It wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that no matter what happens, the 2022 Padres ultimately had a fine season. Despite losing their best player for the entire season (and a chunk of the next one), they won 89 games and made the playoffs, and also acquired one of the best young players ever available via trade. They excised the worst of 2021’s demons in avoiding a repeat of the sudden, stunning collapse that transformed them from a top-tier contender to a sub-.500 squad. And most recently, they went to New York and ended the season of the 101-win Mets. But the season would still not feel like a triumph if they now fell to their biggest rival, the Los Angeles Dodgers (sorry, Giants fans, you have to share your bête noire). That’s easier said than done.

The rivalry between the Dodgers and Padres over the last few years has largely been a mismatch. San Diego went a miserable 5–14 against the Dodgers in 2022, didn’t even take a single series against them this season, and haven’t had a winning record in this matchup since 2010. To add injury to insult, the only time the Padres have made the playoffs during the A.J. Preller era, the weird 2020 season, it was the Dodgers that sent them packing in a 3–0 sweep in the NLDS.

Let’s start things out with the ZiPS game-by-game projection.

The Dodgers are keeping it close, as of press time, whether Clayton Kershaw or Julio Urías will be the Game 1 starter (though reportedly, they already know). While Kershaw has seniority in the rotation, the team has regularly not started him in the first game of a series when he’s available, with both Urías and Walker Buehler among the pitchers getting the nod in recent years among others. ZiPS would slightly favor Kershaw as the Game 1/Game 5 starter, bumping the projected probability of the Dodgers advancing from 60.2% to 61.6%. While Urías won his first ERA crown in 2022, his peripherals are down slightly from ’21. Read the rest of this entry »

Will the real 2022 Yankees please stand up? Projected to win 91 games, they spent the first half of the season looking a whole lot stronger than that, winning 61 of their first 84 (a .726 winning percentage and a 118-win pace) and building a 15.5-game lead in the American League East. Injuries and a disappearing offense — besides Aaron Judge — led to an epic slump as the team went 18-31 (.367) from July 9 to September 3 while that lead dwindled to four games. They righted the ship by going 20-9 the rest of the way, finishing 99-63 with their first division title since 2019 (and just their second of the past decade). While Judge set a franchise and American League record with 62 homers and several injured players returned, major questions linger as they attempt to win their first World Series since 2009.

Meanwhile, before issuing a two-game sweep to the Rays in a Wild Card Series capped by Oscar Gonzalez’s 15th-inning walk-off home run, the Guardians — the majors’ youngest team, with a weighted average of 26 years — surged down the stretch as well, going a major league-best 23-6 from September 5 onward. At 92-70, they ran away with the AL Central and were the division’s only team to finish above .500. Of course, as I’ve noted before, there’s very little correlation between a team’s September performance and their October success:

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There are plenty of ways to win a ballgame. Some teams like to get ‘em on, get ‘em over, and get ‘em in. Some go for pitching, defense, and a three-run homer. One fairly reliable method is to absolutely obliterate the baseball all night long while your pitcher nearly throws a perfect game. On Sunday night, the Padres opted for that approach.

San Diego’s batters crushed everything the Mets could throw at them, while Joe Musgrove allowed no runs, one hit, and one walk over seven shutout innings. He also allowed one person to get very intimate with his ears, but we’ll get to that later.

Coming into the game, much of the talk was about Mets starter Chris Bassitt, who was riding high after posting a 2.94 ERA in the second half of the season. Some predicted that Bassitt’s curveball, which Stuff+ ranked as the best pitch in the game this year, could decide the game, as the Padres usually feast on curves. Instead, it was Bassitt’s fastball that ended up being the issue. Read the rest of this entry »

After ending an 11-year postseason drought, the Phillies weren’t content with a short stay in October. They got a chance to vanquish their most recent playoff conqueror, the St. Louis Cardinals. Somehow, Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina still loomed large, though the Phillies have remade themselves several times since then. The ghosts of the past couldn’t stop them, though; they won in a sweep.

Now, they’ll get a chance to face some more recent tormentors. The Braves have won the NL East in each of the last four seasons. The Phillies have had playoff hopes in each of those years and ended up on the outside looking in each time. It seems only fitting that the Braves, who haven’t lost the season-long series against the Phillies since 2017, stand in their way after the Cardinals.

