Yesterday I slapped together an InstaGraphs post about a Jon Lester strikeout of Brandon Guyer. It was a called strikeout on a pitch off the plate, but it was also a strikeout Lester has recorded several dozen times before. That part, I found interesting. But the call was also important in the moment. It changed the Indians’ odds of winning Game 5 by 10 percentage points, and during the game I tweeted that out with a screenshot. I didn’t expect the tweet to blow up like it did.

This isn’t supposed to be boastful. Wow, retweets, all right. Nobody cares. What happened as a consequence of that tweet going around was that countless different people started showing up in my mentions. And wouldn’t you know it, but those people had opinions about the strike zone! Some people were convinced the umpires were in the tank for the Cubs. Other people were convinced the Indians didn’t have any right to complain after calls they’d gotten earlier. More people still accused me of whining for some reason, as if a screenshot and a fact are opinions. The overall response was emotionally charged. Maybe not a surprise, in a World Series elimination game, but people were stirred the hell up.

Guess what! The zone’s been even. The Indians have gotten calls in their favor. The Cubs have also gotten calls in their favor. The World Series isn’t over yet, of course, but through the five games we’ve watched, neither team has really gotten a more favorable zone to pitch around.

Read the rest of this entry »

Remember that Josh Tomlin isn’t even really supposed to be here. Not that there’s anything wrong with him, but the Indians like Corey Kluber, and they like Trevor Bauer. They liked Danny Salazar, and they liked Carlos Carrasco. If the Indians had their druthers, Tomlin, perhaps, would be a bullpen long guy right about now. Maybe he would’ve been left off the roster entirely. Not only will Tomlin now start a game that could deliver the Indians a World Series championship — he’s going on short rest. Don’t lose sight of how the Indians are a miracle.

Of course, by name value, the Game 6 starter matchup is frightfully uneven. The Cubs are happy to be going with Jake Arrieta, because a year ago, he was maybe the best pitcher on the planet. Tomlin, meanwhile, recovered from shoulder surgery before making 10 starts. This year, Arrieta took a step back, but Tomlin basically lost his rotation spot. Go off perception, and it feels like the Cubs have a great chance of extending this all to seven. Anyone who knows anything would rather have Arrieta on the mound.

Arrieta, see, is the more talented pitcher. He’s the tougher pitcher to hit. He has higher-quality stuff. The edge Arrieta doesn’t have is in recent results. In what amounts to the most recent history, Tomlin has done a better job of pitching.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not the relievers themselves that have seemed to give the Indians a bullpen edge. I know that so many baseball fans have reduced the Indians’ playoff success to the words “Andrew” and “Miller,” but Andrew Miller might not even be the best reliever in the World Series. If you look only at this year, Aroldis Chapman was no less dominant. If you look over the last three years, Aroldis Chapman was no less dominant. Miller maybe feels somewhat fresher; Miller maybe has to try a little harder. But Chapman’s arm is amazing. It’s incredible that he’s ever blown a save.

So it’s not about how well the pitchers can pitch. It’s been about when the pitchers can pitch. The whole advantage with Miller has to do with his versatility, how he can pitch in any situation in any inning. Miller has given Terry Francona almost limitless bullpen freedom, and we’ve seen how that’s worked. With Chapman, things were a little more rigid. You might say traditional. Chapman, they said, was accustomed to his routine, and you wouldn’t want to risk a disruption.

Sunday night, the Cubs risked a disruption. Joe Maddon asked Chapman to be prepared to enter in the seventh. Chapman got warm in the seventh. Chapman came in in the seventh. No one had to relieve Aroldis Chapman. Maybe it wasn’t so much that Chapman got Francona’d — maybe it would be better to say he got Dave Roberts‘d. But for the first time in the playoffs, Chapman was pushed to the extreme, and now the Cubs know there’s something new he can do. That information could prove to be useful as the series shifts right back to Cleveland.

Read the rest of this entry »

Like a lot of people, I don’t gamble, but, like a lot of people, I have done it before. I was a sophomore in college, and I thought I knew an awful lot about baseball, so I thought, you know what, I bet I can monetize this. I decided to lean on my baseball expertise to bet on individual baseball games. I bet for two days, I lost about four hundred dollars, and I haven’t tried it again since. I’ve learned more about baseball over the decade, but, have I, really?

If there’s one thing we know about baseball, it’s that we can’t predict it. The smaller the sample, the wilder it gets. But we can be so, so easily tricked, and never is that more clear than it is in the playoffs. In the playoffs, see, individual games are under greater scrutiny. And when you get to the World Series, people are searching for possible keys everywhere. *Everything* is important. This pitcher’s vulnerability could be exploited. That player on the bench will have a good matchup. The guy over there’s a bad defender. We examine these games in so much detail that we start to convince ourselves the games can be actually predicted. We convince ourselves the games will make sense. Earlier Friday, in my chat, I fielded countless questions about the degree to which the Indians would be screwed in Game 3. Road park, Josh Tomlin pitching, wind blowing strongly out, DH in left field. It was all lining up for the Cubs. It was so easy to believe, yeah, this is the Cubs’ game. How couldn’t it be?

