What causes teams to succeed in the playoffs? This is one of the debates in baseball most ridden with conventional wisdom, folksy tales, and grand assertions. Some claim that teams need to have playoff experience. Others focus on clutch performance, which usually coincides with whatever the person wishes to argue. A common argument, more cloaked in the language of reasonableness, is that teams that are more reliant on home runs than other ways of scoring underperform in the postseason. There are myriad reasons given for why some teams end up winning October, and most of them can tested for accuracy based on baseball history. I did a piece last year that looked at dozens of different team variables, and most of the explanations meant bupkis.

That doesn’t necessarily mean we throw our hands in the air and just assume teams are equally as good as they are in the regular season and go with that. There are significant structural differences between postseason and regular-season play simply due to the number of games and the increased number of off-days. Regular-season winning percentage is one of the few good predictors of postseason success; projections do even better. When I change the methodology in the ZiPS projections to focus more on a team’s frontline talent and the exact matchups and less on important regular-season things like depth, team strength becomes significantly more predictive of postseason success.

One of the best recent examples of this is the Nationals in 2019. Despite the 13-win regular-season advantage of the Dodgers, ZiPS projected their NLDS as a coin flip on the strength of the Nats being able to stuff so much of their team’s value into players who would be on the field. That was a projection that got a lot of pushback, but in the end, Washington won the World Series, basically riding the top of the rotation, a few really good hitters, and the two or three relievers that Dave Martinez could actually trust. Read the rest of this entry »

If Houston has a problem, that notion was put on hold for at least one night. Having lost four straight three-game series, three to lousy teams, the Astros arrived in Seattle sporting just a half-game lead over the Mariners for the third AL Wild Card spot, 2.5 games behind the Rangers. Fortunately for the Astros — for whom quality starting pitching has suddenly been in short supply this month — Justin Verlander played the stopper, shutting out the Mariners on two hits over his first eight innings in a 5-1 win.

Facing a team that owns the majors’ second-highest wOBA against four-seamers (.377), the 40-year-old Verlander dialed down his fastball usage in favor of his curve, and retired the Mariners in order in seven of his innings. He struck out the side in the second and fourth innings, and got into trouble only in the third, when Dominic Canzone and Josh Rojas hit back-to-back singles and J.P. Crawford followed with a walk. Verlander escaped that jam by inducing Julio Rodríguez to ground into a double play.

By that point, the Astros led 4-0, having banged out three second-inning runs against Luis Castillo via a trio of hard-hit balls from Mauricio Dubón, Martín Maldonado, and Jose Altuve, with Yordan Alvarez adding a fourth-inning homer. From the double-play ball through the end of the eighth, Verlander retired 16 straight Mariners. Given the intact shutout and a pitch count of just 91, manager Dusty Baker sent him out to start the ninth, but Rojas’ double into the right field corner ended Verlander’s night, and Bryan Abreu closed things out, though Rojas came around to score. Verlander struck out eight, benefited from a pair of diving stops by first baseman José Abreu, and allowed just six hard-hit balls out of 18 in play, none of them barrels. Read the rest of this entry »

Kenta Maeda has had a stellar career on two continents. Now in his seventh big league season — three with the Minnesota Twins preceded by four with the Los Angeles Dodgers — the 35-year-old erstwhile Hiroshima Carp has a 2.95 ERA and a 162-115 won-lost record between NPB and MLB. He’s been as good as ever in September. The Osaka native has been credited with a win in each of his last three decisions while allowing just four runs over 17-and-two-thirds innings. When he next takes the mound it will be with a 4.28 ERA and a 3.96 FIP on the year.

Maeda discussed his evolution as a pitcher, and offered some thoughts on NPB, when the postseason-bound Twins visited Cleveland earlier this month. Daichi Sekizaki served as an interpreter for the interview.

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David Laurila: How much have you changed as a pitcher since coming over from Japan?

Kenta Maeda: “The first couple of years I was pretty much just myself; I was the same pitcher that I was in Japan. After pitching here for several years, I know what the different hitters’ weaknesses are and when they are getting on to me. I ironed some things out and made adjustments to become better, to become the pitcher that I am today.” Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, Michael King proved that moving him to the rotation was the best maneuver the Yankees have made in the entire second half by striking out 13 Blue Jays over seven innings. Somewhat lost in the shuffle, as has often been the case over the past few seasons, was Kevin Gausman’s dominance opposite King.

Gausman, who was perhaps better known for his firm fastball as a prospect, has really only taken off since the heater and splitter entered into a timeshare. After only using the split at a 35% clip in one year previously, he’s turned to it at least that often every year since 2021. This season, its usage is at a career-high 38.5%.

