Once the second inning rolled around Wednesday, Game 4 of the ALCS felt like a blowout. The Tigers put together a five-run inning, then shortly thereafter they added two more, and though the Red Sox did what they could to chip away, the Tigers at no point felt threatened as they coasted to a series-evening victory. But there is one interesting quirk: while the Tigers wound up winning by four, between their hits and walks and hit batters they racked up 17 offensive bases. Between the Red Sox’s hits and walks they racked up 17 offensive bases, too. In a sense, Wednesday’s was a game about sequencing, with the Tigers putting more bases together.

Which isn’t to suggest it was all a matter of luck, because of course it wasn’t. It was the sequencing in the second inning that did the Red Sox in, as six Tigers reached base and five Tigers scored. Jake Peavy walked three of 17 batters in his start, but they all came in the span of four batters, following a single. The first run the Tigers scored was on a bases-loaded walk by Austin Jackson, and Jackson walked on four pitches. All of the rest of the damage followed. What happened between Peavy and Jackson got me wondering about some things.

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Speaking literally, Miguel Cabrera is still the same guy. He still responds to the same name, he still has the same identification. He still drives the same car, or cars. He’s still got the same family, he still eats the same breakfast, he still has the same genetic makeup, and while he might have an extra new scrape or three, scrapes are experience and experience is wisdom. Cabrera’s even basically himself in the ballpark. He’s got the same inside jokes, he’s got the same uniform and locker, he’s got the same glove and he’s got the same stance. If someone were to point at Miguel Cabrera, and ask you “is that Miguel Cabrera?” there would be only one reasonable answer, and that answer would be “yes, yes of course, this is a very dumb question.”

But it’s plain as day Miguel Cabrera is not still the same player. Which isn’t to suggest he’s in the throes of decline — he’s in the throes of short-term physical agony. Come next season, Cabrera should resemble himself, but right now, he’s playing hurt, meaning he’s playing less effectively, and people know. It’s kind of been talked about. Never was this more apparent than Tuesday, when, in a big spot in a one-run game, the best hitter in baseball was made to look helpless by a good Red Sox reliever Red Sox fans still don’t trust. With runners on the corners and one out, Junichi Tazawa blew Cabrera away with outside heat, and the Tigers felt just about finished. It was a dark moment for Cabrera, and it was a moment in which he also tried something different.

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With Lance Lynn scheduled to start on Tuesday, it stood to reason the Cardinals would probably need a major contribution out of their relievers if they wanted to push the Dodgers to the brink of elimination. Indeed, the Cardinals did push the Dodgers to the brink, and indeed, the Cardinals did get a lot of help from their relief, with Seth Maness, Carlos Martinez, and Trevor Rosenthal holding the Dodgers scoreless from the sixth. But maybe the Cardinals’ most important reliever wasn’t a relief pitcher at all. Maybe it was another guy who handled the final four innings.

Obviously, the Cardinals had more visible heroes. Lynn himself pitched decently well into the sixth, all things considered. Matt Holliday hit a big dinger. Shane Robinson hit an insurance dinger. Matt Carpenter drove home the first run with a double. There was no one guy who allowed the Cardinals to win — a lot of different parts had to come together just right. Among those parts, though, was Pete Kozma, who helped his team in the playoffs in a much less surprising way than he did a year ago. Last October, for pretty much no reason, Kozma hit. Tuesday, Kozma just played the field.

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The Cardinals felt like they were in a good position, handing the ball for Game 3 to Adam Wainwright. The Cardinals lost, not because of Wainwright, but because they couldn’t score. The Tigers felt like they were in a good position, handing the ball for Game 3 to Justin Verlander. The Tigers lost, not because of Verlander, but because they couldn’t score. Verlander, on Tuesday, turned in one of the better postseason starts all-time, I’d say. Over eight innings he struck out ten and was made to pay for one mistake. But John Lackey and the Red Sox bullpen kept the Tigers shut out, with Koji Uehara slamming the door. And Uehara’s outing was not without its moment of interest.

It was bad for the Tigers when Miguel Cabrera struck out with two on in the eighth. It was bad for the Tigers when Prince Fielder struck out right after. But according to the play log, the worst play all game for the Tigers was Jhonny Peralta‘s ninth-inning double play. After Victor Martinez‘s leadoff single, the Tigers’ win expectancy was an estimated 35%. After the double play, it dropped to 5%. Hope was torn down as quickly as it was built up, and Alex Avila’s closing at-bat felt like a formality. The game effectively ended on Peralta’s grounder, and that grounder came on a pitch that followed a 1-and-1 fastball.

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Way back in July, when the Cardinals were good but unsure how good they would be, Adam Wainwright turned in a strong start against the Angels. Edward Mujica, however, blew a save and took the loss, the Angels walking off in the bottom of the ninth. It was an uncharacteristic show of weakness from a guy who to that point had been a dominant closer, and afterward Mujica knew exactly what he’d done wrong. For the first time since joining the Cardinals, Mujica shook off Yadier Molina. The first time he shook Molina off, the Angels hit a tying homer. The second time he shook Molina off, the Angels won. Mujica swore to follow Yadier from that point forward.

One of the exciting things about pitch-framing research is that we’re able to quantify a part of catcher defense that, before, we just had to guesstimate. We might’ve had a sense of who was good and who was bad, but we didn’t know what that meant. Now, we’re closer than ever before to understanding catcher value, but we’re still dealing with a massive blind spot. We don’t know how to quantify good and bad game-calling. True, pitchers get the final say, but pitchers and catchers work together, and some catchers have better plans than others. They say Molina’s the best, that he gets in the hitters’ heads. This October, Molina has taken very good care of Wainwright. Monday night, Wainwright and Molina had one particular disagreement. Moments later, the Dodgers had the only run they’d need.

