One of the weird things you just get used to when you’re a hockey fan is the vague, non-informative reportage of injuries, especially around playoff time. If a guy has a broken foot, it’s a lower-body injury. If a guy sustained a concussion, it’s an upper-body injury. No one ever goes into specifics until a playoff run is over, nominally so as not to give the other team some kind of advantage. If a guy’s playing through pain, you don’t want the other team targeting his sore spots, after all. Once a team is eliminated, or wins the Stanley Cup, everything comes out, and everyone admits what they’ve been dealing with. By the end, nobody’s healthy.

Tony Paul’s suspicion is that, whenever the Tigers are done playing baseball, everyone will come clean about what’s going on with Miguel Cabrera. It’s no secret that Cabrera’s playing hurt, and we’ve all heard about his litany of aches and pains, but we might not have a true understanding of how bad things have gotten. I don’t know, that’s speculation, but Cabrera most certainly doesn’t look like himself. He most certainly didn’t look like himself — or perform like himself — in September, as nagging pains mounted. The Tigers, like everyone, are more than just one player, and they’ve still got a shot at a title, but they’d have a better shot with a healthy Cabrera, a Cabrera who doesn’t presently exist.

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Cliff Lee pitched for the Phillies in the World Series in 2009, and though Lee and the Phillies didn’t win, the ace impressed armchair psychiatrists and industry officials alike with his apparent countenance and composure under stress. One of my favorite baseball anecdotes is that, the next spring, in a team meeting, a coach pointed to Lee and held him up as an example of how to stay balanced and perform when the pressure’s really on. It was then that Lee spoke up and said, paraphrased, “actually I damn near s*** my pants.”

In a postgame interview Wednesday night, Adam Wainwright admitted to having been nervous, given that he was tasked to start a do-or-die Division Series Game 5. Wainwright’s pitched in a World Series before, and he already had 14 games of playoff experience, but you could hardly blame him for being human. Experience doesn’t make you immune to feelings. It maybe gives you a better idea of how to handle them. Wainwright was chosen for the postgame interview because he threw a complete game to allow the Cardinals to advance to the NLCS. For the second time in two starts, Wainwright was dominant, and though there’s no such thing as an unwinnable game, Wainwright is the reason why you talk about avoiding aces in October. The Pirates technically had two chances to win this series, but this is why it felt like they only had one.

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Something I like to look at after every season is a chart of the locations of all the season’s intentional balls. Intentional balls, of course, are supposed to be super far away from the strike zone, but out of any such group there has to be a pitch that’s closest to being a strike, and for some reason those pitches fascinate me. This project would by no means be timely right now, in the middle of the playoffs, but something that is timely is something very similar. Along a similar vein to intentional balls, we have hit-by-pitches.

Hit-by-pitches just about have to be pitches out of the zone, in order to hit a batter, since batters stand some distance away from the plate. These pitches aren’t thrown wildly intentionally, but the locations are generally way off regardless, because pitchers aren’t perfect. But out of the pool of all hit-by-pitches, there has to be a pitch closest to having been in the zone. What follows is inspired by Shane Victorino.

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The other day, in one of my chats, someone asked if I could design a dream starting pitcher, throwing any four pitches of my choosing. Of the pitches, I wanted a curveball, and of all the curveballs, I settled on Adam Wainwright‘s. There are a host of excellent curveballs out there — Clayton Kershaw‘s is famous, and Jose Fernandez’s will be — but Wainwright’s is spectacular, and I was also dealing with recency bias after Wainwright’s start against the Pirates in which his curve flat-out dominated. That curve was fresh in my mind, and the worst thing about Wainwright’s game ending was that I wouldn’t be able to watch that curveball anymore.

A funny thing happened on an earlier tour through the Baseball Prospectus PITCHf/x leaderboards. I was looking at 2013 starting pitchers, and I was looking at curveballs, and almost by accident, I noticed that Wainwright’s curve generated a good whiff rate, but Gerrit Cole’s generated an excellent whiff rate. Cole — Wainwright’s opponent in just a couple hours in Game 5 of that series. This was originally slated to be a matchup between two great curves. Now it looks like a matchup between one of those great curves, and another, also great curve. There are a few things we can take away from this.

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Prince Fielder ranks 12th among active players in hit-by-pitches, and you can spare us all the fat jokes because Reed Johnson ranks fifth. There are guys for whom getting hit is basically a skill, and this seems to be the case for Fielder, as he’s happy to find another way to reach base. Some of the balls that’ve hit him have hit him in the back. Some of the balls that’ve hit him have hit him in the butt. Some of the balls that’ve hit him have hit him in the elbow. Bringing us to a Prince Fielder HBP on Tuesday.

