It may be impossible to believe after the last two games — after all the front-door sinkers thrown by Corey Kluber that turned the Cubs’ bats into mush and after a similar experience last night facilitated by his apprentice Trevor Bauer — but the front-door sinker is not a hot new trend in baseball.

First, to review: the front-door sinker is thrown from a pitcher of one hand to a hitter of the opposite one. The intention? Essentially, to fake the batter into not swinging. It’s a sinker thrown at the hip that then moves into the strike zone. Here’s an example from August Fagerstrom’s piece on Kluber this week:

Seems like a rad pitch. In the era of the swinging strike, it’s a pitch that’s designed to elicit a take. It relies on command in an era when we wonder if pitchers even have any command. After all, as I noted in my for last year’s Hardball Times Annual, the average pitcher misses the catcher’s target by more than 11 inches on a 3-0 count.

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Kyle Schwarber was the show, or at least the story, in last night’s Game Two of the World Series. After five plate appearances in April without a hit — followed by a six-month layoff that prevented him from facing even one major-league pitcher in a game situation — Schwarber has been up to the plate nine times on the biggest stage baseball has to offer. In those nine plate appearances, Schwarber has reached base safely more often than he hasn’t, and has yet to be retired when hitting the ball in play. Last night, his hits proved timely, producing the second and fourth runs for the Chicago Cubs as they evened a series that now heads back to Chicago. How has Cleveland approached him, and how has he responded?

It’s often said at the beginning of spring training that the pitchers are ahead of the hitters; batters don’t yet have their timing back and can have difficulty recognizing pitches. The chart below depicts all 40 pitches Schwarber has seen this postseason, color-coded by the result of the pitch. From Baseball Savant:

Of the 20 or so pitches clearly outside of the box above, Schwarber has offered at just three of them. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the biggest strikeouts in last night’s World Series Game Two came in the seventh inning when Carlos Santana swung through a curveball from Mike Montgomery. The Indians had two on and two out, and trailed 5-1. One swing of the bat would have brought them to within a run.

The curveball has been Montgomery’s secret to success. The 27-year-old lefty began featuring it prominently after coming to the Cubs from the Mariners in late July. His sinker has also became a primary weapon. His pitching coach, Chris Bosio, deserves much of the credit.

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Potential rooting interests notwithstanding, last night’s World Series Game Two was pretty brutal, as far as World Series games go. It was a cold, wet, dreary night in Cleveland. One team’s win expectancy was greater than 90% by the fifth inning. It lasted more than four hours. The Indians made six pitching changes. The Cubs made more mound visits than pitches. Trevor Bauer started for Cleveland, and of his 87 pitches, just 53 were strikes. Jake Arrieta started for Chicago, and of his 98 pitches, just 55 were strikes.

Tough game to watch, all around. So, rather than dissect the game, let’s dissect Jake Arrieta’s postgame press conference. These things aren’t always very revealing, but in the spirit of the current political season, maybe some fact-checking can reveal some truths.

* * *

Q. You started off a little rocky and then you got it back. How did you turn it around?
JAKE ARRIETA: “Well, I think really controlling my effort is when I was able to get locked in. I kind of had my foot on the gas a little too much at the start, trying to do more than I needed to.”

The first pitch Arrieta threw was his hardest of the night! As easy as it can be to write off something like “I had to get locked in” as a ballplayer cliche, these are human beings who are prone to unintentional rushes of adrenaline, and this is, after all, the freaking World Series. Arrieta hit 95 on the first pitch of the night to Carlos Santana, and then never hit 95 again. He was all over the place in the first, throwing just 43% strikes, his lowest strike rate of any inning, and walking Francisco Lindor on four consecutive pitches with two outs. The adrenaline effect is real. It looks like it was real for Arrieta last night, and it may help explain part of his early-game troubles to command his pitches.

Q. You started off a little rocky and then you got it back. How did you turn it around?
JAKE ARRIETA (cont.): “Then I really got back to just executing good pitches towards the bottom of the strike zone. With the cutter going one way and the sinker going the other way, trying to be as aggressive as I could, and allow those guys to put the ball in play and let the defense work.”

In the first inning, 57% of Arrieta’s pitches were in the lower half of the zone or beyond. After that, it was 56%. The first-inning issue wasn’t necessarily leaving the ball up, but there’s a different between “pitches toward the bottom of the strike zone” and “good pitches toward the bottom of the strike zone.”

