Here’s a chart I used for a story I wrote last week:

I came across this while writing about Houston Astros left-hander Brooks Raley, whose 2020 season is marked by the dot in yellow. But had you come across this chart in the wild, Raley’s dot wouldn’t be the one that gets your attention. That would be the dot in the upper left, isolated all by itself with baseball’s best whiff rate and one of its lowest exit velocities allowed. If you’re the dot in yellow, it means you had a sneakily good year. If you’re the one off by itself, you’re probably one of the best pitchers in baseball.

That lonesome dot in the corner belongs to Milwaukee Brewers right-hander Devin Williams, who won the National League Rookie of the Year Award on Monday. Among the finalists he defeated for the award were a former third overall pick who reached based 40% of the time in his debut and an out-of-nowhere breakout utility player who helped lead his team to its first playoff appearance in 14 years. From where I sit, the decision shouldn’t have been all that controversial. Read the rest of this entry »

As a long, likely-bleak offseason began late last week, many teams opted out of the final year of players’ contracts, often with the seeming goal of beginning this winter with as little committed money on the books as possible. Tampa Bay will not bring back Charlie Morton, one of baseball’s best starting pitchers. Cleveland will not bring back Brad Hand, one of baseball’s best relievers. Some teams will use the money saved on these unexercised club options to pursue other free agents they feel will provide more value; many are likely to simply pocket the savings as a means of recouping what they say the COVID-19 pandemic cost them. The bar for players hoping to land any kind of guaranteed money this offseason appears to be quite high; in the eyes of the Houston Astros, left-handed reliever Brooks Raley cleared it.

Raley’s $2 million club option (he’ll make just a $250,000 salary in the minors) for the 2021 season isn’t close to the double-digit price tag that Morton or Hand’s would have cost their clubs, but the specific figure in play here doesn’t feel as important as the fact that Houston was willing to pay Raley in the first place. His numbers this season — a 4.95 ERA and 3.94 FIP in 20 innings — aren’t anything special. Other relievers with similarly-priced club options and perfectly good 2020 production, such as Javy Guerra and Darren O’Day, were turned loose by their respective clubs. In a depressed spending environment, the prices for high-leverage relievers this winter could turn out to be low. For Houston to commit to Raley before free agency even begins shows the team must see something valuable in him.

The Astros were already demonstrating their belief in Raley when they used him rather aggressively during this year’s surprisingly deep playoff run. In the ALCS alone, Raley pitched in four games, holding the Rays without a run across three innings while striking out six and walking two. That usage — particularly in close games — was reflective of just how thin the Astros had become at the back of their bullpen, but it also showed how fond Houston had grown of Raley in his short time with the team.

If this year’s postseason was the first you’d ever heard of Raley, you probably aren’t alone. And if you got curious and looked him up, you may have been surprised to learn just how long he’s been around. The 32-year-old lefty was a sixth-round pick of the Chicago Cubs in 2009; he pitched sparingly for them in 2012-13 before being placed on waivers. His run on the waiver wire saw him shuttled to the Twins and then the Angels, but neither found a home for Raley on their big league roster. Lacking interest from MLB squads, Raley answered a call from the Korean Baseball Organization’s Lotte Giants, who offered him a rotation spot he never relinquished. From 2015-19, Raley started 151 games with the Giants, proving to be a durable, if not necessarily dominant, starter. Read the rest of this entry »

When recording a segment with Ben Clemens for FanGraphs Audio last week, our Dodgers conversation naturally delved into their at-times off-kilter pitching usage, particularly in regards to rookies Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin. After following a mostly straightforward (for 2020, that is) pitching arrangement — both spending the year in the starting rotation — the two were shoved into very different roles in the postseason. May was asked to start, follow, take over the middle innings, or anything else the Dodgers needed of him. Gonsolin, meanwhile, was suddenly less a starter than an opener, and never quite got settled into a typical rest schedule. The result of this constantly evolving usage were postseason performances filled with several unpleasant memories for both young pitchers.

