of champagne were taken down so that the players could fly to Houston. Read the rest of this entry »

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:

Read the rest of this entry »

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 »