In Game 1 of the NLDS, the 84-win Arizona Diamondbacks raced to a commanding 11-2 victory over the 100-win Los Angeles Dodgers, their longtime tormenters in the NL West. While Game 2’s 4-2 win wasn’t quite as dominant, it nevertheless lifted the D-backs to a 2-0 series lead and the brink of a sweep. With a combination of patience (forcing Bobby Miller to throw 52 pitches in under two innings) and guile (becoming the second team to notch four stolen bases in a game this postseason), the upstart Arizonans firmly established themselves as legitimate title contenders.

Though the Los Angeles crowd roared at Miller’s first 100-mph heater, déjà vu set in within a few hitters. With the bases loaded and no one out in the top of the first, Christian Walker rocketed a four-seam fastball 105.6 mph off the bat to deep center. But while James Outman missed his first chance on Saturday, he didn’t blink this time, leaping and snagging the slicing drive and limiting the damage to a sac fly:

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The Braves can thank Austin Riley for pulling Monday night’s win out of a hat in the late innings. His two-run homer off Jeff Hoffman in the bottom of the eighth inning of NLDS Game 2 gave the Braves their fifth unanswered run and a 5–4 lead. His heads-up throw to first base to double up Bryce Harper at the tail end of a wild, spectacular play secured the game’s final out, helping the Braves escape Truist Field with a split after spending most of the night looking like they would be heading to Philadelphia on the brink of elimination.

That game-ending double play occurred with Nick Castellanos at the plate and Harper, representing the tying run after drawing a leadoff walk against A.J. Minter (who was then replaced by closer Raisel Iglesias), on first. Castellanos swatted a towering 101-mph drive an estimated 392 feet to deep center field. Center fielder Michael Harris II got on his horse to run down the ball, making a leaping catch at the wall to take away a sure extra-base hit that could have tied the game. Harper, who had been running on contact, had to turn back after passing second base, and though Harris’ relay throw bounced past cutoff man Ozzie Albies, Riley alertly backed up the play, backhanding the ball and side-arming a peg to first baseman Matt Olson in time to nab Harper for one of the craziest endings to a postseason game in recent memory. Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday, three of the four home playoff teams lost the opener of their respective Division Series. The losses ranged from 3-2 dramas to 11-2 laughers. Sunday, the American League teams played their second games, and the home teams went 0-2. Now that we’ve seen six games and the home teams are 1-5, it’s time to ask the obvious question: Is this format irrevocably broken?

Okay, fine, that’s not really a fair question. But there’s been a lot of hue and cry about the playoff system recently, headlined by an article by the estimable Ken Rosenthal that came out this morning in The Athletic, and as the resident “I don’t see what all the fuss is about” guy at FanGraphs, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. What better time to dive into the numbers and see if we can find some interesting facts on either side of this debate.

The biggest gripe, as far as I can tell, is that the layoff between the end of the regular season and the start of the Division Series unfairly disadvantages teams that secured a bye. Their opponents get to play baseball, while they’re forced to sit on their butts. It’s a daily sport, goes the argument; disrupting that rhythm leads to a disadvantage even if extra rest sounds like a carrot rather than a stick.
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If the Twins were supposed to be a speed bump on the Astros’ familiar path to the World Series, nobody sent them the message, as they got revenge for Game 1’s 6-4 loss with a convincing 6-2 victory that wasn’t even as close as the score. By winning Sunday, the Twins ensure that we’ll finally have at least one series this postseason that isn’t a sweep as the teams head to Target Field for Game 3.

While nearly everyone on the Twins contributed in Game 2, I don’t think many people will disagree with me when I say that this was Pablo López’s game. While he held the Blue Jays to one run in his Wild Card start, I wouldn’t call that outing a dominating performance. This one was. Against the Astros, a better offense than the Jays, López went seven strong innings, striking out seven and allowing six hits. Bill James’ Game Scores might not be a whiz-bang Statcast measure, but I think they do a great job of giving a general feel of starts from a historical, fan perspective, and López’s Game Score ranks very high among Twins’ postseason outings since the Senators moved to Minnesota:

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BALTIMORE — “We need to start taking a little bit of pressure off our pitchers and start scoring earlier in the game,” Orioles manager Brandon Hyde said before Game 2 of the ALDS against Texas. The previous afternoon, Baltimore had lost a cagey affair, playing from behind most of the way. And despite numerous opportunities, the Orioles never could tie the game back up.

In the bottom of the first inning on Sunday, Hyde’s offense obliged him, stringing together three singles (including an honest-to-God Baltimore chop from Ryan Mountcastle) and a walk to pull in front, 2–0, against the previously unhittable Jordan Montgomery. The Orioles had the lead and the initiative, and the Camden Yards crowd was out for blood.