The Jays’ right-hander actually out-whiffed King on Wednesday, 17–16, with 11 swings and misses on the split. In terms of balls in play, both King and Gausman allowed just three at an exit velocity of 95 mph or harder. While the whiffs are staples of both pitchers’ games, the hard hits are especially noteworthy; King’s hard-hit rate on the season — 31.4% — ranks fourth lowest among pitchers with at least 90 innings, and Gausman’s, at 11.5 percentage points higher, ranks a paltry 108th. If you prefer barrel rate, King (6.8%) ranks 22nd lowest and Gausman (9.8%) 110th. Read the rest of this entry »

The biggest news to come out of Thursday’s series opener between the A’s and Tigers in Oakland was the A’s gifting retiring future Hall of Famer Miguel Cabrera a bottle of wine valued at under $100 — a gift roundly criticized on social media for being both cheap and not particularly appropriate, given Cabrera’s history with alcohol abuse. It was the kind of story that is ripe for punchlines: a franchise whose much broader-scale cheapness is costing their loyal fans a beloved local team presents a thoughtless gift to fulfill an already awkward tradition before a meaningless game. But at least outside of Detroit, the ceremonial blunder may have overshadowed another outstanding performance from a pitcher who has quietly been one of the hottest in baseball since returning from injury in July: Tarik Skubal.

On Thursday in Oakland, Skubal faced 22 hitters and recorded 21 outs, using just 87 pitches. He struck out 10 of those 22, walked just one and allowed only a pair of singles, both of which were erased by double-play balls. No A’s hitter reached scoring position until the Tigers’ bullpen had taken over after Skubal’s seven scoreless frames. The two hits he gave up looked like this:

And this:

Read the rest of this entry »

Justin Steele has an uncommon pitch profile and an uncomplicated approach to his craft. He also has an outside chance of capturing this year’s NL Cy Young award. With two starts remaining (one if the Cubs clinch a Wild Card berth prior to Sunday’s regular-season finale), the 28-year-old southpaw is 16–5 with a 3.00 ERA and a 2.99 FIP over 168 innings. He’s not only been Chicago’s best pitcher, but he’s also been one of the best in the Senior Circuit.

Steele’s emergence as a frontline starter was portended by last year’s performance. While his won-lost record was an anything-but-eye-catching 4–7, his 3.18 ERA and his 3.20 FIP weren’t notably higher than this year’s marks. Moreover, his strikeout and ground-ball rates were actually better, as were his xFIP and HR/9. His BABIP was nearly identical. The only meaningful difference, on paper, was his walk rate, which at 3.78 was essentially double this season’s 1.88.

Prior to his last outing — a game in which he was BABIP’d to death by six consecutive fourth-inning singles — I approached Steele in Wrigley Field’s home clubhouse to get his thoughts on what has been an outstanding season. The following day, I asked Cubs pitching coach Tommy Hottovy about the pitch characteristics that make Steele a Cy Young contender.

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David Laurila: Won-lost record and walk rate aside, a lot of your numbers aren’t all that different from last year’s. Are you more or less the same pitcher?

Justin Steele: “I would say that I’m better. The pitches are the same, I’m the same pitcher as far as that goes, but I’ve been more consistent this year. I’m not walking as many guys. I’m being competitive throughout the count, I’ve cut down on non-competitive pitches big time. So yeah, a lot more consistent.”

Laurila: Were you happy with last year?

Steele: “I think so. I was definitely happy with how I finished up [a 0.99 ERA over his last seven starts]. I felt like the entire season I was improving. That’s something that’s really important to me, always improving from start to start.”

Laurila: What’s behind this year’s improved consistency?

Steele: “I think it’s just more reps, getting more and more comfortable out there each time I take the ball. It’s like anything in life: you do it more and you get more comfortable doing it. You also get better at it.” Read the rest of this entry »

With apologies to Matt Olson, Freddie Freeman, and Corbin Carroll, the race for the NL MVP Award has essentially boiled down to two players: Ronald Acuña Jr. and Mookie Betts. It’s an incredibly close one, with the pair producing such similar batting lines that they’re tied for the NL lead with a 169 wRC+. Betts has the edge in both the FanGraphs and Baseball Reference versions of WAR, Acuña has the edge in several counting stats, and each player has added some unique additional flavors into the mix.

For Acuña, those largely center around his prolific baserunning. Aided by the new rules — particularly the limits on pickoff throws — and unhindered by a drop in sprint speed in the wake of his 2021 ACL tear, he’s stolen 68 bases, the highest total in the majors since 2010. With his 40th homer coming against the Nationals on Friday, he has just the fifth 40–40 season ever, and now the most steals of any player in that club, surpassing Alex Rodriguez’s 46 from 1998 (to go with 42 homers). With one week remaining, he needs two steals to become the first player ever to combine 40 homers and 70 steals in the same campaign, in what’s arguably the greatest power-speed combo season anybody has seen.