We did not talk about Julio Urías during this part of our conversation, even though Urías is younger than Gonsolin, just a year older than May, and had seen his role tinkered with just as much during the postseason. He didn’t come up because we were talking mostly about the pitchers on the Dodgers’ staff who had been struggling, and Urías had been great. He was great when he started, he was great when he was asked to throw in the middle of games, and he was great on Tuesday, when he closed Game 6 of the World Series by retiring all seven batters he faced and striking out four to clinch the Dodgers’ first championship in 32 years. Read the rest of this entry »

Facing elimination in Game 6 of the World Series on Tuesday, the Tampa Bay Rays were in desperate need of some offense. As he has so many times, rookie outfielder Randy Arozarena delivered. With one out in the top of the first inning, Los Angeles starter Tony Gonsolin threw a slider running off the plate outside that wasn’t able to evade the bat of Arozarena, who launched it over the right field fence to give the Rays a 1-0 lead. It was his record-setting 10th homer of the postseason; no other player in history has more than eight in any playoff run.

But in a game that would see the Dodgers tally three runs, one solo homer wasn’t going to cut it for the Rays. And in spite of Los Angeles using seven pitchers in a bullpenning effort, one solo home run was all Tampa Bay was going to get. After Gonsolin exited just five outs into the game, Tampa Bay totaled just two hits and zero walks over the final 7.1 innings. It was the third game of the series in which they scored two runs or fewer, and the second time they totaled five or fewer hits. Given those numbers, it’s hardly a surprise the team in the other dugout was the one celebrating a championship on Tuesday.

During and after the loss, much of the discussion surrounding the Rays had to do with the pitching staff — both the way it performed and the way it was managed. There was the controversial decision to lift Blake Snell in the midst of a shutout in the sixth inning, the sudden struggles of Nick Anderson, the disappointing pair of starts made by Tyler Glasnow in this series, and plenty of other points to dissect. The focus on the pitching side makes sense. The Rays are a team known not only for the lights-out arms they boast, but also for the unconventional-yet-typically-successful ways those arms are utilized. Tampa Bay’s pitching staff was the reason the team had made it this far, and if the team won the title, the pitching staff would probably be the reason for that too. It isn’t, however, the reason it lost. Read the rest of this entry »

Prior to Game 2 of the World Series, there was little ambiguity about how Brandon Lowe’s 2020 postseason had gone. He was dreadful, owning a .107/.180/.161 slash line over 61 plate appearances with just one home run. To say the least, Tampa Bay had expected more from him — with 2.3 WAR in the regular season, he was the Rays’ most valuable player, in addition to leading the team in a host of offensive categories. His manager, Kevin Cash, continued not only to play him every day, but position him prominently at the top of the lineup. But with one disappointing series after another, he was quickly running out of time to make a positive impact.

Mercifully, that extended slump fell by the wayside on Wednesday. Lowe homered twice and drove in three runs against Dodgers pitchers, as the Rays defeated Los Angeles 6-4 and knotted the series up at a game apiece. The two sides will take a day off before reconvening Friday, with Los Angeles right-hander Walker Buehler scheduled to face Tampa Bay righty Charlie Morton.

Wednesday’s tilt had a dramatically different feel from the previous evening’s Game 1, when the Dodgers rode a dominant starting pitching performance and an offensive surge in the middle innings to an impressive victory. Los Angeles tapped right-handed rookie Tony Gonsolin as its Game 2 starter, just two days after he’d thrown two innings in a relief appearance during Game 7 of the NLCS. The decision to use Gonsolin, as opposed to Buehler on three days rest, was a signal that the Dodgers were comfortable relying upon their relievers to throw a large chunk of Game 2 — it was just unclear when we’d see them. Read the rest of this entry »

Three years ago, when MLB.com referred to Charlie Morton as an “unlikely” World Series hero, the description was fitting. After nine years in the majors, most of which had come with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Morton had alternated between being acceptable and downright dreadful. Then, in his first year with Houston at the age of 33, he didn’t just pitch the best season of his career — he closed out the final four innings of Game 7 of the World Series to secure the first championship in the history of the franchise. Nobody in their right mind would have foreseen such a responsibility being placed in his hands before the season started, and yet there he was, limiting the Dodgers to one run in a game in which they needed five.

