If everybody in baseball were better at execution, offense would go down. Though the hitters would be improved on talent, hitting is reactionary, and if pitchers could more consistently hit their spots, it stands to reason there would be far fewer dingers. Pitches aren’t usually called in dinger-friendly areas — home runs, commonly, come out of mistakes.

Sunday night, the Cardinals went deep four times against Giants pitching. Matt Carpenter clobbered a Jake Peavy fastball that drifted out over the plate. Oscar Taveras got out ahead of a Jean Machi splitter that never dropped. Matt Adams punished a high Hunter Strickland fastball that, if Strickland had his druthers, would’ve been higher. And then Kolten Wong was the hero in the bottom of the ninth, taking advantage of a Sergio Romo mistake. And for Romo, it was a mistake he hadn’t made.

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Over 162 games, which is the full season, the Royals were the best base-stealing team in baseball, and it was all worth to them about a dozen runs. That is not very many runs, unless they were to all happen in one or two games, and there’s a reason we don’t talk about stolen bases much during the year. They’re just such a minor factor, of far less significance than, say, playing good defense, or hitting for power. So maybe now you think the Royals’ running game is getting too much attention. They went nuts in one game, but that’s it. I’ve personally never before devoted this much attention to a running game, but here I am, putting together another post. I’m deeply interested in the way the Orioles’ ALCS roster matches up against how the Royals intend to score runs.

The matchups are a little thing, but we’re so bad at predicting the big things in a short series I might as well try something else. The Orioles released their 25-man roster, and while nothing came as a shocker, there is one notable swap — Ubaldo Jimenez will not participate. Brian Matusz will particpate, or at least he’ll be available to do so. The simple explanation is that Matusz is left-handed, and the Royals’ lineup is fairly left-handed, so Matusz fills a greater need. That’s all true, but there’s also a little more. The Royals want to get on base and run. They could have some difficulty doing both.

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The Royals are an incredible story, and the Orioles are an incredible story, and when you break down a big incredible story into its component bits, you’re left with a whole bunch of tinier incredible stories. Among the possessors of those stories on the Orioles is closer Zach Britton, who, like a lot of good relievers, is a failed starter. Britton failed to build on a promising rookie season and was reduced this year to bullpen work, but in that role Britton has excelled. And not only is it remarkable that he’s excelled — it’s remarkable how he’s excelled.

If you’re familiar with Britton, you know the story. If you’re not, you will be. Britton, basically, has one pitch. He’ll mix in the occasional breaking ball, but nine times out of ten, Britton is attacking with his sinker. People liked his sinker when he was a starter and it flew in at 92 miles per hour. Now it’s coming in at 96, so it doubles as both a setup pitch and a putaway pitch. Kenley Jansen has his cutter, Jake McGee has his four-seamer, and Zach Britton has his sinker. It’s the pitch that’s allowed him to tie for the highest single-season groundball rate we have on record.

Britton’s sinker is the whole secret to his success, in that people can’t do anything with it even when they know that it’s coming. At FanGraphs we track pitch values, which measure the quality of a single pitch based on the results that it gets. This year, Johnny Cueto had the highest fastball pitch value. McGee came in second — he’s also a one-pitch pitcher. Then you’ve got Clayton Kershaw, then you’ve got Zach Britton, and of course, Cueto and Kershaw were starters. Britton had one of the most dominant individual pitches in baseball, allowing him to be a shutdown closer, and so far in the playoffs Britton hasn’t thrown anything but his bread and butter. He knows what’s been working for him.

A few people have remarked that when they see Britton’s sinker in action, they’re reminded of Jonny Venters. Unfortunately Venters hasn’t been able to pitch in the majors since 2012, so I found myself curious: does anybody else in baseball throw Zach Britton’s sinker? Does it have peers, or is it a standalone pitch? After thinking on it, I’ve come up with a method. And for simplicity, I’m ignoring handedness concerns. Left-handed and right-handed sinkers will be combined.

