You want your ace on the mound when all the marbles are in the fire. When the stakes are high, the big cheese needs to have his hands on the wheel. Are those real metaphors? No, but I bet you knew what I was talking about in each case, because the playoffs are a perfect time to discuss the importance of star pitchers. But do you want to deploy them as early in the series as possible? Or do you want them for the decisive game? Does it even matter?
In our game chats and article comments — across the internet really — it’s hard to find a consensus. When I wrote about Chris Saleearlier this week, there were comments to the effect of “It’s a bummer he pitched out of the ‘pen in the Wild Card, now he won’t get to pitch in NLDS Game 5,” as well as “Don’t save Sale for Game 7 of the NLCS, there might not be a Game 7!” Those are exact opposite opinions, and yet they both make a lot of sense when I hear them. But they can’t both be right, so let’s do some math. Even though there’s no real adage to prove or disprove here, this feels like a job for Mathemadage.
Here’s the question, as I see it: For a given set of pitchers making postseason starts, which way would you like those starts arranged in a seven-game series? In other words, if you have an ace, a second banana, and some bullpen games, would you prefer to have your ace for Games 1 and 5 or Games 3 and 7? There are good intuitive reasons to prefer either. Games 1 and 5 happen in almost every seven-game series; Game 7 is a much less frequent occurrence. More innings for my best guy, please! But the stakes can also never be higher than they are in a decisive game. In a big spot? Why wouldn’t I want my best guy in? Read the rest of this entry »
NEW YORK — For one brief moment, all had been forgiven. The unreasonable hope, the unbearable burden, the unfulfilled potential — it all had led to this point, when the local kid and lifelong Yankee fan finally made good.
Anthony Volpe stepped into the box in the bottom of the sixth inning with a runner on first, two out, and the Yankees down by two and facing elimination in Game 3 of the American League Division Series. After taking a Griffin Jax sweeper in the dirt for a ball, the one-time second coming of Derek Jeter, who’d stalled and backtracked and flamed out in frustrating fashion, turned on a sinker running in on his hands and lifted a high-arching fly ball to left field that just cleared the wall for a game-tying home run. As he made his way around the bases, all the emotions of the last four years came pouring out of him.
But just after he crossed the plate, the six umpires came together and called for a crew chief review. Reality set in as the replay repeated on the jumbotron in center field, showing different angles of the same disappointing event. Several minutes of deliberation made it official: The home run was overturned. A fan in the first row had reached over the wall with both hands and touched the ball before it rolled up his arms and into his lap.
Volpe was awarded second base, as the umpires determined that the ball would not have been caught even if the fan hadn’t interfered with it. They also concluded that George Lombard Jr., who began the play on first and was running on contact with two outs, would’ve scored on the play. That run turned out to be the final one of the game for either team, as the Rays held on to beat the Yankees, 4-3, and complete the sweep. Read the rest of this entry »
After cruising through the NLDS with a gentleman’s sweep, the defending-champion Los Angeles Dodgers are headed to the National League Championship Series for the third year in a row. A day after Yoshinobu Yamamoto silenced Atlanta’s bats in Game 3, the Braves and Dodgers ran out the finest Tylers they had to offer, and both pitchers excelled. The difference largely came down to the bullpens. With a bevy of rested options to choose from, Dave Roberts went and got his pitchers at the first sign of trouble. In contrast, Walt Weiss, who ran a bullpen game in Game 2 and needed four innings from his ‘pen in Game 3, stretched his pitchers a bit further than they could manage, and although it took seven innings, he finally paid for it. The Dodgers took the game 4-1 and the series 3-1. They now await the winner of the Brewers/Padres series in the NLCS, but you have to imagine they’re not too worried either way.
If you were the Braves, you might have circled Tyler Glasnow’s start on the postseason calendar. This Dodgers rotation has about as many soft spots as the four horseman of the apocalypse, but Glasnow missed much of the season with back spasms, hadn’t pitched in 13 games, and had underperformed his peripherals in a major way. Since he returned from the IL, Glasow had run an excellent 2.14 FIP because he was striking out nearly 13 batters per nine, but his ERA was an unsightly 4.46. When your other options are Yamamoto, Tarik Skubal, and Blake Snell, you’ll take it.