These days, Morton is no longer some big surprise, a novelty pitching far above the expectations anyone holds for him. He’s just a great pitcher who gets the ball in big games because he is clearly the right man for the job. On Saturday, however, the Astros weren’t the team celebrating with Morton. They were the ones who felt his wrath.

Morton threw 5.2 shutout innings while allowing just two hits as the Rays defeated the Astros, 4-2, in Game 7 of the ALCS. With the win, Tampa Bay secured its second World Series appearance in the franchise’s 23-year history, and a chance at its first-ever title.

The Astros entered Saturday having battled back from a 3-0 series deficit to win three straight and force a Game 7, just the second team in MLB history to do so. After being held to just five combined runs over Games 1, 2 and 3, the Astros finally outpitched Tampa Bay with a pair of one-run victories in Games 4 and 5 before unleashing a back-breaking rally in the middle innings of Game 6 to knot the series up. But unlike the Boston Red Sox of 2004 — who rallied from a 3-0 ALCS deficit to steal the pennant away from the New York Yankees and eventually win the World Series — Houston could not pull off that fourth-straight win, a streak the team mustered just once during the regular season. Read the rest of this entry »

If you watch a lot of scary movies, you learn to anticipate when the big jump-scare is about to happen. The music, after ominously trickling along throughout the scene, suddenly stops. The camera does a painfully slow pan around a corner or abruptly whips across the room. You learn to brace yourself when a woman is quietly observing her reflection in a mirror, or when a child peeks through around the door of his clearly-haunted wardrobe. There is a rhythm to these movies, and it mirrors that of Dodgers postseason baseball.

Game 4 of their National League Championship Series against the Atlanta Braves had all the familiar cues. There was Clayton Kershaw, heading out for the sixth inning of what had been a perfectly solid postseason start. There was manager Dave Roberts, leaving Kershaw in to face the toughest lefty in the opponents’ lineup. There was Roberts — gulp — leaving him in to face another hitter, even after he failed to get the first two out. And there was the Dodgers’ bullpen, searching for water to douse the flames but finding only gasoline, until yet another incredible season was just a game away from turning to ash.

The Braves defeated the Dodgers, 10-2, at Globe Life Field on Thursday to take a 3-1 lead in the NLCS. Atlanta is one win away from clinching its first World Series appearance since 1999, and a shot at winning its first title since 1995. Los Angeles, meanwhile, is on the verge of failing to reach the World Series despite owning the NL’s best regular-season record for a second-straight year and continuing a championship drought that has persisted since 1988.

Braves right-hander Bryse Wilson turned in the best game of his young career, tossing six innings of one-run ball while allowing just one walk and striking out five. The one hit he yielded came on a solo home run by Dodgers designated hitter Edwin Ríos in the third. Despite being a rookie who started just twice during the regular season, Wilson made it difficult for the future Hall of Famer in the other dugout to keep up. For five innings, though, Kershaw did just that. He allowed just one run on a solo homer by Marcell Ozuna, who was DHing, and otherwise scattered three hits and a walk while striking out four. He’d thrown just 71 pitches, making Roberts’ decision to send him back to the mound for the sixth inning a seemingly easy one, even if the Braves were turning the order over for a third time. Read the rest of this entry »

There are stories athletes must tell themselves to kick in an extra gear of motivation totally foreign to many of us. To feed the adrenaline that needs to flow through your body in order to square up a fastball thrown at 100 miles per hour. They are stories about the athlete being under attack; by a public that doesn’t believe in them, by the media that unfairly targets them, by the rival who has crossed and provoked them. Some of those stories are completely true, others less so — most people probably expect professional baseball players to do well, and the grudges they hold may be ones we aren’t aware of.

Everyone, however, was aware of the grudge between Mike Brosseau and Aroldis Chapman. The heater Chapman threw at Brosseau — who dodged it at the very last moment with mere inches to spare — has been replayed and analyzed since it caused the benches to clear during an otherwise quiet game on September 1, and served to ratchet up a tense division rivalry. So when Brosseau came up to bat against Chapman with the game tied in the bottom of the eighth of Friday’s do-or-die ALDS Game 5, the idea of the at-bat deciding both team’s seasons was simultaneously far-fetched and a narrative far too convenient.

