The flip side to the story of the Incredible Shrinking Postseason Starter — which, in fact, has only suffered more shrinkage since I published that piece about two weeks ago — is the expanded use of bullpens during this postseason. For the second year in a row, they’re throwing more than half of all innings this October, a situation that probably owes as much to the unique conditions of baseball in the time of the coronavirus pandemic as it does to analytically-inclined management.

Due to a combination of injuries and desperation, this past weekend’s three World Series games saw the six starters combine for just 17.2 innings, with only one lasting longer than four — and that one, Ian Anderson — was removed with a no-hitter in progress! Meanwhile, a total of 28 relievers came through the bullpen gates, an average of nearly five per team per game; they combined for 34.1 innings, nearly double the total of the starters but allowed just 10 runs to the shellshocked starters’ 24. Yes, the Braves’ use of the inexperienced Dylan Lee and Tucker Davidson to start Games 4 and 5 had something to do with it, but even Framber Valdez, the author of this postseason’s only eight-inning start, was chased after allowing five runs for the second straight turn. Valdez, in fact, has allowed 10 runs in this World Series, while the rest of his staffmates have yielded just eight.

Differentials like that, in which relievers have been much more effective than starters, help to explain what we’re seeing. While starting pitchers are often the stars who offer more name recognition to casual fans, given the urgency of October baseball there’s little sense in riding a starter who’s getting beaten up, regardless of the underlying reasons or the theoretical entertainment value. With the Astros carrying 13 pitchers on their 26-man World Series roster and the Braves 12, there are more than enough relievers to go around. Just one reliever pitched in Games 3, 4, and 5 — which is to say, made back-to-back appearances without a day off: the Astros’ Ryne Stanek, whose first appearance was just one batter and four pitches long. Only one other reliever in the entire postseason has pitched on three straight days, the Red Sox’s Martín Pérez. Read the rest of this entry »

Though they lost on Sunday night, the Braves still own a three-games-to-two lead over the Astros in the World Series thanks in large part to the work done by their bullpen. Due to the season-ending injuries to starters Huascar Ynoa and Charlie Morton, the unit has had to do a whole lot of heavy lifting, throwing two-thirds of the team’s innings (29.1 out of 44). What’s more, in Games 4 and 5, not only did manager Brian Snitker have to patch together bullpen games, he began them by giving the ball to a pair of pitchers, lefty Dylan Lee and righty Tucker Davidson, who barely had any big league experience at all. Lee, in fact, had never started a big league game before, making that move without precedent in any of the previous 115 World Series. The gambit met with only limited success, as both pitchers were shaky, but the Braves nonetheless managed a split, taking Game 4 before losing Game 5.

Lee and Davidson are hardly the first such pitchers to be thrown into the World Series fire despite a dearth of experience. In fact, such October surprises are part of a rich tradition. What follows here is a non-comprehensive look back at the Braves’ pair plus eight other pitchers with minimal major league experience before the Fall Classic (which isn’t to say that they’re the youngest), and how they fared.

Ken Brett, 1967 Red Sox (1 regular season appearance)

The older brother of Hall of Famer George Brett as well as two other brothers (Bobby and John) who briefly played professionally, Ken Brett stands as both the youngest and least experienced pitcher in World Series history. The fourth pick of the 1966 draft out of El Segundo High School in California, Brett rose quickly through the minors, and was just nine days past his 19th birthday when he debuted with two innings of relief work in a loss to Cleveland on September 27, 1967. At the time, the “Impossible Dream” Red Sox were 80-70, tied for second in a four-way race. When they pulled out the pennant, manager Dick Williams included the precocious lefty on the roster without hesitation because, as he later said, “He had the guts of a burglar.” Read the rest of this entry »

Only two pitchers have ever thrown a postseason no-hitter: the Yankees’ Don Larsen with his perfect game in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series, and the Phillies’ Roy Halladay in the 2010 Division Series opener. On some level, the Braves’ Ian Anderson was vying to be the third; in Game 3 of the World Series on Friday night, he held the Astros hitless through five innings. But even from the start, anybody who has watched this postseason — where starters have averaged a hair over four innings per game — and understands the impact of the year-over-year workload increases that these pitchers are shouldering following the pandemic-shortened 2020 season could have told you that he wouldn’t get a chance to finish the job. That was doubly true on a raw and rainy night in Georgia and with a rested bullpen behind him. Backed by just two runs, Anderson and four relievers carried the no-hitter into the eighth and settled for a two-hit shutout, giving the Braves a 2–1 World Series lead.