Lower-half pitches in the first:

After the first:

It’s tough to compare one inning to 4.2, but I think I’ll allow it. That really bad slider off the plate in the first didn’t come back. Those three middle-middle pitches didn’t come back. It seems like there’s a higher percentage of pitches catching the bottom edge of the zone.

Q. You started off a little rocky and then you got it back. How did you turn it around?
JAKE ARRIETA (cont.): “Then in the sixth, I think that maintaining a consistent feel and on a night like this with the weather the way it was can be tough. So I tried to keep the body warm and ready to go the best I could.”

Nope.

It was rainy, windy, and in the low-40s by a lake in Ohio. Wearing short sleeves is not how one tries to keep the body warm, you absolute madman.

Q. You mentioned the conditions, how did they affect your choices? And how would you compare tonight to that Game 2 you started in Citi Field last year?
JAKE ARRIETA: “Pretty similar, I would say. I think the temperature was probably close to what it was at Citi Field.”

Last night’s first-pitch temperature: 43 degrees, cloudy.

Last year’s first-pitch temperature: 45 degrees, partly cloudy.

Q. You mentioned the conditions, how did they affect your choices? And how would you compare tonight to that Game 2 you started in Citi Field last year?
JAKE ARRIETA (cont.): “I think keeping my hand as warm as I could in between innings to not lose feel in the fingertips, because for, not even just a starting pitcher, but for a pitcher, you want to have that consistent feel off your fingertips, especially on your breaking ball, to maintain consistency with how you execute those pitches.”

Arrieta may not have made the best life choice for keeping the body warm, but as far as keeping the hand warm, it seems like he did a fine job, because last night’s success had plenty to do with his breaking pitches. As our own Jeff Sullivan detailed back in late-August, a big part of Arrieta’s midseason skid had to do with his struggles against left-handed batters. This, coming on the heels of his excellent slider disappearing. Against lefties in 2015, Arrieta was able to paint the outer edge of the zone, back-dooring his breaking pitches in at the last second. During much of 2016, rather than starting his breaking pitches outside the zone and back-dooring them to the edge, he was too often starting them on the edge and moving them to the middle of the plate.

Last night, Arrieta threw 36 breaking balls to lefties out of 71 pitches — 51%, almost double his season rate. And here’s the location of those pitches to lefties:

Arrieta absolutely lived on the outer half of the plate, and you see all the purple in the bottom-left quadrant of the zone, indicating well executed back-door sliders, and enough light blue in the area, too, indicating those big, looping curves that catch the zone at the last second.

He was wild, but he managed to keep the walk total down, and he was wild out of the zone, rather than being wild with hittable mistake pitches. When Arrieta was able to find the zone, it was with pitches that stuck to the game plan, and with his movement, pitches that stick to the game plan are tough to square up.

And the press conference? Good. More insightful than most. Mostly truthful and supported by the evidence. I give it an 8/10. But, my God man, put on some sleeves.

It would’ve been the thrill of his life to play in his first-ever World Series game, but I don’t think Anthony Rizzo’s going to be telling many stories. Though just being there is an achievement in and of itself, Rizzo finished the game 0-for-4, and he popped up against Corey Kluber three consecutive times. Rizzo is a fly-ball hitter, but he’s not a pop-up hitter. Kluber made him uncomfortable. He made the lot of them uncomfortable. The Cubs were defeated, and I’m sure Rizzo doesn’t want to talk much about it.

But don’t confuse a lack of discussion for a lack of remembrance. Rizzo might not have been successful on Tuesday, but he did pick up on a tell. And he brought that information with him into Game 2, a somewhat sloppy affair the Cubs took 5-1. Rizzo, in the first inning, doubled home Kris Bryant while facing Trevor Bauer. By WPA, it was the most important play of the game, and even just in the moment, it got the Cubs on the World Series scoreboard. Rizzo’s two-strike double was a big one, and had it not been for the night before, it very well might not have happened.

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Earlier today, Eno Sarris took a look at the arsenals of tonight’s World Series Game Two starters, Trevor Bauer and Jake Arrieta. In this article, I’m going to hone in on one of those pitches in particular: Bauer’s curveball.

