So that was exciting, and then the exact opposite of exciting, but after two days of play-in games, we know who the Wild Card entries are to the postseason this year. The Royals and Giants join the six division winners in chasing the World Series title, and so before the games begin tonight, let’s take a look at what each remaining contender did well this year, as well as something they might have had problems with.
Three months ago, the Oakland A’s had Yoenis Cespedes, Addison Russell, Tommy Milone, a seemingly insurmountable lead in the American League West, and joy in their hearts. (I don’t know, probably.) Now, they’ve had a summer-long collapse, a much smaller-scale collapse within the wild card game, and have some farewells to offer to short-term employees Jon Lester, Jason Hammel, Geovany Soto, Jonny Gomes and Adam Dunn, plus slightly longer-term employees Luke Gregerson, Alberto Callaspo and Jed Lowrie, all free agents.
I’d say “it’s going to be a winter of transition” in Oakland, except that’s always the case. A full 30 members of the season-ending 43-man roster (three players were on the 60-day DL) were acquired via trade; throw in nine more via free agency or waivers, and only four Oakland players were homegrown draftees. Even that’s overstating it, though, because two of those four (eternal prospect Michael Ynoa and injured starter A.J. Griffin) didn’t appear at all for the A’s this season. That leaves Sean Doolittle, who wasn’t even drafted to do the job he’s doing, and Sonny Gray. Otherwise, this entire A’s team was built via the non-draft machinations of Billy Beane.
Right now, the A’s have financial commitments to a mere five players next year, and two of them are minimal. What’s next for the A’s? There’s no shortage of answers to that question.
Award season is upon us, and as far as the biggest pieces of individual hardware go, there will be relatively little debate this season. Clayton Kershaw would appear to be poised to sweep the NL Cy Young and MVP awards, and Mike Trout would seemingly be in line to finally (?) land his first AL MVP. That leaves us with the AL Cy Young, a heavyweight matchup between perennial contender and one-time winner Felix Hernandez and this year’s breakthrough pitcher, Corey Kluber. Conventional wisdom seems to hold that Hernandez would be the choice of traditionalists, while Kluber would gain the sabermetric vote. Should that be the case? Let’s take a deeper look. Read the rest of this entry »
Washington Nationals starter Jordan Zimmermann pitched a no-hitter against the Miami Marlins on Sunday. It was the first no-hitter in the history of the ten-year-old franchise. It was also the last day of the regular season. Those facts alone will keep the memory of Zimmermann’s effort alive for Nationals fans for years to come. But they won’t be the most memorable aspect of the no-hitter. That belongs to Steven Souza Jr.
Nationals manager Matt Williams sent Souza in to replace Ryan Zimmerman in left field for the top of the ninth inning. Zimmerman isn’t a natural left fielder, but a shoulder injury has hampered his throw across the diamond from his usual spot at third base. That, and the emergence of Anthony Rendon, has lead to Zimmerman playing left field quite a bit this season.
With Souza in left, Michael Taylor in center and Nate Schierholtz in right, the Marlins’ Christian Yelich stepped to the plate against Zimmermann. There were two outs and Yelich was the last hope for the Marlins to break up Zimmerman’s no-hit bid. Courtesy of Erik Malinowski, a Vine of Yelich’s fly ball out.
The Kansas City Royals just won the American League Wild Card, and advanced to the postseason for the first time since 1985. Congratulations are in order, and yet, had Billy Butler’s baserunning blunder not indirectly led to Geovany Soto’s thumb injury — and the insertion of throwing-impaired catcher Derek Norris — we would probably be talking about a very different game this morning. That’s what kind of game that was; the Royals may very well have won because their lead-footed designated hitter screwed up an attempted stolen base, allowing their track stars to run wild later on in the game. These are the kinds of events that make prognosticating a baseball game feel like a futile endeavor.
But for about an hour or so, the story of this game felt like it was going to be pretty easy to write. The Royals carried a lead into the sixth inning. The Royals had the best bullpen in baseball this year, led by the dominant trio of Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis, and Greg Holland. And each of those three sat and watched as James Shields put the tying and go-ahead runs on base, and then continued to watch as Yordano Ventura entered the game and promptly gave up a three-run home run to Brandon Moss. Yordano Ventura, a rookie starter who threw 73 pitches two days ago. A right-handed rookie pitcher, working on very short rest, in a situation in which he was not used to being used. This didn’t even require second guessing, as there was plenty of first guessing going on even before Moss crushed the ball over the center field fence.
I’m not here to say that going to Ventura was definitely the right call, or that it was not a strange decision in light of the other available options. Earlier in the day, I suggested that Yost not rely too heavily on Shields pitching deep into the game, and that he should be willing to ask his trio of elite relievers to get the final 12 outs. Had Yost called me at the start of the sixth inning, I’m pretty sure that I would not have considered Ventura as my first option, especially once Shields put two men on base and their collection of left-handers came around to bat.
But was it really indefensible? Was the move so obviously bad that the ensuing result should have been foreseeable? I’m not so sure. Let’s deal with the primary criticisms.
