Stop for a minute. Take a breath. You’re great. Everything will be fine. If I were Blake Snell, that’s what I’d have been telling myself six batters into the second inning Wednesday. Snell came out firing, garnering empty swings and weak contact left and right. The first three batters of the inning produced two flares and a line drive single. After a steadying strikeout, though, this happened:

You can’t control the sun, but that one stings. That ball is as close to a sure out as you can get, and instead it fueled the Philadelphia rally. The next batter, Edmundo Sosa, flipped another flare to left to make it 3-0. Snell was pitching extremely well, and staring down three runs and two more runners on base. The game threatened to get out of hand quickly. Read the rest of this entry »

For the sixth consecutive season, the Astros are in the American League Championship Series, and for the third time in that span, they’ll face the Yankees for a chance to play in the World Series. They beat the Yankees in seven games in 2017 before advancing to defeat the Dodgers, victories now tainted by the subsequent revelations regarding their use of illegal electronic sign stealing (which, yes, included the postseason). Amid further allegations of sign-stealing, they beat the Yankees in six games in 2019 before losing to the Nationals in the World Series. Suffice it to say, this is not a friendly rivalry, though the Yankees have publicly downplayed its relevance as it pertains to this matchup.

Both of the Astros’ ALCS victories over the Yankees came with A.J. Hinch at the helm, but Dusty Baker has taken over since. He’s trying to take them back to the World Series for the second season in a row — they lost to the Braves in six games last year — and secure the first championship of his 25-year career as a manager. The 73-year-old Baker would surpass 72-year-old Jack McKeon as the oldest manager to win a World Series, but first things first, the Astros have to get there. After winning an AL-high 106 games and securing home-field advantage for as long as they’re still playing, the Astros swept the Mariners in a Division Series much closer than its three-games-to-none outcome suggests, with the games decided by a total of four runs and the two bookend games won in Houston’s final half-inning; the finale extended to 18 innings and ended with a 1-0 score via Jeremy Peña‘s home run. Yordan Alvarez was the big star in the series, hitting a walk-off three-run homer in Game 1 to complete a comeback from a 7-3 deficit and then a two-run, go-ahead shot in Game 2; his seven RBIs accounted for more than half of Houston’s 13 runs. Alvarez (4-for-15), Alex Bregman (5-for-15 with a double and a homer) and Yuli Gurriel (6-for-15 with a homer) together accounted for 15 of the Astros’ 28 hits, masking Jose Altuve’s 0-for-16 performance. Meanwhile, a dominant Astros’ bullpen combined to allow just one run and nine hits in 20.1 innings, with a total of eight relievers combining to strike out 23 batters while walking only five.

Where the Astros swept their way into the ALCS, the 99-win Yankees not only had to go the distance against the Guardians but needed an extra day to do so because rain on Monday night forced the second postponement of the series. Stellar work from Gerrit Cole in his two starts, a strong start from Nestor Cortes on three days of rest, some very good work by a banged-up bullpen, and a 9-3 advantage in home runs — including three by newcomer Harrison Bader and two apiece by Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton — helped to elevate the Yankees past the upstart Guardians. They didn’t have much time to celebrate on Tuesday night; inside of an hour after the final out, the plastic sheets protecting the clubhouse from the spray of champagne were taken down so that the players could fly to Houston. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve come to expect the characteristic intensity of the MLB postseason. The league’s best teams meeting head to head with everything on the line is bound to generate some memorable storylines, and two weeks in, the 2022 playoffs have been no exception. The top four seeds in the NL — the Dodgers, Braves, Cardinals, and Mets — were upset by the Padres and Phillies, leading to heated debate on the merits of a playoff format that remains a crapshoot. The Mariners ended their drought and beat the Blue Jays on the road to earn a playoff game in front of their long-deserving home fans before falling in the ALDS to Yordan Alvarez and, eventually, Jeremy Peña. The Yankees and Guardians traded blows for five games in the only Division Series to go the distance.

What is not a given in the playoffs is that, independent of the stakes of the game, the games themselves will be competitive. With the level of talent on the field, we expect to see some worthy contention, but it is an inevitability of the sport — maybe an inevitability of sports in general — that some games end up as back-and-forth nailbiters and others as, well, something like 8–2 in the fourth inning. The results may be the same, but baseball is, after all, about the fan experience, and it’s a heck of a lot more fun to watch when you don’t know who’s going to win. This postseason, we’ve been lucky to get more of the former than the latter. Read the rest of this entry »

The Division Series between the Astros and Mariners only went three games, but it wasn’t short on drama. Overlooked amid the extra innings madness and the late game heroics was the performance of Jose Altuve. That might be for the best, as the Astros second baseman struggled mightily:

Going 0-for-16 with six strikeouts is, to use a technical term, real bad. What was going on? Let’s start with Altuve’s plate discipline:

Read the rest of this entry »

Well folks, that’s what we call a pitcher’s duel. I don’t think there’s a universal definition for the term, but Wikipedia tells me it’s when both starting pitchers allow very few runners to reach base. That seems about right! Zack Wheeler and Yu Darvish both came up big Tuesday night in San Diego, with each starter limiting the success of the opposing team’s hitters after each offense had put up an incredible performance in their respective Division Series. As the game progressed, both attacked their foes with a variety of pitches spread across the zone. Neither was predictable, and neither gave their manager much reason to remove them, but one made a few more mistakes in a few more at-bats than the other. Those mistakes ended up being the difference in the game.