You can stare at a coin all you like, but heads or tails will still come up half the time. An exhaustively-examined game in the World Series is not meaningfully more predictable than an unexamined regular-season game in July. Give it one game at a time, and baseball’s likely to baseball. Give it one game at a time, and Tomlin and the Indians can knock off the Cubs 1-0 in a pretty extreme hitters’ environment.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

I might need to prime you for this one first. I don’t know if this is something people are actually talking about, or if I just made this theory up. But it sounds like it could make sense, so let’s go forward. In Game 3, the Indians are throwing Josh Tomlin against Kyle Hendricks and the Cubs, in Chicago. That doesn’t seem to bode very well for the visitors. The Indians were already the underdog, and now they’re losing the DH and the home-field advantage. Our scoreboard page puts the Cubs’ odds of winning at 64%. You could argue a few points in either direction but the Cubs are supposed to win this game.

However, let’s theorize! How might you make yourself feel better about the Indians’ shot? We know Tomlin is by no means overpowering. He’s not a strikeout pitcher. What he is is a control pitcher, and in that regard he’s one of the best. He led the American League in strike rate, among qualified pitchers. He had baseball’s lowest walk rate, among qualified pitchers. Tomlin is forever around the zone, and, the Cubs offense just finished with the highest walk rate in baseball. Being disciplined about the zone has been a big part of the Cubs’ offensive equation. Doesn’t it make sense that the Cubs could struggle against strike-throwers, who consistently get ahead? Could Tomlin turn the Cubs’ discipline against them?

Pretty interesting theory, right? Yeah! No. Sorry, but, nope. Tomlin isn’t poised to turn the Cubs’ walk rate into a weakness. Sorry if I just spoiled the rest of the article, but if Tomlin is going to succeed, he’s going to have to do it simply by executing almost perfectly, just like everyone else.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a fundamental truth about the playoffs that everyone knows, but that’s also easy to forget. That is, the playoffs are selective for the best. They’re selective for the best baseball teams, and as a part of that, they’re selective for the best baseball throwers and the best baseball hitters. Come playoff time, it doesn’t matter so much that, say, the Cubs trounced all their opponents, because in the playoffs, everyone is at least pretty good. The quality of competition evens things out. Lineups are disproportionately good, but so are pitching staffs, and it can feel almost like a whole month of partially-diluted All-Star Games.

October selects for the best on-field product. But what about the on-field umpires? We know that umpires have to earn their way to gaining postseason responsibilities. We know it’s considered an honor to be an ump in the playoffs, as it should be. You’d think it would follow that the playoff strike zone would reflect this selection on the part of the league. As I look at it, the October zone does appear slightly different. But not in the direction of being better. Rather, it seems a little more pitcher-friendly.

Read the rest of this entry »

It would’ve been the thrill of his life to play in his first-ever World Series game, but I don’t think Anthony Rizzo’s going to be telling many stories. Though just being there is an achievement in and of itself, Rizzo finished the game 0-for-4, and he popped up against Corey Kluber three consecutive times. Rizzo is a fly-ball hitter, but he’s not a pop-up hitter. Kluber made him uncomfortable. He made the lot of them uncomfortable. The Cubs were defeated, and I’m sure Rizzo doesn’t want to talk much about it.

But don’t confuse a lack of discussion for a lack of remembrance. Rizzo might not have been successful on Tuesday, but he did pick up on a tell. And he brought that information with him into Game 2, a somewhat sloppy affair the Cubs took 5-1. Rizzo, in the first inning, doubled home Kris Bryant while facing Trevor Bauer. By WPA, it was the most important play of the game, and even just in the moment, it got the Cubs on the World Series scoreboard. Rizzo’s two-strike double was a big one, and had it not been for the night before, it very well might not have happened.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Larry Vanover was the home-plate umpire yesterday. At one point on Twitter I noticed he was trending, so, you probably know what that means. After one particular half-inning, Jon Lester walked over to Vanover to have a little chat, presumably to try to clear some air. There were disagreements. When the stakes are so high, it’s possible to see injustice everywhere.

Vanover, in truth, called strikes that were perfectly fine. There were borderline pitches, and any borderline-pitch decision will make half the viewers upset, but overall, the Vanover zone was good. Maybe great! Let’s use the artificially binary strike zone from Baseball Savant. During the season, 91% of the pitches taken within the strike zone were called strikes. Vanover called yesterday at 96%. During the season, 13% of the pitches taken outside of the strike zone were called strikes. Vanover called yesterday at 10%. More preserved strikes, fewer extra strikes. That’s good umpiring. He clearly missed a pitch or three, but that’s just part of the everyday arrangement. Sometimes I fall asleep without taking out my contacts. That’ll happen until we have lens-removing robots. (I, too, will not accept said robots until they are perfect.)

Read the rest of this entry »