Pitchers want to disguise their pitches. This is a pretty obvious statement – it’s harder for a batter to hit a pitch if he can’t tell what’s coming. So naturally, conventional wisdom dictates that pitchers should try to make every pitch look the same coming out of their hand. You don’t want drastically different mechanics while throwing one type of pitch than while throwing another.

So when Trevor Bauer throws his curveball from a significantly different height than all his other pitches, that stands out. It’s hard to notice on television, but Bauer releases his curve a full six inches higher than all his other pitches.

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Jon Lester doesn’t throw to first. This isn’t new. In the National League Championship Series, Dodgers runners tried to dance off the first-base bag, taking large leads to try and disrupt Lester. By and large, it didn’t really work. The Dodgers didn’t take the extra base, and Lester had few problems pitching to the Dodgers with runners on.

Last night, in Game One of the World Series, the circumstances were mostly the same. On paper, at least. Cleveland did steal a base against Lester, but they also got caught stealing once, too. That’s actually a net positive for the Cubs in terms of runs. Again, on paper.

One of those stolen bases belonged to Francisco Lindor, though. Not only did the young shortstop steal a base in the first inning, but he preceded it with some of the same sort of dancing with which the Dodgers experimented previously. The end result of that first innings was two runs for Cleveland — the only two they’d need to win the game.

Was there anything Francisco Lindor did that might have gotten Lester out of rhythm in the first inning, or were the two walks and hit-by-pitch that followed simply ill-timed luck. Is there any evidence that ties Lindor’s steal to Lester’s head?

On the season, Lester threw 64% of his pitches for strikes. Generally speaking, he relies on swinging strikes to get batters out, as his strike-zone percentage of 46% placed him among the bottom quarter of qualified pitchers this year. Of the first eight pitches he threw before Lindor’s single, Lester recorded seven strikes, retiring Rajai Davis on four pitches and inducing a first-pitch out from Jason Kipnis. Lindor was only on first base for two pitches, both called balls by the umpire. The second pitch was in the strike zone, but as is sometimes the case on stolen-base attempts, David Ross‘ movements to prepare for throwing out the runner didn’t provide a good opportunity for framing; the pitch, likely as a result, was called a ball.

Six of Lester’s next eight pitches were balls, and suddenly the bases were loaded. For the rest of the game, Lester threw 64% of his pitches for strikes, just like the regular season. Unfortunately for Lester, one of the balls went to human ball-magnet Brandon Guyer, who has what could be generously called a “strategy” for getting hit. That HBP and a swinging bunt on the previous pitch led to the 2-0 Cleveland lead that proved to be the difference.

Let’s take a look at what Lindor did to “distract” Lester. Here’s the stolen base itself:

It doesn’t appear that Lindor does anything out of the ordinary here. He took perhaps a slightly larger lead than normal, and then ran on first movement. Lindor was safe, as Ross had difficulty getting the ball out of the glove. When August Fagerstrom discussed Lester and Ross, he went through the numbers on why it’s so difficult to steal on them despite Lester’s throwing problems:

Well, let’s run some math. The problem here is, Lester and Ross are quick. All of the following information comes from Statcast, provided by Mike Petriello. Lester was getting the ball to the plate between 1.1 and 1.2 seconds last night, and Ross’s average pop time for the season was 1.95, which ranked sixth among 83 catchers with at least five throws to second base. Both those figures could be considered plus to elite on a scouting scale, and as a battery, their ~3.15 time to second base is hard to beat.

Lindor took advantage of a slightly larger lead and the knowledge that he could leave on first movement without consequence. Those two things together likely put Lindor’s chances of stealing a base at something like average for him, after factoring in the speed of Lester’s delivery and Ross’s pop time. Did the steal get in Lester’s head to help cause the walks of the next two batters as Rajai Davis intimated?

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Inarguably, one of the biggest moments of Game 1 happened in the seventh inning. Really, a handful of the biggest moments of Game 1 happened in the seventh inning, but the top half ended with Andrew Miller whiffing David Ross with two down and the bases loaded. The score at that point was a manageable 3-0, and the showdown got people talking. In part, there was confusion over why Ross was hitting there in the first place. Ross is not that good a hitter! But, he was definitely the one up there, and he is not a bad baseball player. Maybe most remarkable was this:

That’s the other thing people have discussed. At 3-and-1, with nowhere for Ross to go, Miller threw a slider. At 3-and-2, with still nowhere for Ross to go, Miller threw a slider. Those are what are referred to as classic fastball counts, and the perception is that there’s a lot of risk in going offspeed, because those pitches are more likely to be balls. Indeed, the final pitch wound up out of the zone, but Miller got Ross to chase, which is kind of his thing. It’s not Ross’ fault that Miller is some sort of baseball god.