The Braves manufactured the first run of the game. More specifically, leadoff man Michael Harris II manufactured it almost single-handedly. Glasnow started Harris with a 96-mph fastball right at the top of the zone, and Harris was all over it, shooting a low liner through the right side of the infield at 107 mph. With basestealing guru Antoan Richardson in the first base coaching box, Harris got out to a huge vault lead and easily stole second base two pitches later. He could have had third as well, but he didn’t see Will Smith’s throw continue into center field. Harris made it there eventually, advancing on a Matt Olson groundout. Three pitches later, Glasnow spiked a 1-1 curveball to Ozzie Albies, and Harris didn’t hesitate for a second. He broke as soon as he read the pitch’s downward angle. It bounced well in front of the plate, and Smith did well to block the high bounce, but he couldn’t keep it close. Harris scored easily. With their season on the line, the Braves had a 1-0 lead. Read the rest of this entry »
You’ve probably heard this fun fact 500 times in the past 48 hours, but I’ll repeat it here: The White Sox haven’t clinched a postseason series at home since 1906. And while I’d take the under on another 120-year wait for a home clincher, White Sox fans are going to have to sit tight for at least another 24 hours.
Jo Adell cleared the bases with a third-inning triple to put the Guardians on top, and they stayed there thanks to some old-school grit-and-grind ball by José Ramírez. A cavalcade of six relievers just barely kept Chicago at arm’s length through the middle and later innings, and the Guardians stayed alive with a 9-3 win. Read the rest of this entry »
Thanks in part to their offense’s listless performance against a parade of six Braves pitchers — Atlanta’s second bullpen game in a row — the Dodgers squandered a chance to take a 2-0 Division Series lead on Sunday, lending extra urgency to their matchup against Chris Sale in Tuesday’s Game 3. Manager Dave Roberts shook up his lineup in ways both foreign and familiar, most notably dropping Shohei Ohtani in the batting order below the two-hole for his first time as a Dodger, in hopes it would lead to a better approach by the banged-up, slumping slugger. Additionally, Roberts called upon old hands Enrique Hernández and Miguel Rojas, as much for their intensity as for the platoon advantages they provided against the ace lefty. Not all of those moves had a direct impact, but one certainly did, as Hernández broke a scoreless tie with a two-run homer off Sale in the fourth inning. Backed by seven strong innings from Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Dodgers eked out a 3-1 victory, positioning them to clinch the series on Wednesday.
Through the first two games, Ohtani had gone 2-for-8 with a pair of strikeouts out of the no. 2 spot behind Mookie Betts, with a single in each game and three hard-hit balls in all. Roberts dropped him to fifth behind Betts, Freddie Freeman, Teoscar Hernández, and Will Smith — the first time Ohtani had started a game batting lower than fourth since 2020, when he was Angel. I’ll explore the numbers below, but the move made particular sense given Ohtani’s sudden struggles against sliders, Sale’s forte. Elsewhere, Roberts swapped out switch-hitting Tommy Edman at second base in favor of Rojas, batting sixth, and in place of lefty-swinging Max Muncy, he inserted the righty-swinging Hernández at third base, batting him ninth. Ohtani aside, the lineup resembled the one the Dodgers used when they — including Yamamoto — squared off against Sale on August 27 in Atlanta; Hernández played third, and Rojas second, with Edman in center in place of the injured Andy Pages. The Dodgers lost that one, 1-0, as Sale tossed a five-hit, 11-strikeout shutout, with Rojas the only one of the aforementioned moving parts to collect a hit.