Ten pitches later, Brosseau’s swing made the far-fetched reality. That terrifying fastball darted not toward his head, but over the inside corner of the plate, and Brosseau snuck the barrel of his bat through the zone just hard enough to send the ball over the Petco Park fence, and the Rays’ dugout into pandemonium. It was the go-ahead run the Rays needed to defeat the Yankees, 2-1, and punch their ticket to the ALCS.

The Rays will face the Houston Astros in Game 1 of the ALCS on Sunday at 7:37 p.m. EST. Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Yankees had a chance. It was the third inning; the bases were loaded, the game was tied, and Luke Voit — baseball’s home run champ in the regular season — was at the plate. When Tampa Bay Rays starter Charlie Morton fell behind him 3-0, you could practically hear the Yankees’ bench vibrating with anticipation. Then back-to-back pitches were called strikes at the knees, and there was a new kind of tension. Both offerings could have been ruled out of the zone to force home a run, but they weren’t, and now Voit had just one more shot to do damage. Instead, he grounded out harmlessly to the shortstop.

Then the Rays got their chance. Joey Wendle singled to lead off the top of the fourth against Yankees right-hander Masahiro Tanaka, who followed that with a walk issued to Willy Adames. Then Kevin Kiermaier turned on the first pitch he saw and launched it into the empty seats in right field for a three-run homer to put the Rays ahead. Tampa Bay added on with two more big homers in the ensuing innings while simultaneously holding the Yankees to their smallest run total of the postseason in an 8-4 victory in ALDS Game 3 on Wednesday at Petco Park in San Diego. The Rays, the AL’s top seed in the playoffs, are now up 2-1 in the series and just a game away from eliminating their division rivals. Read the rest of this entry »

The San Diego Padres knew this was the outcome they risked. Just two pitches into the second inning of his start in Game 1 of the NLDS against the Los Angeles Dodgers, right-handed pitcher Mike Clevinger made a somber exit from the game, wincing at a pain in his elbow. He would later say it felt like bones were hitting the back of his elbow. The Padres knew this might happen, because it was almost exactly what did the last time Clevinger started a game, back on September 23. It was the reason his attempt to clear himself for the team’s Wild Card series last week failed. This was the risk the team took, however, because it was still the Padres’ best chance at avoiding precisely what happened anyway — a revolving door of relievers being asked to keep the team afloat for a fourth time in as many playoff games.

It wasn’t the Padres’ bullpen that stole the show on Tuesday, however, but that of the Dodgers, who picked up another short start by Walker Buehler by silencing San Diego’s deep lineup en route to a 5-1 victory to open the best-of-five series at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas. The second game of the series will take place Wednesday at 9:08 p.m.

Buehler went four innings for the Dodgers while allowing just one run on two hits, but walked four and threw 95 pitches. Behind him, Dustin May, Victor González, Blake Treinen and Kenley Jansen combined for five innings of one-hit shutout baseball, striking out six and walking none.

For five innings, the Padres’ bullpen had walked a high-wire act without falling: eight walks, a hit by pitch, and an error in the field behind them, yet somehow just one run allowed. Those numbers suggest shoddy command, to be sure, but they also show the lengths to which the ‘pen was willing to go to avoid giving into the Dodgers’ powerful lineup. Of the 116 pitches thrown by Padres arms over those innings, just 58 were strikes. That led to a mind-numbing 11 hitters reaching three-ball counts; it also led to the Dodgers not recording a hit.

In the sixth inning, the dam finally broke. With the game tied at one apiece, Padres right-hander Garrett Richards walked Chris Taylor with one out before surrendering the first hit of the game — a Mookie Betts double to right-center. Left-hander Matt Strahm was then brought into face Corey Seager, who scored Taylor on a fly ball to give Los Angeles its first lead of the game. Read the rest of this entry »