The pivotal and most crucial decision of Game 5 of the World Series was attended by a wave of boos, even as Dave Roberts got it right.

Amid the carnage and chaos at the end of Game 4 a scant 20 hours prior was the realization that the fulcrum of the series was now the left arm of Clayton Kershaw. That he would be the man on the mound was already known, as he’d been announced as the scheduled starter for Game 5 well before then, but the circumstances surrounding his turn swung as sharply as Game 4 itself. In the moments before Brett Phillips overturned the world, Kershaw was going to take the mound as the man to end Los Angeles’ three-decade run without a title. In the moments after, he became the man who would have to overcome his checkered postseason past to break the deadlock and put the Dodgers on the doorstep of a championship. If he couldn’t, Los Angeles would be facing the end of the road in Game 6.

It’s both unfair and tiresome that the playoffs always seem to swing around Kershaw, but he warps the series around him, a gravity well that sucks up matter and turns it into white-hot takes. There’s also the fact that the Clayton Kershaw Postseason Narrative™ has, for the most part, accurately reflected his October body of work, full of struggles and heartbreaking losses. The irony of these playoffs is that, one weak NLCS start aside, Kershaw has looked more like his regular-season self. Coming into Game 5, his 2020 postseason body of work consisted of eight runs allowed in 25 innings — a 2.88 ERA — and 31 strikeouts, and he was superb in Game 1, holding the Rays to one run in six innings. This is the Kershaw we all know and love. Read the rest of this entry »

8:02	Dan Szymborski: Good evening!

8:03	Dan Szymborski: I actually have something on this for the morning.

8:03	Dan Szymborski: Every playoff series has an awkward narrative.

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The 2004 movie Primer is widely considered the most complicated movie plot of all time. Two engineers travel back in time again — and again — and maybe before?? — and again in an attempt to mold events to their own benefit. It’s a truly ridiculous, convoluted mess — and it pales in comparison to what the Dodgers and Rays did last night in Game 4 of the World Series.

Let’s begin at the beginning. Ryan Yarbrough took the mound for the Rays, on three days’ rest after a relief appearance in the first game of the series, and he wasn’t sharp. He surrendered solo home runs to Justin Turner and Corey Seager, and scattered three other hits and a walk while striking out only one batter. He was out of the game in the top of the fourth.

Julio Urías, his counterpart, flirted with brilliance. He struck out nine Rays out of the 18 he faced, bullying the opposing lineup to the tune of 20 swinging strikes. Tampa Bay whiffed 17 times on his fastball alone, and his curveball accounted for another 10 called strikes. Naturally, the Rays tagged him for two home runs — a Randy Arozarena first-pitch ambush and a full-count moonshot from Hunter Renfroe. The Dodgers had added a run in the top of the fifth, so Urías left with a 3-2 lead.

LA added another run in the sixth inning,, and the game felt like it might start getting away from Tampa Bay in a hurry. The Dodgers bullpen isn’t airtight, but the Rays’ own bullpen hadn’t been able to slow down opposing hitters all series, and they were running out of good options to fill innings. What was the offense going to do, score six runs in four innings or something? Read the rest of this entry »

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I’ve been thinking about distance a lot lately. The space we must keep from each other, the proximity of the most turbulent election of our lifetimes, and how the former often exacerbates the stress of the latter.

Baseball cannot provide a complete escape, of course, and the specter of distance loomed again prior to the start of Game 3. Just before first pitch, I couldn’t help but wince as the camera panned around a not particularly distanced crowd under the roof of Globe Life Field. Responsible countries with far fewer cases have maintained much stricter attendance measures at sporting events. Here in the U.S., there may be good reasons to allow 11,447 people into a big league ballpark right now, but they evade me.

To add another uncomfortable variable, a rainy forecast prompted the powers that be to close Globe Life Park’s retractable roof. I’m not really sure whether the closure made the stadium any more dangerous, but it certainly couldn’t have helped. At least one writer stayed away from the pressbox, though the roof did nothing to diminish gatherings down the first and third base lines. With cases spiking around the country — up 21% in Texas over the past week — Tom Verducci’s hasty declaration that the league had concluded fans were no less safe with the roof closed didn’t inspire much confidence. Read the rest of this entry »

8:02	Jay Jaffe: Good evening and welcome to the chat! I’m popping in for a few minutes here but i’ll have to duck out soon t help put the kiddo to bed.

