Earlier this week, I wrote about some dicey intentional walk decisions from the two NLDS series. One worked and one didn’t, but both of them were decisions managers made in huge leverage situations, and both managers tried to put their thumb on the scale of fate and influence the direction one way or another. Today, I’m going to talk about a decision that didn’t end up mattering nearly as much.

Brian Snitker tried to seize a small edge in yesterday’s Cardinals/Braves game, starting Adam Duvall in the outfield over Matt Joyce despite the fact that Joyce is left-handed and Jack Flaherty is a righty. It looked like a weird decision, one that might swing the game, but of course it didn’t. Nothing Snitker could have done, short of conducting a seance to channel the life force of a young Warren Spahn into Mike Foltynewicz, could have mattered.

The Cardinals scored 10 runs in the first inning, an endless deluge of offense, run stacked upon run. They added another in the second, and by the time Duvall stepped to the plate, our game win probability stood at 1.4% for the Braves, though the system doesn’t work well with such extreme margins. The leverage index of that at-bat was a measly 0.11, and it didn’t get better from there; his subsequent at-bats came with leverage of 0.02, 0.01, and 0.00.

So Snitker tried to make a small decision, and the gods of baseball laughed in his face. That doesn’t mean we can’t analyze his decision though, that we can’t evaluate it on its merits regardless of the actual outcome. If this game was played a million times, the vast majority would be closer than yesterday, and in some of those the difference between Duvall and Joyce would decide the game. Read the rest of this entry »

After two elimination games on Wednesday night, the National League Championship Series has its two participants: the St. Louis Cardinals and the Washington Nationals. It’s not quite the matchup most predicted — only four of 32 FanGraphs predictors pegged the NLCS correctly a week ago — it’s hard to say that either team got there cheaply. The Game 5’s were very different; one was a fantastic blowout, the other a fantastic crushing of Clayton Kershaw’s hopes and dreams, and just like that, the National League’s two winningest teams saw their seasons end before mid-October.

The Washington Nationals were a ZiPS favorite going into their series with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Not a literal favorite — the Dodgers were still projected to win 51%-49% — but certainly a team that was hitting above their seasonal win total. Over 162 games, there’s no doubt that the Dodgers were the better club, but over a short series of five games, Washington’s Big Three of Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Patrick Corbin match up against any team in baseball. It didn’t always work (see: Corbin’s first relief appearance), but combine the Wild Card and the NLDS, and Nats were able to use that trio in just under two-thirds of their total innings (66.3%). In the regular season, that number was only 40.1%.

Similarly, while the Washington relief corps still isn’t a good unit, they’ve at least been able to use the shorter timeframe of postseason baseball to lop off some of the dreadful performances at the back of their bullpen. Kyle Barraclough and Matt Grace weren’t around to start any late-inning conflagrations (Trevor Rosenthal was mercifully released in August). The bullpen combined for an abysmal 5.68 ERA in 2019, but the seven pitchers brought in this October have combined for a 3.90 ERA. That’s certainly not going to remind anyone of the Yankees, but it’s at least a serviceable group if you’re forced to use them.

In a seven-game series, the Nationals undoubtedly will have to utilize the bullpen more than they did in the NLDS. The two extra games the NLCS can run do not come equipped with an additional day of rest, so it would be even harder to feature a surprise guest appearances from their top starters. Aníbal Sánchez will certainly get another start unless Game 4 is an elimination game for the Nats, and while I wouldn’t count out a Scherzer appearance in a truly high-leverage relief situation, I think you’ll necessarily see Washington rely on its relief pitching more. St. Louis’ offense is not L.A.’s, something that’s not necessarily captured in Win Expectancy calculators, so the average relief outing is slightly less frightening against the Cardinals than an identical game state against the Dodgers. Read the rest of this entry »

If this afternoon’s contest between the Cardinals and Braves was a game you were interested in watching, hopefully you tuned in early; if you’re a fan of the Braves, or competitive baseball, there wasn’t much worth watching after that. Here was the Cardinals’ top of the first inning:

Things could have gone differently for Mike Foltynewicz. There was an infield single by Paul Goldschmidt; Freddie Freeman committed an error. If Goldschmidt had hit that grounder at an infielder instead of in the hole, or if Freeman had caught Yadier Molina’s gounder, the Braves escape with a 1-0 deficit in the first. That isn’t what happened, though. After a walk and a double, Foltynewicz was done down by four and Max Fried came in to face the pitcher with the bases loaded. Fried walked Jack Flaherty, more damage was done, and by the time the inning finally, mercifully concluded, the Braves’ were in a massive hole, though not until after a wild pitch allowed Marcell Ozuna to reach, and Kolten Wong to score. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Jay Jaffe noted that starting pitching has been carrying a greater load in the playoffs this year than in the regular season and recent postseasons. One really good reason for that is the sheer number of very good starters in the playoffs this October. Take today’s games as an example. Jack Flaherty and Mike Foltynewicz will go head to head this afternoon, followed by Walker Buehler and Stephen Strasburg tonight.