Atlanta will be comfortably favored in the series. We give them around a 54% chance of advancing; betting markets have them a hair over 60%. That makes sense to me; the Braves won 101 games while the Phillies muddled their way into the last Wild Card slot. But rather than try to predict who will win – it’s a five-game series, so the odds will tend towards 50% regardless of the teams involved – let’s consider some matchups that will help determine the series. Read the rest of this entry »

Coming into last night’s win-or-go-home game for the Mets, the biggest question concerned ace Jacob deGrom. In his last four starts of the season, he tossed 21 innings with an incredible 39-to-4 strikeout to walk ratio, but when he got hit, he got hit hard. He allowed 14 runs in those starts, mostly coming off of six home runs allowed, including three in his last start against Atlanta that ended up deciding the division. Perhaps more importantly, deGrom had averaged just 21.7 batters faced in the regular season, with abysmal results when facing the order a third time. While he looked like normal Jacob deGrom through his first 18 batters of any given start, he allowed a .936 OPS his third time through the lineup, with five homers in 42 plate appearances. What would the Mets do with deGrom if the game entered the later innings in a close situation?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this exact situation occurred. After setting down the first seven batters in order while touching 101.8 mph on his fastball, Trent Grisham took a triple-digit heater on the outer edge deep into center field for a homer. But deGrom wasn’t out of the inning yet. He allowed Jurickson Profar and Juan Soto to reach base with two outs, but struck out Manny Machado on a perfect slider to escape the jam. deGrom got through the fourth inning unscathed, but it was clear that he didn’t have the near-robotic command that led him to historic success in 2021, especially on his slider. He spiked a few of them, and threw many more off the plate in noncompetitive locations.

Those command issues came into play as deGrom began the fifth inning by walking Grisham on five pitches, three of them sliders low and inside. After a successful sacrifice by Austin Nola, deGrom had to face the Padres’ lineup for the third time. Profar, the Padres leadoff hitter, saw four sliders in the same place before a fifth leaked out over the middle of the plate and singled, driving in the Padres’ second run of the game. The next batter, Soto, lined a 2-0 changeup down the pipe into right field for his second hit of the game. With runners on the corners and just one out in a tie game, deGrom was in a tight spot. But he kicked it back into gear after that. Four consecutive sliders perfectly located on the low and outside corner resulted in three swinging strikes from Machado, and deGrom ended the threat with a 99.4 mph fastball that got Josh Bell whiffing, his hardest-thrown pitch of the inning. Read the rest of this entry »

The history of the Seattle Mariners, as famously documented by Jon Bois and crew, is rife with bizarre, inexplicable, and downright hilarious episodes. But the most memorable of all, the one representative of the team’s scrappiness and tenacity, has to be The Double, Edgar Martinez’s famous hit in the bottom of the 11th that sent the Mariners to their first ever Championship Series in 1995, capitalized, given a Wikipedia article, and revered ever since.

The point is, the Mariners are no strangers to comebacks. They’ve been underdogs their entire existence; to them, surprise victories might as well be regular ones. A pinch-hit, walk-off home run from Cal Raleigh to clinch the team’s first playoff berth in two decades? Thrilling, yes, but just another day in the office. That pitted them against the Blue Jays, who before the series began were deemed favorites. But manager Scott Servais knew. “Expect the expected,” he said in an interview last Thursday, stressing the importance of preparation in an unfavorable situation.

At one point in Game 2, the Mariners were down 8–1. For the do-or-die Blue Jays, everything had gone according to plan; it looked like they would live to fight another day. Then the spirit of the Mariners awoke from its slumber. Ten combined runs later, the dust had settled. The final score: Seattle 10, Toronto 9. In the heat of the postseason, the Mariners authored another scorching come-from-behind win, with the Blue Jays their latest victim.

How innocuously it all began. With Kevin Gausman on the mound for the Blue Jays and Robbie Ray for the Mariners, we first got to enjoy some quality pitching. In the top of the first, Gausman struck out two batters and allowed only Raleigh to reach base on a walk (so did Ty France, but on a fielding error from Santiago Espinal). Moments later, Ray nabbed two swinging strikeouts and a groundout. So far, so peaceful. But in the bottom of the second, the game’s first cracks appeared, as Ray began leaking his pitches over the plate. Alejandro Kirk doubled, then Teoscar Hernández blasted a baseball to deep left field:

Ray managed to escape the inning without further harm, but that proved to be a mere respite. When he got back to work, Espinal led off with a double, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. drove him in with a single to center. And when Hernández hit another homer, this time to lead off the fourth, the Mariners had had enough. Matt Brash replaced Ray, who stopped just short of being outed as a double agent, and put out the fire.