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Sunday night, David Ortiz faced Joaquin Benoit with the bases loaded. There were two outs, and the Tigers were winning the game by four, but it was nevertheless a tense situation, with Tigers fans feeling deeply anxious and Red Sox fans feeling something similar to that, only a little warmer. Everybody recognized that it was the plate appearance of the ballgame — a hell of a lot was going to swing based on the outcome. That feeling is the feeling of leverage. Leverage mirrors intensity, and so by using the leverage statistic, we can more or less capture group emotional states. A low-leverage situation is one during which you might excuse yourself for the restroom. A high-leverage situation is one during which you might use the restroom where you sit. High-leverage situations are where heroes are made.

An ordinary situation has a leverage of 1. When Benoit faced off against Ortiz, the game leverage was just a hair over 2.2. Helping keep matters somewhat modest is that Ortiz could do no more than tie things up, but Ortiz did tie things up, delivering the best or worst possible outcome, and for Ortiz this is now part of a track record. Ortiz is considered the American League’s best clutch playoff performer. Much in the way that Carlos Beltran is considered the National League’s best clutch playoff performer.

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Nothing against Jarrod Saltalamacchia, but I just had to look it up to make sure that the game-winner was hit by Jarrod Saltalamacchia. It was an important hit to win Game 2, of course, and it was sharply struck, but that was a fairly obvious run-scoring situation, and more importantly, what people are really going to remember is David Ortiz. What was on people’s minds at the time was David Ortiz and his first-pitch game-tying grand slam. In the same way the US didn’t win gold by beating the Soviets in 1980, the Red Sox didn’t beat the Tigers on the strength of Ortiz’s slam, but it was the slam that provided the moment. What came after only make sure the slam didn’t go to waste.

Naturally, there’s the same issue as there was with Jose Lobaton: we don’t yet know how this will really be remembered, in the long run, because the series still has at least three more games to go, and an eventual Red Sox loss would color everything that came before the decision. The magnitude of Ortiz’s heroics will be determined over the course of the following week. But one does still get the sense this won’t be forgotten as quickly as Lobaton’s bomb, even if the Sox do lose, just considering the circumstances and the identities. The moment became an instant legend. So who do we blame? That’s how we’re supposed to do this, right? Who screwed up, to allow Ortiz to bring the Sox back? Or did no one screw up, and did Ortiz just pull some more magic out of his tuckus?

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The Cardinals’ pitching staff, obviously, is led by Adam Wainwright, and Wainwright’s curveball is the single biggest reason the team was able to slip past the Pirates in the previous round. Wainwright’s a veteran, and though he can throw pretty hard, he’s not known for his velocity so much as his movement and command. But behind Wainwright, this is a postseason staff featuring a hell of a lot of mostly young heat. Michael Wacha kept the Cardinals alive by nearly keeping the Pirates no-hit. Lance Lynn can run it up there. Trevor Rosenthal’s fastball is the main reason he’s so dominant. Kevin Siegrist and Carlos Martinez can blow hitters away in front of Rosenthal. Shelby Miller and John Axford have big heat, if also big question marks. And there’s Joe Kelly, whose fastball this season averaged 95 miles per hour.

If you’re being honest with yourself, unless you’re a Cardinals fan, Kelly’s probably a virtual unknown. He’s also tonight’s Game 1 starter in the NLCS against the Dodgers, and if you just glance over Kelly’s statistics, you’ll come away unimpressed. If you dig into the splits and isolate his performance as a starter, you’ll come away even more unimpressed. The performance numbers paint one picture of Kelly. The velocity numbers paint a picture quite different. The two different Kellys are somewhat hard to reconcile, but it helps that the same profile exists somewhere else.

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When the Tigers fell behind the A’s two games to one in the series, they knew they’d need either Max Scherzer or Justin Verlander to pitch well if they were to advance. As it turned out, they needed them both — Scherzer recorded some critical outs in Game 4, and then Verlander recorded a lot more of them in Game 5, starting in what would’ve been Scherzer’s place. For eight innings on Thursday, Verlander was virtually unhittable, removing any would-be suspense from a potentially suspenseful game. At times on Tuesday, the A’s would’ve figured this would be Scherzer’s start, if necessary. At times on Tuesday, the A’s would’ve figured they’d have Thursday off. It was in Game 4 that the A’s were in position to lock this series up. In Game 5, they never really stood a chance.

The question coming in was whether the Tigers or A’s would emerge from this triumphant. The question in the middle innings became whether the A’s would so much as get a runner on base. Nobody reached until Josh Reddick’s walk in the bottom of the sixth. Nobody got a hit until Yoenis Cespedes‘ single in the bottom of the seventh. There wasn’t suspense until the game’s final batter, and by then Verlander had been removed. On October 6, 2012, Coco Crisp led off Game 1 of the ALDS with a home run against Verlander. He hasn’t given up another postseason run to the A’s in four starts, whiffing 43. It’s an all-time record, and it’s active, pending the future.

For eight innings, Verlander mowed the A’s down. With one swing of the bat, he was given all the run support he’d need. After Verlander was gone, the A’s couldn’t seize their one final chance. This was a Game 5 decided by three separate fastballs.

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