The at-bat inspired some wonderful writing. In there, you see a discussion over what pitches there were, and what pitches Ross was expecting. It takes some balls to throw back-to-back sliders in that situation. I searched for precedent. I bet you’re not surprised to learn Miller hasn’t pitched that much this year with the bases loaded. When he has, he’s even less frequently been in three-ball counts. In fact, this year, before yesterday, Miller had thrown two three-ball pitches with the bases loaded. They both came on May 6, with the Yankees leading the Red Sox 3-2 in the top of the ninth. Miller threw a 3-and-1 pitch to David Ortiz, and he threw a 3-and-2 pitch to David Ortiz.

Here’s the first of them.

The count ran to 3-and-1 in the first place after a fastball/slider/fastball/slider sequence. It’s the same sequence that took Miller to 3-and-1 against Ross. Back in May, against Ortiz, Miller threw a 3-and-1…slider, for a close called strike. Now, it looks worse in the video, because the catcher was crossed up. The catcher was crossed up! And Miller still got the strike. That’s good umpiring! But it made Ortiz upset, because he turned around and saw the catcher fumbling, and so he made some assumptions. John Farrell came out to keep Ortiz from getting ejected. Farrell got ejected.

So, full count. Bases still loaded, one still out, one still the deficit. This is about as high-leverage as it can get in the first week of May. Miller threw the baseball that he had.

Slider, called strike, strikeout. Does the pitch seem kind of low to you? It definitely seemed kind of low to John Farrell, who — wait, what was Farrell doing still in the dugout? Get out of there!

People were heated. Ortiz got ejected. His getting ejected mattered less after the at-bat than it would have in the middle of it. It was a generous strike call. It was maybe probably a ball. Tough couple pitches.

But it’s not the results that matter to me. It’s just the process and the precedent. Miller got a lot of credit for throwing Ross two three-ball sliders. On the only two comparable pitches he threw this year, he also threw sliders. That’s kind of the thing about guys who throw 60% sliders — they don’t do that unless they really, really trust the pitch. For all intents and purposes, Andrew Miller’s slider is his fastball. At least, in the way we think about pitchers conventionally. Against Miller, it’s impossible to rule out the slider, ever. It’s among the things that make him nearly unhittable.

Andrew Miller threw David Ross some tough sliders in a difficult spot. Andrew Miller throws tough sliders. The best pitchers can do whatever they want.

Larry Vanover was the home-plate umpire yesterday. At one point on Twitter I noticed he was trending, so, you probably know what that means. After one particular half-inning, Jon Lester walked over to Vanover to have a little chat, presumably to try to clear some air. There were disagreements. When the stakes are so high, it’s possible to see injustice everywhere.

Vanover, in truth, called strikes that were perfectly fine. There were borderline pitches, and any borderline-pitch decision will make half the viewers upset, but overall, the Vanover zone was good. Maybe great! Let’s use the artificially binary strike zone from Baseball Savant. During the season, 91% of the pitches taken within the strike zone were called strikes. Vanover called yesterday at 96%. During the season, 13% of the pitches taken outside of the strike zone were called strikes. Vanover called yesterday at 10%. More preserved strikes, fewer extra strikes. That’s good umpiring. He clearly missed a pitch or three, but that’s just part of the everyday arrangement. Sometimes I fall asleep without taking out my contacts. That’ll happen until we have lens-removing robots. (I, too, will not accept said robots until they are perfect.)

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If you attempted to characterize the starters for Game Two of the World Series merely by arsenal alone, you might end up somewhere you didn’t expect: the same place. Cubs right-hander Jake Arrieta throws a four-seam fastball with ride and good velocity; a sinker he’s gone to more often this year; a strong, harder breaking ball; an excellent, bigger breaking ball; and a change he doesn’t use very often. As for Trevor Bauer… Well, huh: he has the same stuff.

Maybe you scoff, because of the differences in the results. Arrieta has produced three consecutive excellent seasons; Bauer has shown promise and improvement, but seemingly not on Arrieta’s level. Regardless, the similarities are present — and remain so, even if you take a more numbers-based approach to the analysis.

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