But wait – it got even worse for the Mariners. It was Paul Sewald who was tasked with the fifth inning and beyond, which is odd considering they were down by four runs, but understandable when you realize their starter went just three innings. What happened next can only be described as ugly, bad, no-good baseball. This wasn’t a battle between Sewald and the Blue Jays. This was a battle between Sewald the Idea and Sewald the Man. The former is a lights-out reliever in perfect command of an advanced fastball and slider, concocted by Mariners pitching analysts in a lab buried in the depths of T-Mobile Park; the latter is a mere mortal who occasionally appears and has no idea where his pitches are going.

You can guess which version of Sewald the Mariners received on Saturday. The Blue Jays scored their fifth run on a passed ball with the bases loaded, then their sixth when Hernández bore the brunt of a hit by pitch. A sacrifice fly made it a seven run deficit for Seattle, and a double made it eight. When Diego Castillo entered the game to put Sewald out of his misery, Toronto’s chances of winning this pivotal game stood at 99.0%.

Ninety-nine percent.

But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s back up for a moment. While chaos ensued around him, Gausman was in the midst of an admirable performance. Sure, a single-double-sac fly sequence allowed one Mariner run to score, but he entered the sixth with seven strikeouts and a manageable pitch count. How did things go south from there? I’m glad you asked:

The honorary Frenchman hit a single, which under normal circumstances wouldn’t sound alarm bells. But it’s Gausman who’s on the mound, and he’s spent this season as the unluckiest pitcher around. To wit, his .363 BABIP allowed is the highest of any qualified starting pitcher post-integration, and that’s including the 60-game weirdness from 2020. Bloop hits and shallow line drives had driven Gausman to the ground all year long, and October was no exception. Following France’s lead, Eugenio Suárez hit his own single, as did Raleigh to load the bases with no outs. It indeed pours when it rains for Gausman, but he maintained his composure, striking out Mitch Haniger on six consecutive splitters and getting Adam Frazier to pop out.

The Blue Jays then went with Tim Mayza to face Carlos Santana, which sparked a bit of controversy. In a little over 2,000 career plate appearances facing lefties, Santana, a switch-hitter, has been notably better against them (125 wRC+) than righties (113 wRC+). Toronto must have had its reasons, but they were undone by a single swing:

Surprisingly, not much happened in the seventh. Mayza and Yimi Garcia combined to retire the side in order. A Danny Jansen single tacked on another run for Toronto, but the entire process, for once, resembled a functional baseball game. And while the Mariners had made a valiant effort, it still seemed like the Blue Jays had a clear path to victory. A four-run lead as the home team entering the top half of the eighth represents a 96.9% win probability, because teams realistically do not make up that large of a deficit in such a limited number of opportunities.

We’re now in the final chapter of this bazonkers game.

Anthony Bass is not some random reliever with a strike-throwing problem. He’s good! He had a 1.54 ERA this season. But, well, there are days when one allows consecutive hits without sporting any visible defects, and the Mariners simply made contact, tacking on a run and cutting their deficit to three. Because Bass failed to earn a single out, Jordan Romano came into the game earlier than expected, inheriting two baserunners. The Blue Jays’ closer started off by allowing another baserunner and potentially spelling disaster, but he recovered, striking out the next two batters. But the crisis wasn’t averted; it was merely delayed:

What a devastating minute for Toronto. While Bo Bichette got back to his feet, the collision resulted in George Springer exiting the game. More than allowing all three Mariners to score, though, the incident seemed to suck all the life out of the Rogers Centre. The game was tied, effectively halving the Blue Jays’ odds of survival, but they might as well have been zero. Despite Andrés Muñoz’s inability to find the zone, the top of Toronto’s somber and defeated order couldn’t muster a single run. Meanwhile, the Mariners immediately seized the moment: Raleigh doubled off Romano in the top of the ninth, as did Frazier to score the go-ahead run. George Kirby took the mound in the bottom half of the inning, ending the game on a fly ball that landed, rather fittingly, in the glove of Julio Rodríguez. Thus concluded one of the greatest comebacks in postseason baseball history. Chart, please:

The Double is the defining moment of Mariners history, but it might not have happened if not for a less-heralded yet equally enthralling rally. In Game 4 of the 1995 ALDS, the Mariners mounted a five-run comeback against the Yankees to force that decisive fifth game. For years, it stood as the largest postseason comeback win in franchise history – that is, until last night’s game. But in the context of a team on the ropes for half a century, it feels more like a progression of sorts than an upset. And it calls into question the definition of a comeback: Does it count as one if this is precisely how the Mariners grab onto success, however fleeting it may be?

