The primary downside of the Chase Utley play over the weekend was that it happened, and that Ruben Tejada paid an unnecessary price for fielding his position. The secondary downside is that, because the play happened, it’s all anyone really wants to talk about, at least as far as that series is concerned. Which is too bad, because there’s a lot else going on, and as an example, I’d like to take a moment to discuss Noah Syndergaard. Syndergaard didn’t get the Game 2 win, but for a while he did impress, and he’s just generally fun to talk about.

One thing to talk about: Syndergaard made an immediate impression. There’s evidence that pitchers throw harder in the playoffs, and Syndergaard didn’t do much to hide his own adrenaline. According to Brooks Baseball, during the year, Syndergaard’s fastball averaged 98.1 miles per hour in the first inning, and 97.7 in the second. Against the Dodgers, it averaged 100.2 in the first inning, and 99.5 in the second before settling down. Of Syndergaard’s 20 fastest pitches of the year, he threw 13 on Saturday, all in the first three frames. Syndergaard was very conspicuously feeling it, and it took the Dodgers a while to catch up.

But if it’s the velocity that brings you in, it’s the rest of Syndergaard’s repertoire that keeps you engrossed. Already, Syndergaard throws one breaking ball with a nickname. Against the Dodgers, Syndergaard featured a second breaking ball, one he hadn’t played with much before.

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That’s it. That’s the whole thing. There are contact sports out there. A whole lot of contact sports. Baseball is not and never has been among them.

Sometimes, players do come into contact with one another. Sometimes, they do so violently, and sometimes, when they do so violently, they’re even on opposing teams. It’s not that the players are forbidden to touch, and it’s not like there’s anything you can do to totally eliminate all collisions. But baseball, at its core, isn’t a contact sport. It’s a bat-and-ball sport, part catch and part golf. Baseball should be played in the spirit in which it was intended.

You ever wonder why players don’t wear pads? I mean, catchers wear pads, almost from head to toe, but that’s because they’re getting shot at by a cannon 130 times a game. Batters wear helmets because sometimes the cannon has a calibration error or an attitude. Defenders wear gloves because sometimes the cannonballs come in hot. Defenders wear cups for basically the same reason. But there isn’t anything else. No other helmets, no other chest protectors, no other shin guards. It’s not because ballplayers are tough guys, impervious to pain. It’s because ballplayers aren’t supposed to run into one another, and when they do, it’s either a freak accident, or something that hasn’t yet been sufficiently codified.

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In the latest example of how playoff baseball is less predictable than a deer by a roadway, the Rangers just won two games in Toronto, with Ross Ohlendorf slamming the door, and with Rougned Odor’s baserunning arguably occupying center stage. In a game that sent 109 men to the plate, it wouldn’t be fair to suggest it all came down to one or two events, but there’s one event and one event only that’ll be dominating the conversation until Game 3. If you watched, you know what it is. If you didn’t watch, you probably still know what it is, because umpiring controversies have a way of getting around.

With two down in the top of the 14th, Odor slapped an infield single. That put the go-ahead run on first base, and then Odor advanced to second on a subsequent single. Odor actually rounded second aggressively, thinking about getting to third, but then he decided to return. Yet, cleverly, Jose Bautista threw behind him. There was a tag attempt, and, immediately, the play became everything.

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Thursday in Toronto, you might’ve noticed that it was Sam Dyson, not Shawn Tolleson, called on to close out the Blue Jays. Or maybe you didn’t notice — neither is exactly a household name — but understanding the usual dynamics of the Rangers bullpen is understanding a key team component that allowed them to charge to the playoffs. For the first few months, that bullpen was a liability. Then it quietly improved, turning into the strength the Rangers have today.

Dyson very quickly made himself the eighth-inning guy, serving as a bridge to Tolleson in the ninth. Thursday, it wasn’t that Tolleson didn’t have Jeff Banister’s trust; he just preferred Dyson’s sinker against the bats the Blue Jays were going to send up. That much doesn’t not make sense. Dyson arrived in a deadline trade that received minimal attention, but he was thrust into a role of importance that he hasn’t given up. In thinking about what the Rangers did, it’s worth reading a wonderful article about the Nationals by Barry Svrluga.

The Nationals dealt for Jonathan Papelbon, and some people suggest that deal even undid the season. Before pulling the trigger on that move, though, general manager Mike Rizzo inquired on both Craig Kimbrel and Aroldis Chapman. Writes Svrluga:

The Nationals wouldn’t trade pitcher Lucas Giolito, one of the top pitching prospects in the game. They wouldn’t trade shortstop Trea Turner, who they thought might be the replacement for incumbent Ian Desmond someday. The Reds and Padres each wanted two of the Nationals’ top five prospects. Rizzo moved on.

Any team would’ve heard the same story — if you want a shutdown reliever at the deadline, it’s going to cost you. Neither Kimbrel nor Chapman got moved, because they were deemed too expensive. Rizzo went the Papelbon route. He was OK with that at the time. Meanwhile, Jon Daniels went another route. With Cole Hamels, he got the Phillies to include Jake Diekman. And he picked up Dyson from the Marlins, giving up a minor-league reliever and a third-string backstop. Few would raise eyebrows in response, but it looks like a stroke of genius today.

Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.

Let’s think about reactions. Think about how people respond to things that don’t go their way. You learn a lot about maturity, which is a lot about emotional command. Years ago my stepdad told me he feels bad for people who are angry — anger is an ugly display, a senseless expression, the avenue of the underdeveloped. It took me a while to know what he meant. The thing about anger is how satisfying it feels in the moment. When provoked, it’s almost a craving. The thing about maturity is remembering the other moments.