Houston’s first hit finally came via a chip shot — 39 degrees, 70.7 mph — into left field by pinch-hitter Aledmys Díaz, the first batter faced by reliever Tyler Matzek. It fell in just in front of left fielder Eddie Rosario; according to Statcast, the catch probability for the play was 85%, but with shortstop Dansby Swanson running toward him and the cost of missing the ball being the tying run in scoring position, Rosario chose not to lay out.

It proved to be the right move. In fact, just about every major move the Braves made in Game 3 proved to be the right one, particularly manager Brian Snitker’s decision to trust his bullpen, no-hitter or not.

Read the rest of this entry »

2:00	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, and welcome to today’s chat! Thankfully the technical snarls that knocked last week’s chat off the table aren’t an issue today; apologies to those who showed up to that one or waited around for it to materialize to no avail.

2:01

Jay Jaffe: As I’m on recap duty for Game 3 tonight, I did not write for today but did a piece about Eddie Rosario’s hot streak yesterday https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/despite-a-rough-night-eddie-rosario-ha… and spoke to Kevin Goldstein about Dusty Baker https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-audio-kris-bubic-chats-changeups… and my recent piece on his managerial evolution and Hall of Fame case https://blogs.fangraphs.com/dusty-baker-job-security-and-the-hall-of-f…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: Pitcher strikeouts strongly correlate with run prevention and future success, but the relationship doesn’t work the same way for hitters, in that a lot of high strikeout hitters have good power and generally strong production.

2:06	Jay Jaffe: Dick Allen should be a Hall of Famer. Dick Allen is not yet a Hall of Famer. Hopefully on December 5, that status changes (see here for more about this year’s Era Committee schedule https://blogs.fangraphs.com/with-experts-on-the-negro-leagues-involved…)

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the more endearing (or maddening) features of postseason baseball is the random journeyman who seemingly comes out of nowhere to go on a tear long enough that he helps push his team through to the World Series. In the grand tradition of non-stars-turned-League Championship Series-MVPs such as Eddie Pérez, Cody Ross, Delmon Young, and Howie Kendrick comes Eddie Rosario. The Braves’ left fielder went 14-for-25 with three homers in the NLCS against the Dodgers, and carried that hot streak through Game 1 of the World Series against the Astros, though his 11-game hitting streak came to an end on Wednesday night; he was also charged with an error on a play that helped break open Game 2.

The 30-year-old Rosario has hit .426/.471/.702 (207 wRC+) with three home runs and 11 RBI in the postseason thus far while collecting hits in every game through the first two rounds, and adding two in the World Series opener. All of those homers and nine of those RBI came in the NLCS, when he hit .560/.607/1.040 and tied the single-series postseason record for hits shared by Albert Pujols (2004 NLCS), Hideki Matsui (2004 ALCS), Kevin Youkilis (2007 ALCS), and Marco Scutaro (2012 NLCS). Rosario is the only one from that group to need only six games to reach 14 hits instead of seven.

Rosario’s arc is all the more remarkable because he didn’t even debut for the Braves until August 28, that after being given away for essentially nothing twice within the past year. After six solid but unspectacular seasons with the Twins, where his power was often offset by low on-base percentages and occasionally spotty defense — his career highs of 32 homers and 109 RBI in 2019 yielded just 1.2 WAR, for example — he was non-tendered last December. He signed a one-year, $8 million deal with Cleveland in late January, but hit just .254/.296/.389 (86 wRC+) with seven homers and 0.3 WAR in 78 games before landing on the injured list with an abdominal strain in early July. Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros knew exactly what they were doing when they hired Dusty Baker to manage the team in the wake of commissioner Rob Manfred’s report on the club’s illegal sign-stealing efforts during the 2017 and ’18 seasons. The septuagenarian skipper’s old-school reputation stood out as an effort to rebrand an analytically-inclined organization that Manfred criticized as “insular” and “problematic,” to say nothing of outside criticisms of the team’s methods as “dehumanizing.” Baker’s human touch and his skill at dealing with the media have helped to offset some of the anger and hostility directed at the team by fans, while the Astros have continued their deep postseason runs, presumably without the benefit of illegal electronic help.