Muncy merely ranked second on the team this year in both wRC+ (129) and homers (29), and what’s more, he homered in each of the first two games of the NLDS, running his franchise record for postseason dingers to 18. Coming off one of his best seasons against same-side pitching — .261/.343/.504 (133 wRC+) in 134 plate appearances against lefties, compared to .249/.349/.485 (126 wRC+) in 427 plate appearances against righties — this wasn’t a benching to be taken lightly. Hernández’s small-sample numbers against lefties during an injury-shortened season (.176/.236/.333, 50 wRC+ in 55 PA) didn’t exactly strengthen the case, nor did his 81 wRC+ against lefties over the past three seasons, compared to 75 against righties. Read the rest of this entry »
When the Padres put Mason Miller on the paternity list ahead of NLDS Game 3, it always had to be this way. It’s like Chekhov’s gun; if you show me a missing closer in the first act, you must show me a late-inning situation where he’d normally appear in the final one. The Padres beat the Brewers 4-3 to stay alive, narrowing their NLDS deficit to 2-1, in what has been easily the most entertaining series of the divisional round.
Right from the jump, the Brewers put pressure on the Padres. And right from the jump, the Padres minimized the damage. Jackson Chourio tattooed a line drive to the deep part of the ballpark to open the game. In response, Jackson Merrill took off on a perfect line and slid across the warning track to corral it.
Nick Pivetta couldn’t throw the ball past anybody; Milwaukee swung 37 times at his pitches and missed only twice. The Brewers peppered line drives left and right, making frequent loud contact. But they got less for their troubles than you’d expect, because Pivetta beguiled them and his defense stood tall behind him. Read the rest of this entry »
Sunday night’s encore performance of the Ray Kerr Variety Hour felt like a turning point in this postseason. The Braves had not only survived the Chris Salebullpen fiasco, they were headed back home with the series tied and their two best starting pitchers lined up on full rest. The Dodgers have been on the ropes before during their back-to-back World Series-winning run, but those ropes felt especially menacing against Sale and the resurgent Braves.
Not to worry, Dodgers fans. Los Angeles escaped this crucible with a 3-1 win, and now sit one game from a third straight NLCS appearance. Regularly scheduled programming has resumed. Read the rest of this entry »
Do you ever stop and think about how baseball would be different if the ball smelled delicious? Imagine that Major League Baseball, in its never-ending quest to abase itself for sponsorship dollars, forges an innovative partnership with Willy Wonka. In exchange for the title of Official Chocolate of Major League Baseball and the right to outfit the umpires in his trademark violet velvet coats, the eccentric chocolatier uses his quasi-supernatural confectionary gifts to impart one of several dozen mouthwatering aromas to each and every baseball used in a game. This baseball smells like warm chocolate chip cookies, the next one like toasted marshmallows, and the one after that like snozzberries. You get the idea.
Now imagine you’re pitching in the World Series. The umpire reaches into the pouch that dangles from their belt (but awkwardly, because they first have to flap the side of their knee-length velvet coat out of the way), grabs a new pill, and fires it out to you. Millions of eyes are on you. The game is on the line. The season is on the line. You’d still raise the ball up to your face for a whiff before you got settled on the mound, right? You’d have to. Would you really be able to go without smelling the ball? You know it smells amazing, but you don’t know how. If you didn’t sniff the ball, wouldn’t the curiosity about its scent be so distracting as to have a deleterious effect on your ability to pitch? Could you really say you’re putting your all into each pitch if you’re not acquainting yourself as fully as possible with the one and only tool of your trade?
I imagine that sniffing the ball would be something of a flex for infielders. Those who gloved a grounder with time to spare would earn the right to take a healthy waft before firing it over to first. I further conjecture that throwing the ball around the horn after a strikeout would take longer because the outfielders would insist on being included too. More importantly, I imagine that the error rate might tick down just the slightest bit. I’m not saying that major league fielders lack motivation to hold onto the ball as things stand right now, but I hardly think it would hurt to supply them with an additional reason to give it their all. Letting a ball go right through your legs feels terrible, but it probably feels just a little bit worse when you know that along with hurting your team, you’ve fumbled away a transportive sensorial experience. Maybe that would push you to take that extra round of infield practice, to lock in on every single pitch, to lay out for that ball. Anyway, that’s what I was thinking about in the shower this morning as I reflected on the fact that last night, in the biggest game of the season, the New York Yankees played as if the ball smelled like a butt. Read the rest of this entry »
The Tampa Bay Rays won the most games in the American League this year while running the AL’s second-lowest payroll. That’s a feat of team-building, first and foremost, but it also speaks to how well their players dodged leaks. On offense, they had the lowest strikeout and whiff rates in the majors; their pitchers had the league’s lowest walk rate and just 18 blown saves. You can’t make mistakes if you’re the Rays.