Wednesday night, Sean Rodriguez’s anger was provoked. One of the enduring images from the wild-card game is Rodriguez beating the life out of a lifeless orange cooler, an act that’s previously sent Rodriguez to the hospital. To Rodriguez’s credit, he didn’t do that to another living person, not that he didn’t try. He was tossed out for throwing a punch; he subsequently threw several more. Rodriguez needed to let his anger out, the pressure having mounted, and the release was violent, paroxysmic. Rodriguez thought of nothing other than resolution through his fists.

Wednesday night, at nearly the exact same time, Jake Arrieta’s anger was provoked. That which provoked Arrieta provoked Arrieta’s teammates, and it was Arrieta’s teammates who provoked Sean Rodriguez. Unlike Rodriguez, Arrieta remained an active player in the game. And very much unlike Rodriguez, Arrieta channeled his anger into something non-violent and constructive. The night saw Arrieta demonstrate his superiority in more than one way.

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It’s always an oversimplification to reduce a baseball game to the starting pitchers, but reduce we do anyway. In our defense, the starting pitchers are always the most important players in any given individual game, so it’s not like this comes out of nowhere. But you can see this taking place with tonight’s NL wild-card game. It’s a game between two excellent baseball teams, two teams who deserve to play in full playoff series, but to a lot of people, the whole story is Jake Arrieta. To others, it’s both Arrieta and Gerrit Cole. Everyone understands there will also be hitters, but the game might as well be a pitch-off.

Almost literally anything can happen, but my read of the consensus is that the Cubs have the edge and Cole will need to match Arrieta’s zeroes. With that in mind, this seems like a game likely to be decided by a very narrow margin. With that in mind, any sort of advantage could end up being a hugely significant advantage. You know what could constitute an advantage? Knowing what the other guy is going to throw. I can’t speak to every pitch, but both Arrieta and Cole do at least have their tells.

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In a way, it felt like the Yankees were lifeless. Few fans expressed surprise when the team was ultimately shut out, given the way the offense had gone of late. The season is over, but it’s over by a narrower margin than it might seem. The Astros scored their first two runs with two swings, and the third scored on what could be best described as an accident. Neither team on Tuesday was dominant, and you can only wonder how it might’ve gone had the Yankees gotten another break or two. That’s the sort of thinking that gets people talking about the strike zone.

It was a story during the game, and it remained a story after the fact. Here’s a post by Dave on the matter. Perception was that Astros pitchers worked with a more favorable zone than Yankees pitchers did, and while a few pitches here and there didn’t make all of the difference, they certainly could’ve made some difference. Based on the evidence, it does indeed look like the Astros benefited more. A quick glance at the Brooks Baseball zone charts shows me the Astros benefiting by six or seven strikes, comparatively speaking. That’s a big enough margin to notice, and it deserves an explanation. Those of you in favor of an automated strike zone might well want to just skip the rest of this.

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Six months ago, we were all idiots. We were all idiots because we figured the Yankees were idiots for letting Masahiro Tanaka pitch. It felt like elbow surgery was inevitable, UCL tears being things you don’t just play through, so it felt strange to see the Yankees in denial. Oh, we all thought we knew what was better. Turns out the Yankees might’ve been on to something. Turns out those doctors have more than just pieces of paper. Tommy John might still be an inevitability. Greg Holland pitched through something like this for a year. The elbow still got him. The elbow might still get Tanaka, but tonight he’s starting a playoff game. Tonight, he’s the guy, at least until Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances are the guys. It’s safe to say now it worked out.

Remain in the flashback, though. Go back six months to when Tanaka made his first start. There was so much attention on his fastball — on its usage, and on its velocity. Observers thought the fastball would be a dead giveaway. They thought the injury would make the fastball worse, and they thought Tanaka wouldn’t be able to cut it without a decent fastball. Just about everyone, after all, builds off the fastball. It’s the pitch at the center of the pitch-type solar system.

In the end, Tanaka’s fastball actually gained velocity this season. He started 24 times, with a mid-3s ERA, and his average fastball was up the better part of one mile per hour. In a sense, the fastball wasn’t a giveaway. But if you stare long enough, you see two things. One: overall, Tanaka was pretty good. Two: Tanaka’s fastball was pretty bad.

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I have a great deal of interest in the Mariners having hired Jerry Dipoto, so once they made it official, I set about reading as much as I could about what he’d done and what he intended to do. As part of that research, I re-visited an old article at ESPN written by Sam Miller, talking about the Angels’ attempts to improve their whole player-development system. The article was more about Scott Servais than Dipoto, and Servais might not come to work with Dipoto in Seattle, but the article is just good regardless of what it might or might not mean for the Mariners going forward, and some of the way through I found the following pair of lines:

The Angels’ PD staff — half of it hired or in new positions since Servais took over — has become used to seeing its unconventional ideas tested. In the Dominican Republic, the Angels started measuring time of possession.

Time of possession is a familiar statistic to fans of other sports. It’s very much unfamiliar to fans of baseball, because baseball is the sport that doesn’t even keep time, so it’s not something you hear about. But, reading that section was all I needed. It put the idea in my head, and there was no getting it out without writing this post. Because of that excerpt, I’ve calculated time of possession for the regular season just gone. One thing’s for sure: you can’t say I didn’t do this.

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