In the days to follow, the emphasis could fall on the word “fleeting.” The Mariners will have to replicate their magic against the Astros, an even scarier squad than the Blue Jays, over the course a five-game series. They will enter the ring as not just the underdog, but to some, a mere stepping stone for a clearly superior team. As much as logic says to bet on Houston, however, we can’t count out the Mariners just yet. Not after their tumultuous history. Not after their multiple come-from-behind wins. And most of all, not after this game, in which they seemed inevitable.

On ESPN2’s Phillies-Cardinals broadcast, Michael Kay and Alex Rodriguez — like everyone has at some point this postseason — explained why baseball has become a Three True Outcome-driven sport. You know the gist: Pitchers have become so good it’s hard to string together sequential offense. Better to wait for a mistake and swing like hell when it comes.

For the first time since 2010, the Philadelphia Phillies have won a playoff series, and Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina have taken part in a meaningful professional game for the last time. These things are so because of mistakes: Who made them, which ones went unpunished, and which ones decided a tense 2-0 game. Read the rest of this entry »

A day after playing the fastest postseason game since 1999, the Rays and Guardians combined for a game more than twice as long, lasting 15 innings and four hours and 57 minutes. Dominant pitching was the name of the game as both teams were held scoreless until the 15th inning — the longest scoreless postseason game in major league history. The decisive blow came when Oscar Gonzalez blasted a Corey Kluber cutter deep into left-center field for the walk-off win.

Between the two teams, 16 different pitchers combined for 39 strikeouts, eight walks, and 11 hits. They threw 432 pitches, 68% of which were strikes. Just 15 of the 58 balls in play were hard hit. No matter how you slice it, it was simply a masterclass in modern pitching by both teams:

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If there were an ideal blueprint for the Mariners’ first playoff game since 2001, it would have included dominant pitching, good defense, and just enough offense to come away with a win. They executed that plan to perfection on Friday afternoon, defeating the Blue Jays, 4–0, in the first game of their Wild Card Series matchup. Luis Castillo was in complete control over his 7.1 innings pitched, folk hero Cal Raleigh hit a two-run home run in the first inning, and Andrés Muñoz slammed the door in the ninth.

The formidable Blue Jays offense never threatened to break through against Seattle’s flame-throwing duo, who scattered seven hits throughout the game; Toronto’s only extra-base hit came with two outs in the ninth inning. A pair of two-out base hits put runners on first and second in the third and again in the fifth, but Castillo escaped those jams with ease.

It was a bit of an atypical start for the right-hander, who struck out just five Blue Jays, three of them coming in the seventh inning. Toronto’s batters had the fifth-lowest strikeout rate and the seventh-lowest chase rate in the majors this year; they’re a difficult bunch to whiff. Instead of mowing down the opposition with swings and misses, Castillo pitched to the edges of the strike zone, content to let opposing batters reach for pitches. The result: tons of weak contact. He allowed 22 balls to be put in play with an average exit velocity of just 82.6 mph and only six registering as hard hit.

All that weak contact allowed Castillo to be efficient with his pitch count: He never threw more than 20 pitches in a single frame and cruised into the eighth inning. He ended up throwing 108 pitches in the game, 30% of which were called or swinging strikes. Plunking George Springer in a 1–2 count with one out in the eighth proved to be Castillo’s end, but Muñoz entered and retired Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. en route to a five-out save. His only blemish was a two-out double by Matt Chapman in the ninth. Read the rest of this entry »

You bring in star pitchers for games like this. Cost? That’s for the accountants. You can’t put a price on a lockdown playoff start, the kind that sucks the air out of the opposing offense one out at a time. Bring in an ace, find your way to the playoffs, and the dominance will flow.

Oh, this is awkward. Did you think I was talking about Max Scherzer? I meant Yu Darvish, who the Padres acquired before the 2021 season in a blockbuster trade. Darvish didn’t harness his usual swing-and-miss stuff Friday night, but he’s spent the entire 2022 season learning how to succeed without it. He’s never run a lower strikeout rate or missed fewer bats, but it hasn’t mattered: He’s having his best season in eight years thanks to a raft of soft contact and no walks to speak of.

Darvish has been a cutter-first pitcher for years, and he leaned into it to the tune of 39 cutters in 101 pitches against the Mets. It’s still Yu Darvish we’re talking about, so he threw six different pitch types, but cutters and four-seamers comprised 65% of his offerings. Add in his slider, and the count climbs to 90%. We think of Darvish as overpowering opposing hitters, but he’s become adept at keeping them off balance, with equally offense-suppressing results. The Mets were eternally in a 1-2 count, eternally popping up pitches they were just too early or too late on. Read the rest of this entry »