Fielder led off the bottom of the second inning against Dan Straily, and after falling behind 0-and-2, he got drilled by a fastball that ran up and in. The next guy struck out and the guy after that hit into a double play, so what happened to Fielder hardly mattered in the end, but this nevertheless seems like an excellent opportunity to gauge reader opinion on something.

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The reality of Jose Lobaton’s walk-off home run is that we don’t know what it’s going to mean yet. This is going to depend in large part on series context, on how the rest of the series goes, and if the Rays still lose to the Red Sox, Lobaton won’t be remembered forever. He’ll forever be a part of Rays history, but the next couple games will determine whether or not he becomes a legend. Dave Roberts‘ steal wouldn’t be Dave Roberts’ steal if the Red Sox still lost to the Yankees. It would’ve been a neat stolen base within a disappointing series. Maybe it’s not fair to have the significance of moments hang on the significance of other, related moments, but that’s the way things are. And speaking of things that aren’t fair, there’s the pitch that Lobaton hit out. I’d say that wasn’t particularly fair to Koji Uehara.

Something we know about pitchers: none of them are perfect. We know this because pitchers are people, and no people are perfect, even within their fields of expertise. Randy Johnson gave up hits. Lots of ’em. Mariano Rivera gave up home runs. Lots of ’em, kind of. Generally, when a pitcher gets hit, the response and assumption is that he made some mistakes. Mistake pitches get hit more often and harder than non-mistake pitches. But it has to be noted that not all of Johnson’s pitches that turned into hits were mistakes. Not all of Rivera’s pitches that turned into home runs were mistakes. One of the realities of pitching is that good pitches can get crushed, even if you do everything you want to do. That’s either frustrating or the source of some important perspective, and against Jose Lobaton, Uehara didn’t screw up. Against Jose Lobaton, at least this once, it didn’t matter.

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There was speculation that, had the Dodgers lost Game 3 to the Braves, they would’ve asked Clayton Kershaw to start Game 4 on short rest in order to help the team avoid elimination. The Dodgers wound up clobbering the Braves in Game 3, moving a win away from the NLCS, and now they’ve asked Clayton Kershaw to start Game 4 on short rest anyway. The official announcement was made earlier Monday, with Kershaw figuratively taking the ball from would-be starter Ricky Nolasco.

Generally, something like this is a desperation decision, but clearly the Dodgers are a team that’s not desperate. They’ve got two chances to get rid of Atlanta, and they were guaranteed to have Kershaw get one of them. Now they’re lined up to give the starts to Kershaw and Zack Greinke, instead of Nolasco and Kershaw. That is, if a Game 5 is necessary. In making this decision, the Dodgers have demonstrated that they don’t want to see a Game 5 at all.

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The A’s and Tigers are playing Game 3 right now, but they played Game 2 on Saturday night, and that game was umpired by one CB Bucknor. Bucknor is routinely considered one of baseball’s worst umpires, and Saturday he made a few questionable decisions, the most questionable of which was probably a called strike three against Seth Smith in the bottom of the second. Now, granted, the A’s eventually won, and there were two out and none on at the time, so it’s not like anyone really cares anymore. The story isn’t Bucknor — it’s Sonny Gray and Stephen Vogt. But there’s something I want to bring your attention to.

Justin Verlander had fallen behind Smith 3-and-0, then he threw a couple strikes. In a full count, Verlander came with a fastball, and it seemed to miss both down and away. Smith took it, in theory for a ball, but Bucknor ruled it was a strike, and Smith expressed his disapproval before returning to the dugout during the inning break. People on Twitter were upset, and even the TV broadcast noted the pitch looked like a ball. Shortly thereafter, the game resumed, and Bucknor got a little better.

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What wasn’t surprising about Sunday’s game between the Dodgers and the Braves was that the Dodgers won. Not that the Braves are any sort of pushover, of course, but the Dodgers had to be considered the favorites. What was more surprising was the manner by which the Dodgers achieved their victory. Starter Hyun-Jin Ryu was removed after throwing just three innings, yielding a pair of two-run frames. But the Dodgers’ lineup chased opposing starter Julio Teheran before the end of the third, and it ultimately ended up a laugher. Not only did Teheran allow more than five runs for the first time all year; for the first time all year, he also lasted fewer than five innings.

Both Ryu and Teheran were making their first-ever starts in the playoffs, and each could’ve performed levels better. Ryu, at least, pitched in games of some import in Korea — Teheran hadn’t faced these stakes, and the TBS broadcast noted that he looked like he was pitching nervous. He was said to look timid and young, with the Dodgers taking considerable advantage. This is the time of year when authorities all over the place give a lot of importance to a player having played in the postseason in the past. It’s important, they say, for the player to have dealt with the intense, persistent pressure. I don’t think there’s any question that the playoffs have a bit of a different feel. At issue is whether that matters.

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