To understand exactly what happened in those at-bats — specifically, why the batter was successful — it helps to know what happened with each pitch and what the pitcher-catcher tandem’s potential thought process was for each of them. John Smoltz always sprinkles in tidbits about pitch sequencing that are worth listening to when he broadcasts a game. It’s easier said than done, but a pitcher holding back some pieces of their repertoire until later in the game — or say, a hitter’s third at-bat — is a good way to maximize deception. If there’s anyone who knows a thing or two about that, it’s Darvish. Darvish’s never-ending pitch mix allows him to change how he attacks hitters as the game progresses. In his first battle against Bryce Harper, he opted for a three-pitch mix and attacked Harper in the zone. No nibbling the first time around:

Read the rest of this entry »

We live in an era where every team, to some degree or another, embraces modern analytics when assessing itself and the rest of the league. Wanting to know about the numbers that drive baseball has filtered into fandom as well, which is why you’re here on this very website! But despite all the progress the stathead crowd has made over the last quarter-century, when it comes to the playoffs and playoff results, many fans seem more inclined to defenestrate the numbers and attribute the losses to all sorts of causative elements beyond a surplus or dearth of players just happening to have particularly good games that week.

In the worst case, failing to win two of three games or three of five is attributed to some kind of character flaw. At best, the loss is because of some fundamental flaw in a team’s construction, typically something that sabermetrics is to blame for, no matter whether the team is sabermetrically inclined or not. Here’s one example of very common thinking along these lines just from the last couple of days. It’s from a fan on Reddit, so I’m not specifically attributing them, mainly because I don’t want to risk social media pile-ons:

The postseason is the real season from now on, so the focus shouldn’t be on sabermetrics as much as it has been. With the playoffs being expanded, 111 wins doesn’t mean squat. Shift some of the focus to bringing in guys who play with fire and aggressiveness and will situationally hit rather than live and die by the long ball. If it costs us some wins during the regular season, so what?? It’s the little things that win the most important games.

With three of MLB’s four 100-win teams already out of the playoffs and the 99-win team pushed to the brink but ultimately surviving, these types of incriminations will be common this season. The Dodgers didn’t lose a 60/40 matchup (the ZiPS projection for the series) because they were simply outplayed over four games, but because something was broken in how the team was built. Depending on who you listen to, you can hear the same type of grumbling about the Mets and Braves.

Since questions should be explored rather than dismissed, let’s look at playoff overperformers and underperformers over the Wild Card era (starting in 1995) and examine if there really are consistent patterns behind which teams are overperforming or underperforming in the postseason. And since this is illustrative more than anything, I’m trying to keep it as simple as possible, within reason. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — During the regular season, the Yankees went 27–2 in games in which their two towering sluggers, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, both homered. The tried-and-true recipe worked once again in the fifth and deciding game of the Division Series against the Guardians, with Stanton smacking a three-run homer in the first inning off starter Aaron Civale, keying an early departure, and Judge adding a solo blast in the second off reliever Sam Hentges. The long balls gave starter Nestor Cortes, who was working on three days of rest, an early cushion, and he cruised through five innings, allowing just just one run before yielding to the bullpen, which locked down a 5–1 victory.

“Incredible,” Cortes said in describing Stanton’s homer. “I knew from that moment on, all I had to do was throw strikes and be able to get us as deep as possible…. I didn’t know how far I was going to go. I didn’t know what my pitch count was. It was basically how I looked out there. And for him to give us that three-run lead in the first from the get-go to was huge for me and calmed me down to go out there and do what I do.”

Pushed to the brink of elimination when their bullpen collapsed in the ninth inning of Game 3, the Yankees will now move on to face the Astros in the American League Championship Series, which begins Wednesday in Houston. This will be the fourth time in eight seasons that the two teams have met in October; the Astros won the 2015 Wild Card Game at Yankee Stadium and beat the Yankees in a seven-game ALCS in ’17 and in a six-game ALCS in ’19.

The Yankees, who hit twice as many homers as the Guardians during the regular season (a league-leading 254 to a 14th-ranked 127), out-homered them nine to three in the series, with Judge and Stanton each going deep twice and Harrison Bader doing so three times. Game 5 marked the fourth time Judge and Stanton both homered in the same postseason game, a total tied for second behind Carlos Correa and George Springer, both of whom have since departed Houston.