Below, find a table with the NL pitching WAR leaders this season:

Three of this season’s top seven National League pitchers by WAR are set to start, and try to get their teams a series away from the NL pennant. It’s possible we see a few more of those pitchers throw in relief in tonight’s games, as well. Now, look at this table showing the NL pitching WAR leaders since August 6 when Mike Foltynewicz made his first start since returning from the minors:

We could very well see an offensive explosion today, but the scheduled starting pitchers are some of the best in the game this year, with Mike Foltynewicz joining the group over the last two months of the season. Elimination games are almost always exciting, and these ones are likely to feature great pitching to boot.

The postseason lends itself to all sorts of narratives. There are team triumphs and individual stories, but this postseason features something special you might not have noticed: a few teammates who have been playing together for nine seasons or more. When Adam Wainwright took the mound for his Game 3 start against the Braves and threw a first pitch sinker to battery mate Yadier Molina (Ronald Acuna Jr. would foul that first pitch off, but ultimately strike out swinging), it was hard to forget that this may well be Wainwright’s final season, marking the end of a career during which so many of the right-handers best moments have come with Molina behind the plate. That first pitch got me thinking: which playoff teammates have been together the longest?

To answer that question, I turned to the game logs here at FanGraphs to find the first day both teammates appeared in a game together at the major league level. I also looked at how many total games each pair has appeared in together, which includes pinch-hit appearances, pitching in relief, and defensive substitutions. This does not include any time spent on the Injured List and only includes games in which both teammates made an appearance. I excluded the postseason for parity; the data is updated through the end of the 2019 season. So, before the Dodgers and the Nationals and the Cardinals and the Braves play their Game 5’s, let’s take a look at the longest-tenured teammates we can watch this October.

No. 5: Freddie Freeman and Julio Teheran

Debut as Teammates: May 7, 2011

Kicking off our list is the pitcher/first baseman duo for the Braves. These two have been staples in Atlanta for several years now; this year Julio Teheran became the only pitcher in Braves’ franchise history to start six consecutive Opening Days. Freddie Freeman has been at first base for all of them.

Teheran was initially left off the Braves’ Division Series roster but when Chris Martin suffered an oblique injury, Teheran took his place. Now both he and Freeman are trying to push Atlanta into the Championship Series for the first time since 2001, though they’re likely both hoping for better individual performances in Game 5; Freeman, perhaps still hampered by an elbow injury, is slashing just .125/.222/.313 with a 38 wRC+ in 18 postseason plate appearances, while Teheran took the loss in Game 4 after giving up a walk-off sacrifice fly to Yadier Molina that scored Kolten Wong.

Total regular season games together: 200 Read the rest of this entry »

In my head, the playoffs have always had a unique relationship with analysis. Things are happening, always new and exciting things, and I feel a strong desire to know what’s skill and what’s luck, to sort out whether Adam Wainwright found the secret formula to pitching or whether he just had a good breakfast Sunday, while the Braves stubbed their collective toes on the hotel bed frame.

But for the most part, there’s not much to say conclusively about one pitching outing, or even a few pitching outings. The samples are vanishingly small in the postseason, and so I watch for the narratives and the drama, rather than trying to find an interesting line to analyze. Sure, I have opinions about the players in the playoffs, formed from a year of crunching numbers on their performances. But for the most part, I don’t use October to tell me new things about them.

If Patrick Corbin comes in and gives up six runs in relief, is he bad? Is he unsuited to relieving? Did he just not have it that day? I don’t know, and short of some velocity or spin rate smoking gun, I’ll probably never know.

Having said all that, there’s one thing I feel very comfortable analyzing. Managers still walk people intentionally in the playoffs, and maybe they shouldn’t. Dave Martinez and Mike Shildt succumbed to the temptation of making a difference over the weekend, and while neither decision ended up impacting the final accounting of the game, I was curious to see what those walks did to the teams’ chances of winning.

Let’s talk about Martinez’s decision first, because it’s much stranger. We’ll set the stage with all the essentials: in Game 2 of their series against the Dodgers, the Nationals took a 4-2 lead into the ninth inning, with Daniel Hudson taking the mound following a dominant inning by Max Scherzer. Justin Turner doubled to start the inning, but Hudson rebounded, striking out A.J. Pollock and getting Cody Bellinger to pop out to third. Read the rest of this entry »

After watching the Cardinals and Braves compete for four games, it seems fitting that the series would be tied up 2-2. In three of the four games, the losing team had a win expectancy of at least 80% while in the fourth game, Cardinals ace Jack Flaherty allowed just a single run in the first inning before a homer in the seventh gave the Braves a 3-0 lead that proved too much for a mostly struggling Cardinals offense. In a series this close, the team that blows the lead will inevitably lament the moments they let the lead get away, but in Game 4, the Braves lost not because of a lead they relinquished, but because of a lead they failed to solidify. The Braves refused to put the Cardinals away, or alternatively, the Cardinals relievers came up big when they needed to, and now the teams head to Game 5 for a shot at the National League Championship Series.

