The first few days of playoff action have had a little bit of everything. At one point or another, we all likely saw something we had never seen before, and been reminded in some way why we had fallen in love with this game in the first place. Each postseason, a narrative or two seems to emerge – this time around, seemingly every media outlet opines that a team’s bullpen is the primary reason for each playoff team’s success, or lack thereof. This was particularly true during the Orioles-Tigers series, which in truth, did feature one of the most catastrophic pen implosions in recent memory. The narrative tells us that a club must do whatever possible, especially via the trade and free agent markets, to bolster one’s bullpen. In other words, do exactly what the Tigers did to build their still smoldering relief corps. Read the rest of this entry »

Billy Butler’s nickname is Country Breakfast. You know that — you’ve known that for years — but at this point, the connection’s automatic, and you probably don’t really think about it. This time, think about it. I don’t actually know why he’s nicknamed Country Breakfast, but it seems to be ever so fitting. If you think about whatever a country breakfast is, and if you think about the people likely to be eating it, you imagine a guy who looks like Billy Butler, a guy who doesn’t have plans to be active the rest of the day. Billy Butler’s all gravy and pig with a .300 average, and that’s an easy sort of player to fall in love with as long as you’ve got pinch-runners at the ready.

Billy Butler is slow. Not just relatively slow, among professional athletes — he is a slow man, when he’s running. The good news is he’s not supposed to be fast. The bad news is he’s slow. Since 2009, Butler’s posted six of the 80 worst baserunning seasons in baseball. This year he was on first base for 31 singles, and one time did he make it to third. About 10% of the time he took an extra base, against a league average of 40%. Current Fan Scouting Report results give Butler a 17/100 in sprint speed. This is consistent with his 18 from previous years. Jesus Montero also received a sprint rating of 18, and the Mariners hired a man to spend the offseason teaching him how to move his legs and arms. According to you guys, Billy Butler runs as fast as a player who didn’t know how to run. I could go on longer than this, but, this paragraph is your background.

And so on Sunday, in Game 3 of the ALDS, Billy Butler stole second base in the playoffs. It wasn’t the play that did the Angels in — truthfully, it wasn’t a play that really mattered — but it spoke to the confidence with which the Royals were plowing forward. The man on the mound, by the way, was a lefty.

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We’ll resume our live blog coverage a little later on in the postseason, but if you guys want to hang out and discuss the Nats-Giants and Cards-Dodgers games tonight, feel free to use this thread for that discourse.

First, a brief introductory note. Some of you will know me from the writing I’ve done for FanGraphs’ sister site, The Hardball Times. This postseason, I’ve been granted the chance to do some occasional quick-and-dirty playoff analysis here. My thanks to Dave Cameron and Paul Swydan for making this possible. Now I’ll stop wasting time and get to the content.

On Saturday night and (for us Easterners) Sunday morning, the Giants and Nationals played a ridiculously long baseball game. How long was it? For one, Nationals pitchers Tanner Roark aged a year during the two innings he pitched. Yes, that means Sunday was his birthday, and quite possibly the worst one he’s had, since he got stuck with the loss. Happy bleepin’ birthday, Tanner! I’d give you cake, but Brandon Belt already ate it.

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Clayton Kershaw seems like a virtual lock to win the 2014 National League Most Valuable Player award. Even though he missed a handful of starts at the beginning of the year, he more than made up for that over the remainder, and below, observe a plot of how Kershaw has distributed his runs allowed.

Kershaw’s made 28 starts, and in seven of them, he didn’t allow a run. In another ten, he allowed but a single run, so you can see why Kershaw’s MVP case has so much support. But I should note that Kershaw made 27 regular-season starts, and he’s made one postseason start. The postseason start is included in the plot above, and it’s something that kind of needs to be explained.

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On Saturday night, Matt Williams removed Jordan Zimmermann with one out to go, trying to preserve a 1-0 lead. Drew Storen entered immediately gave up a single to Buster Posey and a double Pablo Sandoval, tying the game at 1-1; the Giants would go on and win in 18. Williams was heavily criticized in the aftermath of the game for taking a pitcher out who was, at that, throwing a shutout, especially given that he had only thrown 100 pitches on the night.

But let’s just look at the numbers here for a second. We’ll look at career and 2014 batting against both pitchers.

On a per-batter faced, Drew Storen has been a more effective pitcher than Jordan Zimmermann. This shouldn’t be a big surprise, since good relievers are almost always the hardest guys in all of baseball to hit, and Storen is a very good reliever.

And as you’re probably sick of reading about by now, pitchers get worse the more often they face the same hitter within the same game. Here are Zimmermann’s career splits by times through the order:

The first time Zimmermann faces a hitter in a game, he’s lights out. Second time, still pretty good. Third time, he’s roughly league average. The fourth match-up has been a disaster for him.

And yes, Zimmermann was throwing the ball well on Saturday night, but you only get to face a guy a fourth time through the order if you’re pitching well, so that entire data pool is essentially comprised of performances against Zimmermann late in games in which he had already performed at a high level. 81 plate appearances is of course a small sample, but both the league-wide and Zimmermann-specific trends are clear; his performance declines the longer he stays in, and by the time a hitter has already faced him three times, they hit him pretty well.