That’s a well-worn cliché, but here’s a novel spin on it: You can’t make mistakes if you’re the Yankees either. Presumptive AL Cy Young winner Cam Schlittler did some terrific work in his first career playoff road start, and no one’s going to remember it, because the other eight guys in gray pajamas played like the ball was covered in dish soap in Game 2.
The Yankees committed three errors in the bottom of the first inning, and another in the fifth. The Rays scored five runs across those two half-innings, and there’s your final score: Rays 5, Yankees 2. Read the rest of this entry »
Playoff losses can follow several different scripts, from the wire-to-wire blowouts that breed prolonged helplessness to the back-and-forth affairs that provide just enough hope before snatching it away at the end. But somewhere in the middle, there is the type of game that seems like a team can and should win, only for a few things to break the other way in such a fashion that its fans do not rage, do not cry, but instead climb aboard the doomsday hamster wheel of here we go again.
With their 4-3 loss to the Chicago White Sox in Game 2 of the American League Division Series, the Cleveland Guardians are now 2-7 in their last nine home playoff games. Those perilously loyal Cleveland fans, clad in red and blue jerseys bearing several different names — both on the front and the back — have seen their team repeatedly fall flat, dating back to that famous rain delay in 2016. But in this decade, they’ve also seen their team lose an ALDS Game 4 to the Yankees in 2022 that would have clinched the series, another loss to the Yankees in 2024 when Juan Soto simply decided he was too good of a hitter not to break their hearts, and two crushing Wild Card Series losses at home in 2025 to a division rival. In 2026, with no guarantee that they’ll be coming back for another game this year, the Guardians have added two more defeats at the hands of an AL Central foe, this time coming off a bye.
The White Sox won this game by eschewing the home run ball they relied on all summer and opting for Guards Ball. They had just three of the 10 hardest-hit balls of the game. Their opening pitcher did not get out of the first inning. But twice they scored from second on a single, went 3-for-8 with runners in scoring position (as opposed to Cleveland’s fatal 0-for-5), and rode a scorching hot reliever to probably their biggest victory since the 2005 championship march.
Ironically, this game began with a bit of Guards Ball from the home team that seemed a little too on the nose. Steven Kwan kicked things off with a roller through the right side that left the bat at 84.8 mph. José Ramírez then worked a walk, and Chase DeLauter followed with a productive out. That spelled the end of the night for Anthony Kay, who was replaced by Sean Newcomb. When Newcomb promptly missed the zone with his first two pitches to Jo Adell, the White Sox bench opted to put Adell on intentionally, loading the bases and setting up a double play. Newcomb was able to induce a grounder from Nathaniel Lowe next, but the type that bounces way up in the air rather than skimming along the dirt. It was also, apparently, the type of grounder that triggers a horrendous throwing error, giving Cleveland two easy runs.
The buildup to that calamitous moment wasn’t entirely Newcomb’s fault, as Kay was responsible for the lead runners and recorded one solitary out on just 17 pitches, both fewer than the four outs on 22 pitches he gave Chicago as a reliever in Game 1. What the White Sox do with Kay for the rest of the series may come down entirely to game situations; his Game 2 performance inspired negative confidence, and it seems he’s better suited for plug-and-play outings out of the bullpen, particularly with Davis Martin, Hagen Smith and/or Erick Fedde, and Sean Burke now lined up for the bulk roles should this series go all the way to Game 5.
For the first half of this game, Newcomb’s blunder looked like it would be the defining play. But the true inflection points came in the bottom of the fifth and the top of the sixth. Cleveland, clinging to a 2-1 lead, sent its best hitters to the plate in the home half of the fifth. Not only did that trio — Kwan, Ramírez, and DeLauter — go down in order, they did so without getting a ball out of the infield. Up to that point, the game was following a favorable script for the Guardians. They were gifted an early lead, had their starting pitcher, Gavin Williams, in the rocking chair, and were primed to put pressure on Chicago’s pitching staff. The exact pocket of the lineup that Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt would want at the plate for that situation wilted, and it felt like the White Sox were headed back to their dugout knowing their opponent had squandered their chance to properly put them away.
