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…)

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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 »

When the postseason began, a rematch of the 2020 National League Championship Series only had about a 21% chance of happening, according to our Playoff Odds. But after some particularly unlikely occurrences — not just the lower seeds advancing in the Division Series — here we are. Freddie Freeman became the first lefty to hit a homer off Josh Hader in nearly 13 months, and the first to do so on a slider in more than two years, while lifting the Braves past the Brewers in Game 4. The Dodgers won the Wild Card game via a walkoff home run by a slumping Chris Taylor and then eked out a narrow victory over the 107-win Giants in similarly heart-stopping fashion, with the winning hit in Thursday night’s Game 5 delivered by Cody Bellinger on the heels of a nightmare season. That’s baseball, Suzyn.

Unlike last year, this time around the Braves will have home-field advantage despite winning 18 fewer regular season games than the Dodgers, because the current playoff format deals a stiff penalty to teams sneaking into the postseason via the Wild Card door. Atlanta’s advantage could be significant at some point in the series, particularly if it goes past five games, but it’s worth noting the Braves went just 42-38 at home, tying the Marlins for the NL’s 10th-highest win total in that split; meanwhile, their 46-35 road record ranked fourth in the NL. The Dodgers had the best home record (58-23) and third-best road record (48-33), and just won an elimination game (and two of their three Division Series games) in enemy territory. The talent gap between the two teams probably matters more than the venue in which they meet, though in a short series… you know the rest. Read the rest of this entry »

Joc Pederson isn’t the only ex-Dodger thriving in October (excuse me, Joctober). Kiké Hernández is going to have to find a catchy nickname for the month as well (Kiktober? ‘Riqtober? I’m still workshopping that one), as he keeps adding to his considerable portfolio of postseason heroics after turning in the best season of his career with the Red Sox.

On Monday night, Hernández hit the walk-off sacrifice fly that sent the 92-win Red Sox past the 100-win Rays in the Division Series. Earlier in the series, he had a 5-for-6 performance with three doubles, a game-tying homer, and three RBI in Boston’s 14–6 comeback victory in Game 2, followed by a 3-for-6 performance with a solo homer and a game-tying RBI single in Game 3. Within those two games, he set a Division Series record with hits in seven straight at-bats (not plate appearances), one short of a postseason record shared by Reggie Jackson (1977–78 Yankees), Billy Hatcher (1990 Reds), and Miguel Cairo (2001–02 Cardinals).

Hernández also went 1-for-3 with a run scored and a walk in the Wild Card Game against the Yankees, highlighted by an assist on the pivotal play where Aaron Judge was thrown out at the plate. It all makes for quite a highlight reel.

Hernández is no stranger to the postseason, having made annual trips from 2015 to ’20 with the Dodgers. His list of greatest hits starts with his three-homer, seven-RBI performance against the Cubs at Wrigley Field in Game 5 of the 2017 NLCS, which did nothing less than help the Dodgers clinch their first pennant in 29 years; he added a game-tying RBI single off Ken Giles in the 10th inning of Game 2 of that year’s World Series against the Astros, though Los Angeles lost that contest. He also contributed a two-run, pinch-hit double in Game 3 of the 2019 Division Series against the Nationals and a pair of game-tying solo homers in last year’s NLCS against the Braves, one against Max Fried in Game 1 (the Dodgers’ only run) and the other in Game 7, followed an inning later by Cody Bellinger’s decisive solo shot.

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Regardless of where he and the White Sox go from here — at this writing, they’re on the brink of elimination against the Astros, down two games to one in the Division Series — the 2021 season has already been the best of Carlos Rodón’s major league career. On April 14, the 28-year-old lefty threw the season’s second no-hitter (nearly a perfect game). In July, he made his first All-Star team, and he finished the season having set career bests in ERA (2.37), FIP (2.65) and WAR (4.9), numbers that all led the staff of the AL Central champions. Under normal circumstances, the availability of such a pitcher to start such an important game would be a godsend, but the combination of Rodón’s late-season bout of fatigue and Monday’s postponement due to rain gave manager Tony La Russa the option to reverse his previous decision and bring back Game 1 starter Lance Lynn on regular rest, a choice that Dan Szymborski tackled elsewhere on the site.

It’s been quite a comeback for Rodón, who just over a year ago appeared as though he might have reached the end of his run with the organization that drafted him with the number three overall pick out of North Carolina State in 2014. To one degree or another, he’s been beset by arm problems for nearly all of his major league career, to such a point that only once has he thrown enough innings to qualify for the ERA title.

Rodón reached the majors less than a year after being drafted, but spent his first four seasons with performances that were right around league average in terms of ERA and FIP; he posted a 97 ERA- and 101 FIP- for the period and only once made more than 23 starts, topping out at 28 in 2016, a season in which he missed three weeks due to a left wrist sprain. The arm troubles showed up in 2017, when biceps tendinitis and bursitis in his shoulder limited him to 12 starts; recurring bursitis led to surgery that cost him the first two and a half months of 2018. Five weeks into the 2019 season, he wound up needing Tommy John surgery, and while he was ready to go to start the long-delayed, pandemic-shortened ’20 season, he made just two starts before being felled by shoulder soreness, then pitched just two innings in late September upon returning. The White Sox included him on their postseason roster, but in his lone appearance in Game 3 of the Wild Card Series against the A’s, he failed to retire any of the three Athletics he faced when summoned to protect a 3-2 lead with two outs in the fourth inning; the A’s took the lead, and while the White Sox came back to tie the game, they were ultimately eliminated. Read the rest of this entry »