Even if we cherry pick the numbers, we can’t come up with a scenario where the expected line against Storen would be worse than against Zimmermann. Storen’s career .273 wOBA allowed is better than Zimmermann’s career-best .280 wOBA allowed this year, so even if we give Zimmermann credit for his 2014 performance and still hold Storen’s entire career line against him, Zimmermann still loses out. Add in any kind of times-through-the-order penalty and it ceases to even be remotely close.

Storen was the right call. It didn’t work, but that doesn’t make the move a mistake.

Statistical analysts have long been fascinated with the idea of clutch hitting. Often times, those who who have provided memorable hits have been assigned an ineffable quality, with the idea that they can raise their game when runners are in scoring position, with two outs, or late in games. The reality is most great clutch hitters are simply good hitters, and over time hitters put up roughly the same numbers regardless of the situation.

For pitchers, the situation is slightly more complicated. Hitting is reactive – one can only take what they are given. Pitchers have more control in big spots, and often their pitch usage with runners on base or in high leverage situations varies from their normal pitch sequencing.

It’s a matter of bearing down. We hear often that a pitcher “needs” a strikeout in a given situation, and often pitchers attack batters with that very outcome in mind.

For some hitters, this is the most important part of an opposing pitcher’s scouting report. Miguel Cabrera is a born hitter, the kind of guy who can rope doubles and hit opposite field home runs while falling out of bed. His unique skills and seemingly innate ability to put the bat on the ball allow him to spend less time in the video room than most players. In fact, he barely studies opposing pitchers much at all.

In a profile of Cabrera’s approach I wrote in 2013, he explained that most of his video work comes from just watching pitchers with runners on base or looking at what they throw from the stretch. It’s the only information he wants because he feels it gives him an edge when his team needs him most.

Some players don’t want that kind of information, but a hitter like Cabrera — the rare talent that can sit on one pitch and still react to others — it can make all the difference during the game’s most dramatic moments as many pitchers make specific and deliberate adjustments when confronted with runners in scoring position.

Read the rest on FoxSports.com.

The Orioles finished off the Detroit Tigers yesterday, winning their division series three games to none, though the primary story of the series still seems to resolve around the Tigers and their disastrous bullpen performance. Despite throwing $10 million per year at Joe Nathan over the winter, and then trading for Joakim Soria at the deadline, the Tigers bullpen combined for 19.29 ERA in this series, and that includes two shutout innings from regular season starter Anibal Sanchez. If you look at just the Tigers postseason pitchers who were relievers in the regular season, they combined to allow 11 runs in just three innings against the Orioles, good for an ERA of 33.00.

The Orioles likely would be up 2-1 in this series even if the Tigers relievers had pitched well — Detroit’s starter left with the team down 4-3 in Game 1 and down 2-0 in Game 3, and the Tigers never managed to make up those deficits in either game — so it’s not accurate to say that the Tigers bullpen cost them the division series. However, on the other end of things, we could put together an argument that the Orioles bullpen, and more specifically Buck Showalter’s management of his relievers, won this series for the Orioles.

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It’s not a stretch to say that heading into the ALDS, the biggest concern in Detroit was about the bullpen — specifically how first-year manager Brad Ausmus had chosen to deploy it late in the season. Baltimore ended up sweeping the Tigers in three games, and the bullpen was directly involved in two of Detroit’s losses. At least one Ausmus decision — lifting Anibal Sanchez for Joba Chamberlain in Game 2 — was enough to get the manager torched by analysts and fans. There were some unhappy, as well, about Ausmus’ decision to bring in Chamberlain in Game 1 and with his choice to pinch-hit Hernan Perez for Andrew Romine in the ninth inning in Game 3 (as though that were really a thing that mattered at all).

Ausmus’ inexperience was perceived as a weakness. He made unpopular decisions that went poorly, and now his team is headed home. Guess we know where to place the blame, right? This is some quality #narrative, of course. It’s not necessarily wrong, entirely, because Ausmus certainly made some choices that didn’t require second-guessing, since they’d been first-guessed in the moment. It’s just a little too simplistic, a little too convenient.

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This is a story all about how an umpire flipped-turned a playoff game upside down.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming the outcome of Saturday night’s marathon game between Washington and San Francisco entirely on fourth-year umpire Vic Carapazza, working in his first MLB postseason. I would never do that. Despite what disgruntled fans might lead you to believe, the blame for a team’s loss can never be placed on the shoulders of one individual. Especially not in a game that lasted 18 innings.

There are countless factors that played into Washington’s loss, and that’s been reflected in the media’s coverage of this game. The offense went scoreless for 15 innings after taking a 1-0 lead in the third. Many have focused on manager Matt Williams‘ decision to remove starting pitcher Jordan Zimmermann after a walk in the ninth. Some have focused on… the male genitalia? But a lot of attention has turned to Carapazza, who had a shaky strike zone and ejected Williams and shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera in the bottom of the 10th for arguing balls and strikes.

Cabrera and Williams need to keep their cool in that situation, but, boy, did Vic Carapazza have himself a rough night.
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