Within minutes, things began unraveling in Cleveland like the night Mike Love gave his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame speech. Miguel Vargas chased Williams by thwacking his 98th pitch of the night into left field for a sharp leadoff single. The Guardians then turned to lefty Erik Sabrowski, a very qualified fireman who came oh so close to extinguishing the flames. Sabrowski retired Munetaka Murakami and walked Randal Grichuk. No harm, no foul. But perhaps the biggest pitch of the night was one that did not get put in play or result in a strikeout. Rather, it was a wild pitch that pushed Vargas and Grichuk to third and second base, respectively. While Sabrowski did well to dig out of a 2-0 hole and pop Tommy Pham up for the second out, the next batter ambushed him.
Braden Montgomery’s first-pitch double was a wondrous display of hitting. It also would not have given Chicago the lead if not for Sabrowski’s wild pitch. One inning after Cleveland’s biggest (and some would say only) offensive threats failed to do anything, a defense-first rookie with an 89 wRC+ delivered the biggest blow of the night for Chicago. Fellow youngster Chase Meidroth then slapped an opposite-field single off Hunter Gaddis to make it 4-2 White Sox, and the here we go again feeling blew through Progressive Field like a vicious Lake Erie wind. Both Montgomery and Meidroth’s RBI knocks came on fastballs, pitch selections that Cleveland might like to have back. In the regular season, Montgomery had a .379 xwOBA against fastballs, and he was facing a pitcher in Sabrowski who hadn’t allowed a hit all year to righties on his slider. Meidroth — who whiffs on fastballs just 15.7% of the time, compared to 23.5% on breaking stuff and 29.3% on offspeed pitches — probably should have seen exclusively sliders and changeups from Gaddis.
The cruelty of this game for the Guardians is found in Williams’ stat line. Their flamethrowing Big Rig sat 99 mph on his fastball, generated 22 whiffs on 40 swings, and finished with 11 strikeouts. Apart from the three walks that drove his pitch count up — one of which helped the White Sox plate their first run in the fourth inning — Williams did everything that could have been asked of him, handing things over to a more than capable bullpen. It not only wasn’t enough, but it will be lost to history because of what Burke did.
Burke is a starting pitcher by trade, one who made 27 starts for the White Sox this year and led the team in innings. Starting pitchers, notorious creatures of habit that they are, typically don’t like following an opener. They especially don’t like entering a game mid-inning with a runner on base. But that’s exactly what Burke did in his spectacular Game 2 showing. When White Sox skipper Will Venable gave his early-inning interview on the television broadcast, he plainly stated that the plan was to have Kay and Newcomb get through DeLauter a second time. DeLauter singled in his second at-bat, immediately shooting Venable out of the dugout to go get Newcomb, as planned. But if you pumped Venable with truth serum, he’d likely tell you he was feeling a bit queasy about that plan now putting Burke in a dirty inning. Burke’s response to this adversity wasn’t as sexy as escaping a bases-loaded jam or coming on for a multi-inning save, but his subsequent strikeouts of both Adell and Lowe is the type of thing that should get a proper segment if this White Sox run turns documentary worthy. He goes to bed knowing he covered 5 1/3 innings while surrendering just one hit, and also that the Pope must be thrilled with him.
The Guardians, meanwhile, do not have papal fandom or many shreds of optimism on their side, both narratively and statistically. They lost two home games with their two best pitchers on the hill. Two of the three runs they’ve scored this series have come from a pitcher fielding his position and suddenly contracting Joel Zumaya Disease. They now have to win two games at Rate Field in Chicago, which will not only be completely bananas, but is a venue where they lost four of their six games this year. Maybe they can cling to the idea that Adell’s ultimately fruitless eighth-inning triple will unlock his swing, or that Grant Taylor has been so overworked that he can’t possibly continue pitching this well.
But once you start playing that mental game, it’s probably not going to happen for you, the same way it hasn’t happened for Cleveland in the postseason all decade.