It’s too bad that the playoffs have to continue uninterrupted, because I’d be content to think about and write about Tuesday night’s wild-card game for the next month and a half. While it wasn’t actually a demonstration of smallball vs. Moneyball, the Royals resembled a team from the 80s, or more accurately, the Royals resembled themselves, beating the A’s with exactly their own brand of offense. The Royals this past season were the best base-stealing team in the league, and while it’s easy to downplay baserunning as a significant overall factor in determining wins and losses, the small picture doesn’t always work like the big picture, and Tuesday night, stolen bases were very much a huge reason behind the Royals’ stunning advance.
That was a key we all thought to watch for. Aggressiveness was part of the Royals’ game plan, as they tied a playoff record with seven steals. There’s blame going the way of Derek Norris, who replaced an injured Geovany Soto, and to be sure, Norris could’ve had a better game. But something we’ve really come to understand in the past few years is that steals are more off of pitchers than catchers, and this wasn’t so much the Royals taking advantage of Norris as it was the Royals taking advantage of the batteries. The Royals read and the Royals ran, and there was no bigger stolen base than Jarrod Dyson’s arrival at third in the bottom of the ninth.
Last night, the Kansas City Royals laid down four sacrifice bunts, one fewer than they had in the entire month of September. It was a veritable bunt-a-palooza, with Ned Yost’s squad taking small ball to an entirely different level. Predictably, sabermetrically-inclined fans and analysts hated it, as the community has spent years preaching the value of not giving away outs. The live blog was inundated with angry Royals fans who wanted Yost fired, even as the team staged a miracle comeback, because he handed the A’s more than an innnings worth of free outs in his pursuit of runner advancement.
But let’s talk about all those bunts, and whether they were actually harmful to the Royals chances of winning. Let’s go through them, in chronological order.
It doesn’t feel like corny sentiment to say the Kansas City Royals stole the American League Wild Card from the Oakland A’s. The Royals lineup does not inspire much in the way of fear but this ragtag bunch hung nine runs on the A’s best starter and its (rightly) maligned bullpen.
They did so while hitting just two extra base hits, both of which came in the 12th inning. Eric Hosmer tripled and Salvador Perez yanked the walkoff double down the line compared to 13 singles and three walks. Without the benefit of big bats, the Royals instead did what the Royals do – they swiped and stole and small ball’d their way to victory, just as our fearless leader suggested they should mere hours before the game began.
They stole seven bases on the night, equalling the record for a postseason game. While none of these steals are likely to reach “Dave Roberts Game 4” levels of notoriety, five of the seven thefts came around to score. Let’s look at each steal, ranking them by win probability added to see which was truly the biggest steal of the night.
A couple of weeks ago, we announced the creation of the FanGraphs Player of the Year Award, which we created to recognize the single best performance in a given season, regardless of the position the player plays or the league that he plays in. Just one award for one player, with everyone eligible, and all players measured on the strength of their own performance.
In that post, we announced that the voting panel would include 11 members of the FanGraphs staff, myself included. Today, we’re amending that slightly, as I am recusing myself from the voting panel this year, as our plan to reveal the winner — and all of our balllots — on October 20th means that my participation would reveal some of the order of the NL MVP ballot which I cast over the weekend. In order to avoid that issue, I’m surrendering my vote for the Player of the Year Award this season. To replace me on the panel, we have chosen to give you guys a ballot instead.
Before I link to the ballot, though, I need to explain the grading process that we have attached to the system. While the ballot does contain a normal 1-10 ranking system, we have added an additional evaluation layer, with a 0-100 grade also being recorded for every player you list on your ballot. The grade is actually the more important number than the ranking on the ballot, though both will be tabulated, and the player’s average ranking will be used as a tie-breaker, so position on the ballot matters as well. But the grade is the more important evaluation, so let me walk through how the grading scale works.
What are you going to remember from the AL wild card game? Be honest, really.
You’re going to remember Ned Yost. Hooooooo boy, are you going to remember Ned Yost. There’s going to be no shortage of post-mortems in Kansas City about Yost, for about 40 different reasons, surprisingly not all about bunting. (Argue about whether it was smart to take out James Shields [yes] for an on-one-day-rest Yordano Ventura [no] all you want, I’m still not over the early botched Eric Hosmer / Billy Butler double steal that was actually called on purpose.) You’re not going to forget Brandon Finnegan, either, or Salvador Perez, or Jarrod Dyson on the base paths.
You’re going to remember Bob Melvin and that eighth inning, too, inexplicably leaving Jon Lester in to rack up 111 pitches, get three men on base, and (along with Luke Gregerson) turn a 7-3 lead into a 7-6 nailbiter. You’re going to remember Jonny Gomes in left field, and what should be by all reason the last game that Derek Norris ever catches in the big leagues. I’ll remember thinking that for every time we laugh and make jokes all while understanding that managers know a million times more than we do, every single thing in this game happened. Yost was often brutal in this one. Melvin wasn’t necessarily better.
There’s so, so much to unpack there, and I’ve barely scraped the surface of what was one of the weirdest, greatest, worst, best, ludicrous baseball games ever. So much happened, in fact, that what no one at all is going to remember is what seemed for much of the evening like the biggest story of the night: Brandon Moss, who had hit two homers in the previous two months, hit two in the same playoff game. Let’s talk about that, a little.