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Chris Tillman’s 2014 has a pretty great storyline. Approaching the end of July, Tillman had an average ERA and below-average peripherals, with 51 walks to go with 83 strikeouts. That’s not at all what the Orioles were looking for, and then all of a sudden Tillman turned his year around. Over the dozen starts he had remaining, he allowed 23 runs, with 15 walks and 67 strikeouts. Last week, Tillman was reasonably effective against the Tigers, with six whiffs in five innings. People who look at the Orioles’ rotation don’t see an ace, but Tillman’s the closest they’ve got, and he’s pitched at that level for a couple of months.

So, Tillman’s had a great second half of the year, just like the whole team around him has, and that’s one thing you could talk about. But in October, people love to focus on the matchups, and Tillman’s about to go up against the Royals, who made a name for themselves in the Wild Card game by running all over the place. The perception of the Royals, now, is that they’ll run you to death if you give them the chance. And yet, Chris Tillman doesn’t give runners chances. This’ll be a fascinating matchup for a number of reasons.

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Since it became clear that the 2014 Yankees weren’t very good, a lot of people in our chats started asking about the 2015 Yankees. Specifically, a lot of people started asking about the shortstop for the 2015 Yankees, since they’re not going to have Derek Jeter, in a different way from how the 2014 Yankees didn’t really have Derek Jeter. A name I kept arriving at was J.J. Hardy — he was due to be a free agent, and he’s pretty good, and he’d cost plenty without costing plenty. He seemed like a good option for a Yankees team that might not want to break the bank. Also, he’s not an option anymore.

In the break between playoff series, the Orioles have signed Hardy to a multi-year extension:

Source: Hardy deal 3 years, $40 mil with $6.5 mil deferred. Vesting option 4th year based on ABs #orioles

— Roch Kubatko (@masnRoch) October 9, 2014

In re-signing Hardy, the Orioles are getting for about market value a player who is no longer young but who is not yet a problem. That sentence is all the analysis you need, but now let’s get into some details you might want.

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Whether or not you believe baseball games take too long, whether or not you believe they’re trending in a bad direction, I think everybody can agree that your average game includes too much time during which nothing is happening. So to want to cut down on that is noble, and baseball’s put together a Pace of Game Committee to try to fit these things back under three hours. Already, they’re testing out a variety of proposed tweaks, and while obviously nothing is yet official for the major-league game, here’s something we could see during the regular season in the near future:

Intentional walks will no longer include the pitcher lobbing four balls outside the strike zone. Instead, the manager will signal to the home-plate umpire and the batter will take first base.

So, automatic intentional walks. People have talked about this one for a while. Tuesday night, Aaron Barrett pitched.

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During the regular season, the Dodgers went 23-4 in games started by Clayton Kershaw, and 20-1 since the beginning of June. Kershaw and the Dodgers started to feel invincible, so, naturally, with Kershaw in the playoffs the Dodgers went 0-2, their year ending on a Tuesday in St. Louis. Plenty of things happened in Game 4 that played a role in determining the outcome, but this tells an awful lot of the story:

Kershaw’s final pitch of 2014 was a home run that turned a two-run lead into a one-run deficit. Under ordinary circumstances, that would just be a thing that happened. However, Kershaw had gone beyond 100 pitches, on short rest, in the playoffs. Despite consensus opinion, the Dodgers did have a bullpen, and a loss meant their season was over. So a tremendous number of people now believe Kershaw shouldn’t have pitched in the seventh, that Don Mattingly hung on a few minutes too long. And, certainly, we here have talked an awful lot about the need to be aggressive with bullpen usage in October. To talk this particular case through, from both sides, I’ve enlisted the help of my own brain. Usually it likes to sit my posts out, but this is a special circumstance.

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In the Dodgers/Cardinals game Monday night, Dale Scott served as the home-plate umpire, and when the game was over Matt Kemp couldn’t help but complain to the media that Scott had been terrible. Umpires have had better games, and umpires have had worse games, but one could at least understand Kemp’s frustration, given what happened to him in the top of the ninth. And what happened to Kemp in the top of the ninth really captures the whole problem with the human-called strike zone. Nothing you’re going to read below is going to be new to you, because this has been the problem forever, but the specific sequence with Kemp was too incredible not to acknowledge. In not writing about Kemp’s situation specifically, I’ll begin by writing about Kemp’s situation specifically.

This post might have my favorite-ever .gif. At least, it’s my favorite .gif so far of the month. I love it because of how much I hate it.

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