Before we get to those blown chances, we should briefly discuss how the Braves got the lead in the first place. The Cardinals were limited to one run off Dallas Keuchel in the first game of the series as Keuchel went off-brand, throwing just 24 two-seam fastballs in his outing. Though Keuchel walked three and struck out none in four and two-thirds innings, he did enough to keep the Cardinals off balance and induced 10 groundball outs, plus two more outs on a double play, and the other two outs on liners. In the first inning of Game 4, Keuchel went back to relying heavily on the two-seamer, but the Cardinals laid off the pitch, even as a strike. Paul Goldschmidt took two sliders for balls, then a two-seamer for a 3-0 count. After a 3-0 sinker for a strike, he hit a changeup out of the park. Up next, Marcell Ozuna took a first-pitch sinker for a ball and then crushed an inside cutter to put the Cardinals ahead 2-0.

Atlanta got a run back in the third before Ozuna hit another homer in the fourth off a slider to give the Cardinals a 3-1 lead. Read the rest of this entry »

In a postseason already filled with great pitching performances, Adam Wainwright’s gem on Sunday afternoon was likely one of the most unexpected. He held the Braves scoreless over seven and two-thirds innings, allowing just six baserunners while striking out eight. If Carlos Martínez had been able to hold onto the slim margin he was handed in the ninth, the headline would have certainly featured the 38-year-old’s gutsy outing. But this latest start was just one more milestone in a career filled with postseason heroics.

2006 feels like a lifetime ago. Wainwright had just turned 25 and was pitching out of the bullpen for the Cardinals in his first full season in the majors. That was where his October legend began, on the road to the Cardinals first World Series win since 1982. The enduring image from that championship season is the final pitch of Game 5 (a cutter) but Wainwright’s crucible was Game 7 of the NLCS. Facing a bases-loaded situation in the ninth, Wainwright struck out Carlos Beltrán on three pitches, the last of which was a nasty curveball that Beltrán could only stare at.

Read the rest of this entry »

After narrowly escaping his ineffectiveness in Game 1, the Carlos Martinez Octobercoaster caused St. Louis to yack up a pivotal Game 3 at home, and cede a 2-to-1 NLDS series lead to the Atlanta Braves. A three-run Braves’ ninth on the back of three hits and two walks spoiled a timeless, if sometimes harrowing, 7.2 shutout innings from 38-year-old Cardinals starter Adam Wainwright, and sent 47,000 fans home in stunned silence.

Up until the twist, Planet of the Apes-y ending, St. Louis had maintained a loose grip on a 1-0 lead first captured on a second-inning Matt Carpenter sac fly, enabled by an earlier Marcell Ozuna double. Throughout the six innings that followed, the Cardinals survived several well-struck fly balls that momentarily stopped the collective heart of Busch Stadium, before they died at the warning track and fell harmlessly into the waiting glove of Dexter Fowler. A Ronald Acuña Jr. laser in the third (107 mph off the bat), a Nick Markakis golf shot (100 mph) in the fourth, and a hanging curveball to Matt Joyce (102.5 mph) in the seventh all amounted to nothing more than a few seconds of concern.

Then came the ninth inning. A leadoff double by Josh Donaldson (who was replaced at second base by human blur Billy Hamilton) immediately put the tying run in scoring position. Consecutive Martinez strikeouts forced Cardinals manager Mike Shildt to make a two-out decision. Either a) have Martinez face lefty-hitting catcher Brian McCann, or b) walk McCann so Martinez could face the right-handed Dansby Swanson, who had doubled off of Wainwright earlier in the game. Shildt chose to face Swanson, who obliterated a first-pitch hanging slider and tied the game on his second double. Adam Duvall followed with a less emphatic, but more significant, single that plated Rafael Ortega (who ran for McCann) and Swanson. Read the rest of this entry »

Nothing feels great with a 1-0 lead. Every hard hit pitch is a reminder that victory is fleeting. Nothing ever lasts. And everybody’s just waiting for you fail–including you.

Braves pitchers don’t have a long and storied history of 1-0 leads in the playoffs, but Mike Foltynewicz added to what legacy there is on Friday night with a performance that requires us to travel 18 years back in time to find a proper comparison, when the Braves went west to Houston for the 2001 NLDS.

After going up 1-0 in the series with a win in Game 1, Tom Glavine got the ball the next night. The Braves scored him a run on a double play in the third. That was it. Glavine wouldn’t sit on the bench as much as he’d bounce off it, having to so quickly return to the mound following another 1-2-3 frame from his offense. It was clear very quickly that he’d have to take care of the rest himself.

He pushed through eight innings; just him and his 1-0 lead. By the time he left the game, handing the ball to John Smoltz to get the save, they were both still intact.

“Nobody expects to win 1-0,” Glavine told reporters back then. “This is big. There’s no understanding it.”

That’s the last kind of pitching performance you want to be up against when you’re trying to win Game 2 of the NLDS, regardless of whether you’re the Astros in 2001 or the Cardinals this afternoon.

The Braves learned on Thursday that when Cardinals Devil Magic starts stirring, there’s not a whole lot more you can do but hope it at least leaves you your dignity. Their 7-6 loss at home in Game 1 put them in a hole. Fortunately for them, they had Mike Foltynewicz to pull them out of it. Read the rest of this entry »