Fifty-five minutes, three pitching changes, and just seven outs later, the Rangers led 9–2 in the top of the third. Though the Orioles cut the lead to 11–8 by the end of the night, the game was basically over then, leaving the Rangers in the driver’s seat and Baltimore in need of a mighty comeback in order to extend a Cinderella season. Read the rest of this entry »

In their Wild Card Series, the Diamondbacks were the comeback kids, the sixth seed that had limped their way into the postseason with a .451 second-half winning percentage and erased deficits of multiple runs on back-to-back days to beat the Brewers in Milwaukee. But on Saturday in Los Angeles, there was no mistaking it: this team can be a serious threat. Arizona came out punching in the first inning, with hard-hit ball after hard-hit ball off Dodgers starter Clayton Kershaw, chasing the left-hander after just a third of an inning – the shortest start of his Hall of Fame career. Before the Dodgers knew it, the Diamondbacks led 9-0, a hole too deep for Los Angeles to climb out of:

The second pitch of the game, a 73 mph curveball, was smoked by Ketel Marte at 115.7 mph and ate up James Outman in center field, leaving Marte on second with a double. It was good for the second-hardest batted ball of the over 21,000 hit off Kershaw in the Statcast portion of his career. In all of Statcast history, just two hitters – Shohei Ohtani and Giancarlo Stanton – have tagged a pitch thrown at 73 mph or slower with an exit velocity that high. It was a harbinger of things to come, the first of eight hard-hit balls in the opening inning, which amounts to one of the most impressive first-inning onslaughts in recent memory – no team has unleashed more hard-hit balls in the first inning of any game in over five years. Arizona plated six runs in the first and three in the second, and the focus – even Dave Roberts’ focus, as he shared in a third-inning interview – shifted to what a blowout here means for the rest of the series. Read the rest of this entry »

The rematch of last year’s NLDS between Philadelphia and Atlanta started off the same way it did last October: with a surprising win by the underdog Phillies. They eked out three runs and held the Braves scoreless at home for the first time this year and the first time since August 28, 2021. It was also the Phillies’ seventh consecutive win in the opening game of a postseason series, putting them in the driver’s seat in the five-game series — again.

The biggest weakness of the Philadelphia roster that reached the World Series last year was their bullpen. But the Phillies quietly led all of baseball in pitching WAR this season thanks to a fantastic rotation and a much improved relief corps, with their ‘pen improving its adjusted ERA from 105 to 81. With Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola spent during the Wild Card round, the Phillies turned to Ranger Suárez to make the start in Game 1; he turned in a solid effort, lasting 3.2 innings and allowing just three baserunners while striking out four. When he ran into some trouble in the fourth inning, manager Rob Thomson used a quick hook on his starter and handed the game over to his bullpen. Six relievers went on to combine for 5.1 scoreless innings in an impressive display from the team’s most improved unit:

Instead of a dominating performance marked by tons of strikeouts, the Phillies were perfectly satisfied to allow Atlanta to aggressively put the ball in play. No team fared better than the Braves when making contact this year — they led baseball in both wOBA and expected wOBA on contact — but thanks to some phenomenal defense and a healthy dose of contact management, they were frustrated all night long. Read the rest of this entry »

This was an unfamiliar place to be for the Twins, after snapping a playoff losing streak dating back to 2004 and winning their first postseason series since 2002. Generations of Twins players have gone by without experiencing a playoff win with the team, but the current squad, coming off a two-game sweep of Toronto, was rewarded with a matchup against last year’s World Series champions. But while they had opportunities to break the game open, especially in the early innings, they were unable to fully capitalize, dropping the series opener, 6–4.

Houston starter Justin Verlander threw six scoreless frames, but through his first couple innings, it was an open question as to how long he would remain in the game. He allowed three baserunners in the first, throwing just 10 of 23 pitches for strikes. After walking Edouard Julien and allowing a hard-hit single to Jorge Polanco, he served a fastball right down the middle to Royce Lewis — a scary pitch given Lewis’ string of excellent performances, especially in the Wild Card series. But he swung over the pitch and tapped it to shortstop for the tailor-made double play. Verlander allowed another walk, but he escaped the inning with a groundout.

His second inning went similarly, as he erased singles by Carlos Correa and Ryan Jeffers with another 6-4-3 twin killing, this time off the bat of Michael A. Taylor. Julien doubled to start the third, the sixth Twins baserunner through 10 batters, but he was tagged out in a baserunning blunder. Verlander would allow just two more men to reach over the next four innings. Read the rest of this entry »

BALTIMORE — The Orioles were one of the toughest teams to put away in the regular season, as their record, status as the AL’s top seed, and distinction of never having been swept all attest. But in Game 1 of the ALDS against a Rangers team that kept going the wrong way in the standings in September, the script was reversed.

In front of a capacity crowd in a game delayed an hour by rain, it was the Rangers who clung to a narrow lead for six innings, as every Baltimore rally fell short. Despite the conditions and an unfavorable pitching matchup, Texas took an upset 3–2 win behind the tandem of Andrew Heaney and Dane Dunning. With that win comes control of the series. Read the rest of this entry »

The wild card round is already short enough, and this year, all four matchups ended in sweeps. That’s not much postseason baseball for the Rays, Blue Jays, Brewers, and Marlins. Suffice it to say, none of those teams took October, despite what the t-shirts promised.

While I feel a twinge of heartache for the losing side in any postseason matchup, I feel especially bad for the first-round exits. After a 162-game slog with the playoffs as the only goal, their season is over in the blink of an eye. With time, some will be forgotten as contenders entirely. That seems a shame, considering how well each of these teams performed in the regular season.

With that in mind, I wanted to take one last moment to recognize the playoff performances of Miami, Milwaukee, Toronto, and Tampa Bay, before the winds of the postseason blow on to the Division Series matchups. To be clear, there isn’t a ton to celebrate; they were each swept, after all. Still, every eliminated team had at least one player whose postseason showing deserves a pat on the back. Read the rest of this entry »