There’s certainly value to such an accomplishment, though we’re entering the realm of intangibility. We’re already crediting the value of his homers and steals within the context of the rest of his offensive stat line, but things like wOBA, wRC+, and WAR don’t tell us how much to care about a player reaching round-numbered milestones like these, even if they’re without precedent. Even less clear-cut is the attempt to examine the extent to which Acuña’s baserunning has helped his teammates, mainly by giving them more fastballs to hit. Colleague Esteban Rivera established that yes, players do see more fastballs when he’s on first, but their performances against those fastballs wasn’t uniformly better. “Acuña is most likely helping his teammates see more heaters,” he concluded. “What they do with those pitches, though, is completely up to them.”

Betts isn’t without his own cool counting stat achievements. His two-run double off Ross Stripling on Saturday night gave him 105 RBIs out of the leadoff spot, a record (Acuña is third at 101). Meanwhile, he’s hit 12 leadoff homers, one shy of the single-season record set by Alfonso Soriano in 2003, and his career-high 39 homers are two shy of the post-World War II record for the most by a player listed at 5-foot-9 or shorter, currently held by Roy Campanella. But bigger (if more difficult to measure) impact he’s made is with his sudden burst of Zobristian versatility: In the wake of Gavin Lux tearing his right ACL in late February, Betts has started 69 games in the infield — 56 at second base and another 12 at shortstop — in his most infield play in nearly a decade. Read the rest of this entry »

Hao-Yu Lee will be one of eight Detroit Tigers prospects participating in the forthcoming Arizona Fall League, and while he doesn’t possess the highest profile of the bunch, he does have the most-traveled backstory. Acquired from the Philadelphia Phillies at the trade deadline in exchange for Michael Lorenzen, the 20-year-old infielder hails from Taiwan and began dreaming of playing professionally in the United States at age 16 after a strong performance in a U-18 tournament, in Korea. Two years earlier he’d excelled in a tournament that took place 15-plus miles southwest of Comerica Park.

The Phillies signed Hao-Yu in June 2021—the Cincinnati Reds and Tampa Bay Rays were among the other MLB teams that had expressed interest — once he’d finished high school. No. 8 on our Phillies Top Prospects list with a 40+ FV coming into this season, he slashed .273/.362/.399 before going on the shelf with a quad strain in mid-August. He ended up playing in just eight games for the High-A West Michigan Whitecaps before missing the duration of the campaign.

The first big-league game Hao-Yu attended was in 2017 when he was competing in the Junior League World Series, which is held annually in Taylor, Michigan. He doesn’t remember if the Tigers won that day, but he does recall his first impression of Comerica Park. “I told my teammates that I was going to play here someday,” the confident youngster said of the experience.

He also remembers the tournament, and for good reason. Not only did Taoyuan, Taiwan capture the international bracket, they went on to beat Kennett Square, Pennsylvania in the finals. Moreover, Hao-Yu “raked that tournament; five games, five homers!” Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been fascinated by the idea of mirror image twins since the Giants signed Taylor Rogers last December, pairing him up with his brother Tyler and illuminating me to their unusual genetic connection. As monozygotic (i.e., identical) twins, they come from the same fertilized ovum and, thus, the same DNA. Taylor, however, is left-handed, and Tyler is right-handed, a manifestation of their mirror image relationship.

Mirror image twinship makes for a perfect metaphor, and as a writer, nothing excites me more. It’s like a real-world example of a contronym, a word that can have two opposite meanings in different contexts; the word “dusting” always looks the same, but sometimes it means to remove dust, and other times it means to sprinkle it on. It’s the same thing with the Rogers twins. They look exactly the same until they take the mound. Read the rest of this entry »

Where is the line that tells you whether a pitcher is a starter or reliever? It’s subjective, but there are a few benchmarks that baseball folks have used over time to determine a pitcher’s role. Do they have more than two pitches? Do they have extreme splits? Does their velocity hold as their pitch count increases? Depending on the answer to any of these questions (and more), you’ll have a decent idea of a pitcher’s fate as a starter or reliever.

Sometimes, though, pitchers get moved to the bullpen simply because the other five options at any given time seem more viable, and not necessarily because they didn’t possess the skills to dish out six quality innings. The latter firmly describes Michael King.

King was a starter throughout his entire minor league career and even started a few games during his debut season in 2020 before settling into a long relief role in 2021 thanks to a crowded Yankees rotation. But the version of King we saw in the minors and those two seasons is not what he is now. For that, we have to reference his 2022 season, when he fully embraced his ability to supinate and started throwing his sweeper as his only breaking ball, upping the usage to 30%; the year prior, he only threw it 10% of the time. Before suffering a season-ending elbow fracture, he posted a 2.29 ERA and 2.23 FIP in 51 innings, delivering several multi-inning outings out of the bullpen.

On top of his sinker and sweeper, King displayed his ability to mix in his four-seamer and changeup at the right times, both of which have been crucial to his success as a starter; more on that later. That gave him a four-pitch mix where each pitch was at least average and more than one that was plus. That’s the exact kind of arsenal you’d expect a rotation arm to have, but coming off elbow surgery and bullpen success and facing another full starting five, the expectation wasn’t that he’d get the chance to pitch in that role. Read the rest of this entry »