The Astros limped to a 29-31 record during the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season due to myriad injuries and underperformances, but in the expanded postseason, they went on a tear, upsetting the higher-seeded Twins in the Wild Card Series and the A’s in the Division Series before falling to the Rays in the AL Championship Series, that after rallying back from a three-games-to-none deficit. This year, despite a rotation full of question marks, they overcame an 18-17 start, took over sole possession of first place in the AL West for good on June 21, and breezed to the AL West title with a 95-67 record. Since then, they outlasted both the White Sox in the Division Series and the Red Sox in the AL Championship Series.

In doing so, Baker became just the ninth manager to win pennants in both leagues, and before that, the first manager to win division titles with five different teams; he had already become the first manager to take five different teams to the postseason last year. Read the rest of this entry »

After a year in which its Era Committee deliberations were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Baseball Hall of Fame announced on Friday that both the Golden Days and Early Baseball Era Committees will in fact meet this winter to consider separate slates of 10 candidates apiece. The Early Baseball ballot will include candidates from the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues Black baseball, as I reported in August — the first time such candidates have been considered since 2006 — and in a welcome bit of good news, a group of five Negro Leagues historians is part of the screening committee that’s selecting the candidates for inclusion on the ballot.

The Hall’s press release did not specify when the actual ballots will be announced, and at this writing the Hall has not responded to FanGraphs’ request for further information. However, its Around the Horn newsletter sent out on Monday said that the ballots “will be announced in the days following the conclusion of the 2021 World Series.” Going by recent history, that will be sometime in early November. The 2019 Today’s Game Era Committee ballot was announced on Monday, November 5, 2018, while the 2020 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot was announced on Monday, November 4, 2019. Since this year’s World Series could extend as late as November 3 even without rainouts, all signs point to Monday, November 8 as the date both committee ballots will be revealed.

Both committee votes will take place on December 5, though the Hall conspicuously did not specify whether they would do so at the Winter Meetings, as various committees have done since 2007. This year’s meetings are scheduled to occur from December 5-9 in Orlando, Florida, but given both the ongoing pandemic and the December 1 expiration of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement — which could trigger a lockout — there’s a growing expectation within the industry that the meetings will be canceled, and so one can’t blame the Hall for its lack of specificity. Regardless of where the vote happens, the results will be announced live on MLB Network that evening. Read the rest of this entry »

As bullpen cogs go, Tyler Matzek has been an indispensable one for the Braves in each of the past two seasons, helping them win back-to-back NL East titles and get within one win of the World Series — and this time around, perhaps to outdo that. The 31-year-old lefty has become the Braves’ “Everyday Eddie” in October, pitching in all eight of the team’s postseason games thus far and generally dominating. His performance has been all the more impressive given his backstory, an odyssey that took him from being the Rockies’ first-round pick in 2009 to taking leave from the team six years later due to performance anxiety issues to pitching for an indy-league team called the Texas Airhogs before returning to the majors.

So far this October, Matzek has pitched a total of 8.1 innings, nearly all of them high-leverage, for a unit that has delivered a postseason-best 2.60 ERA in 34.2 innings — 10 fewer than any of the other three remaining teams, if you’re looking for a commentary on the stability of the Braves’ rotation relative to those of the Dodgers, Astros, and Red Sox. The starters’ comparatively strong performance (2.55 ERA, 3.25 FIP, and five or more innings five times) has allowed manager Brian Snitker to line up his bullpen to best effect, and that’s generally meant calling upon Matzek and righty Luke Jackson ahead of lefty closer Will Smith late in the game. After the Braves’ 9-2 victory over the Dodgers on Wednesday night, during which Matzek pitched a scoreless, 14-pitch eighth inning when the margin was still just three runs, Snitker gushed, “Our bullpen guys… all they do is answer the phone and get ready. And I ride them. I told them all they got saddle cinches on their sides because I have tightened that thing so hard riding them. They have done a great job.”