Rafael Devers/J.D. Martinez
Carlos Correa/Jose Altuve
Max Muncy/Joc Pederson
George Springer/Jose Altuve
Manny Ramirez/David Ortiz
Lance Berkman/Carlos Beltran
Jim Thome/Kenny Lofton

— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) October 18, 2022

The Yankees’ homers went a long way figuratively (if not always literally) in a low-offense series. The Guardians collected 44 hits to the Yankees’ 28, but power and patience (a 17–9 edge in walks) produced a .643 OPS (.182/.273/.370), which outdid the Guardians’ .626 (.247/.289/.337), and they outscored Cleveland by a combined score of 20–14. While the Guardians collected 12 hits with runners in scoring position to the Yankees’ five, New York handily outproduced them there as well via a .926 OPS (.227/.296/.636) and 11 RBIs to Cleveland’s .535 (.255/.280/.255) with 10 RBIs. As my former Baseball Prospectus colleague Joe Sheehan likes to say, “Ball go far, team go far.” Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Ah yes, the postseason. As Jay Jaffe noted yesterday, it’s nothing like the regular season. Here, managers have to grind out every edge possible. Continuing a series that I started last year, I’ll be assigning managerial grades for each vanquished team. They’ll cover on-field managerial decisions: chiefly, lineup construction, pinch hitting, and pitcher usage.

My goal is to rank each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things – getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is one I find particularly valuable – but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for that.

Another thing I’m trying to avoid? Relying too much on “leaning on your trusted veterans.” That’s never really been a strategy I love without knowing the underlying data, but mentioning it lets me drop this delightful statistic: “proven veterans” Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, and Charlie Morton each have a 13.50 ERA this postseason. That’s not in aggregate; each of them has that exact mark. The playoffs are about overpowering your opponent in big spots. Which pitchers and hitters teams use to do so is entirely up to them, but if the justification for a move is “but he’s a veteran,” I’m going to judge that decision harshly. Let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »

They ran roughshod over the league for six months thanks to an elite offense, great pitching, and exceptional defense, posting a win total that hadn’t been seen in decades. Yet a stretch of a few bad days in October sent them home, consigning them to the status of historical footnote and cautionary tale. Somebody else would go on to win the World Series.

Such was the fate of the 2001 Mariners, though everything above applies to this year’s Dodgers as well, who won 111 games — the most by any team since those Mariners, and the most by any NL team since the 1909 Pirates — but were bounced out of the playoffs on Saturday night. A Padres team from whom they had taken 14 out of 19 games during the regular season beat them three games to one in the Division Series because they got the clutch hits they needed while the Dodgers didn’t. The combination of an 0-for-20 streak with runners in scoring position that ran from the third inning of Game 1 to the third inning of Game 4 — after which they began another hitless-with-RISP streak — and some puzzling bullpen choices by manager Dave Roberts doomed them.

There’s been plenty of that going ’round. The Padres, who won 89 games this year, were facing the Dodgers only because they first beat the 101-win Mets in the best-of-three Wild Card Series. Earlier on Saturday, the defending champion Braves, who claimed the NL East title with 101 wins this year and like the Dodgers played at a better-than-.700 clip from June through September, were ousted by the Phillies. On Saturday evening, the 99-win Yankees let a two-run lead in the ninth slip away against the 92-win Guardians, pushing them to the brink of elimination, though they rebounded on Sunday night, pushing the series to a decisive Game 5 in New York.

Upsets in short postseason series are practically as old as postseason series themselves. In 1906, in the third modern World Series, the 93-win White Sox, a/k/a “The Hitless Wonders,” took down their crosstown rivals, the 116-win Cubs, four games to two. In 1954, the 97-win Giants beat the 111-win Indians in the World Series. In 1987, the 85-win Twins bumped off the 98-win Tigers and then the 95-win Cardinals. Last year, the 89-win Braves felled the 106-win Dodgers in the NLCS, then the 95-win Astros in the World Series.

Such unexpected wins are a cornerstone of baseball history. As MLB.com’s Anthony Castrovince noted, in terms of the gap in winning percentage between the underdogs and the favorites, the Padres trail only the aforementioned 1906 White Sox in the annals, with a 136-point gap (.549 to .685) compared to the Chicagoans’ 147-point gap (.616 to .763). In third place is the 122-point gap from the 2001 ALCS between the Yankees and Mariners (.594 to .716), and in fourth is the 107-point gap from last year’s NLCS between the Braves and Dodgers (.547 to .654). The 86-point gaps between the Nationals and Astros in the 2019 World Series and between the Braves and Phillies in this year’s Division Series are tied for seventh. By that measure, seven of the top 11 upsets have happened in this millennium. Read the rest of this entry »