8:03	Jay Jaffe: It’s an odd coincidence that one of those Astros is again facing the Dodgers in the World Series. Morton was the guy who closed out Game 7 with four innings of one-run ball. He obviously wasn’t hitting but he’s said he was aware of the trash can banging

8:04	Jay Jaffe: https://www.mlb.com/news/charlie-morton-on-astros-sign-stealing

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Between Randy Arozarena’s remarkable postseason and Mookie Betts’ tour-de-force, there have been plenty of standout performances this October. But what Corey Seager has done in the playoffs is just as impressive. He earned the NLCS MVP award after completely demolishing the Braves pitching staff with nine hits, including five home runs and two doubles. His homer in the eighth inning of Game 2 of the World Series marked his seventh dinger of the postseason, the most hit by any shortstop in a single playoff year.

For Seager, this October has been the culmination of a year in which he’s returned to form. After injuring his elbow in early 2018, which led to Tommy John surgery, he struggled to regain his previous level of production the following season. From 2015 through April of 2018, he posted a 133 wRC+, winning the NL Rookie of the Year award in 2016 and earning All-Star honors in both ’16 and ’17. Last year, his offensive production fell to just 13% above league average, and he missed about a month of the season with a hamstring injury. But the late start to the 2020 campaign was a blessing in disguise for Seager, as the additional time off allowed him to heal and strengthen himself. Here’s how he described the state of his body to Pedro Moura of The Athletic:

“Last year especially, I just wasn’t physically as strong as I’d have liked to have been. Your body kind of changes. You get tired, things start changing positions on you. Just being strong again and being healthy again has definitely helped that.”

In 2019, Seager’s hard hit rate was just 38.2% and his average exit velocity was just 88.8 mph, both career lows. Both of those marks rebounded to career highs in 2020: a 55.9% hard hit rate and a 93.2 mph average exit velocity. That’s a stark illustration of his rebuilt strength. Read the rest of this entry »

Watching Mookie Betts on a daily basis makes it difficult to understand how his teams ever lose, though they did in Game 2 of the World Series on Wednesday night, in part because the Rays kept him in check. The 28-year-old right fielder is one of the game’s top hitters, but his contributions are hardly confined to the batter’s box, and during this postseason — as it’s been throughout his seven-year major league career — he has amply illustrated just how well-rounded his game is.

In Tuesday’s World Series-opening 8-3 victory, Betts put on a show with his baserunning, that after working a five-pitch leadoff walk against a flagging Tyler Glasnow to start the fifth inning. The Rays had just trimmed the Dodgers’ lead to 2-1, so when Betts stole second and then third base — the latter at the front end of a double steal with Corey Seager, who also walked — and then scored on a fielder’s choice thanks to a great secondary lead and a well-executed slide, it was a big deal.

Betts’ journey around the bases not only produced a run without the benefit of a base hit, it effectively tossed an anvil to Glasnow as he was trying to keep his head above water. “At that point, he was kinda not in the zone as much,” Betts told MLB Network’s Greg Amsinger afterwards. “So I knew he was going to try and slow up and get back in the zone, and I was able to take advantage of it.” 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 »

The Rays made it to the World Series for a lot of reasons, but one of them is indisputably their bullpen, which has given Kevin Cash the flexibility to pull starters whenever he wants and follow them with an unending stream of hard-to-hit relievers. Cash, in turn, has used it masterfully; he’s pushed the right button at seemingly every turn. Last night, I think that might have changed.

In the top of the fifth inning, Tyler Glasnow couldn’t find the zone. He walked the first two batters he faced, allowed two runs (on a fielder’s choice that didn’t get anyone and a single), and generally looked gassed. Cash went to his reserves and brought in Ryan Yarbrough.

That sounds like a reasonable usage choice, but it’s simply not how Yarbrough is deployed most of the time. Here are the particulars of his previous playoff appearances this year:

Okay, there have only been two of them, but he’s been used as either a starter or a bulk guy in both. He throws a near-starter number of pitches and faces a small sliver of the lineup a third time through. That’s similar to his usage this regular season:

Mostly starts, with a few relief appearances thrown in. It’s not unreasonable that the Rays might want to turn him into more of a reliever in the World Series, the only round of the playoffs with off days, but 19 pitches? Four batters faced? The last time he faced four or fewer batters in the regular season was July 13, 2018. He had two short appearances to only one extended stint in last year’s ALDS, but that was part of a gambit to use a true bullpen game (Diego Castillo drew a start) with Yarbrough handling two innings, then use him as a LOOGY in two other games.

Yarbrough is essentially a starter. We had him penciled in for Game 4 of the World Series, something which would be tricky now; that would be on three days’ rest, and while he only threw 19 pitches, it’s still a disruption to his routine. The Rays still could use him there, but I think that game is now more likely to be a bullpen game with perhaps two innings out of Yarbrough. Glasnow, Snell, and Morton would then each draw two starts to fill out the full complement of seven games. Read the rest of this entry »