In his 8.1 innings, Matzek has allowed four hits, four walks, and two runs while striking out 13 (39.3%) on the strength of his fastball/slider combination. The runs and two of the walks came in Game 2 of the NLCS against the Dodgers, and they weren’t entirely his fault. Summoned in the sixth inning of a 2-2 game — the earliest he’s entered any of this year’s postseason games — he struck out Albert Pujols with two outs and a runner on third, then returned to pitch the seventh where he lost a 10-pitch battle to Mookie Betts, whom he walked before striking out both Corey Seager and Trea Turner on three pitches apiece. During Seager’s plate appearance, Betts stole second, so Snitker ordered Matzek to walk Will Smith (the Dodgers’ catcher, not the Braves’ closer) and then called upon Jackson. The intentional walk backfired, as Jackson hit Justin Turner with a pitch to load the bases, and then served up a two-run double to Chris Taylor, giving the Dodgers a 4-2 lead and charging the runs to Matzek’s room. The Braves would come back to tie the game after Dave Roberts‘ ill-fated and puzzling decision to use Julio Urías to pitch the eighth inning, and to win in the ninth via Eddie Rosario’s walk-off single off Kenley Jansen. Read the rest of this entry »

A year ago, the Red Sox were coming off an embarrassing face-plant of a season. They finished 24-36, missed the playoffs for the second straight year, and could only watch as Mookie Betts, the transcendent, homegrown superstar they had traded in February 2020, led the Dodgers to their first championship today in 29 years. Today, the retooled Red Sox are two wins away from another trip to the World Series thanks in part to Alex Verdugo, the most major league-ready of the three players they acquired for Betts in a deal that required restructuring — a trade at least somewhat vindicated by the team’s success thus far, whether or not they close out the ALCS, but one that still raises nettlesome issues about the way a marquee franchise has chosen to operate. Meanwhile, Betts has helped to position the Dodgers for a shot at returning to the World Series, and on Tuesday capped a four-run eighth-inning rally with an RBI double that put the Dodgers ahead to stay and enabled them to avoid a nearly-insurmountable three-games-to-none hole in the NLCS against the Braves.

Twenty months removed from one of the biggest blockbusters in recent memory, the trade continues to cast a long shadow over the postseason with the play of both Betts and Verdugo, the latter of whom has hit .324/.390/.486 in 37 PA for the Red Sox. Verdugo’s 138 wRC+ this October is fifth on the team behind the impossibly hot Kiké Hernández (269), J.D. Martinez (216), Rafael Devers (174), and Xander Bogaerts (166). Most notably, the Red Sox left fielder drove in the final three of Boston’s six runs in the AL Wild Card game against the Yankees via an RBI double and a two-run single, and plated two of Boston’s first four runs in their 14-6 Division Series Game 2 win over the Rays with a first-inning RBI single and a third-inning solo homer. He later made an over-the-wall snag of a Nelson Cruz foul ball and singled and scored the team’s ninth run.

Thus far in the ALCS against the Astros, Verdugo has gone 4-for-14 with three walks and two runs scored. On Monday, his one-out second-inning walk against José Urquidy turned into the first of the Red Sox’s six runs in the inning. In Tuesday’s loss, he finally went hitless, breaking an eight-game streak. Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t blame the Dodgers. Or don’t just blame the Dodgers. While the defending champions used Corey Knebel as an opener in back-to-back postseason games to finish the Division Series and begin the League Championship Series (albeit under very different circumstances), starting pitchers throughout this postseason are throwing fewer innings than ever. Thus far this October, starts of three innings or fewer outnumber those of six innings or more by 60%! More than one-third of all starting pitchers are getting the hook before they reach double digits in outs, and even the aces aren’t pitching deep into games as frequently.

Sunday night’s NLCS Game 2 between the Braves and Dodgers provided yet another example. Before Ian Anderson even recorded an out, he was down 2-0 thanks to a Mookie Betts single and a Corey Seager homer. He faced seven batters in the first inning, and while he had a 1-2-3 second, he put two men on in the third, after which manager Brian Snitker elected to pull him for a pinch-hitter.

Opposite number Max Scherzer, after being pushed back a day due to his Division Series Game 5-saving effort, held the Braves scoreless through three innings but walked Austin Riley and then gave up a titanic game-tying homer to Joc Pederson in the fourth; when the lineup turned over after he recorded his first out of the fifth, manager Dave Roberts pulled him in favor lefty Alex Vesia — the second time in three postseason starts that Scherzer has exited before completing five innings. For as much of an affront as this might have been to purists, the 37-year-old future Hall of Famer conceded afterwards, “My arm was dead. I could tell when I was warming up that it was still tired… I wasn’t going to be able to get truly deep into a game, and I wasn’t going to be able to get to that 95, 100-pitch count.” Read the rest of this entry »