In 2012, Stephen Strasburg didn’t pitch for Washington in the postseason after being shut down due to injury concerns. He did make his playoff debut in 2014, and in one start gave up two runs in five innings while striking out just two with a walk and a hit-by-pitch. It wasn’t a great start to his postseason career, but since that outing, Strasburg has been incredible. He made two starts against the Cubs in the NLDS in 2017. He went seven innings in the first one, striking out 10 and walking just one while giving up two unearned runs in a loss. In an elimination game later that series, Strasburg again went seven innings, this time striking out 12 against two walk and no runs in a Nationals victory. That 2017 NLDS gave everyone a taste of what Strasburg could do in the playoffs, and this year, he’s putting together one of the greatest postseason runs of all time with a chance to keep the Nationals title hopes alive tonight.

Strasburg first appeared this postseason in a season-saving relief outing in the Wild Card game in which his three shutout innings kept Washington within range before the offense could make a comeback and advance to the NLDS. Against the Dodgers in the next round, he struck out 10 batters in six innings with no walks and just one run to keep the Nationals from going down 0-2 in the five-game series. Then, in his only blip of the postseason, Strasburg gave up three runs in the first two innings of the deciding game against the Dodgers, but he allowed no runs over the next four as the Nationals won in 10 innings. He shut down the Cardinals with 12 strikeouts and no walks in seven innings in the third contest of a four-game NLCS sweep. Finally, in the second game of the World Series, Strasburg outdueled Justin Verlander and threw 114 pitches in six difficult innings to hold the Astros to two runs. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: Michael has previously written at Pitcher List and Baseball Prospectus, as well as his own site, Pitcher Giffer, and serves as the site manager for Bucs Dugout. You may also have seen his nifty pitch GIFs at ESPN. He’ll be contributing to FanGraphs a few times a week. We’re excited to welcome him.

Down two games to one to the Washington Nationals, with their season potentially hanging in the balance, the Houston Astros turned to rookie pitcher Jose Urquidy in Game 4 in an attempt to pull the World Series even. Not much was known or expected from the 24-year-old righty who made his post-All-Star break major league debut in July. To say Urquidy rose to the occasion on Saturday is a bit of an understatement. He kept the Nationals offense in check, throwing five innings with no runs allowed on two hits, no walks, and four strikeouts.

Urquidy spent one month with the team, was sent back down to the minor leagues in August, then returned in September. He continued to strike out hitters at a high rate, minimized his walks, and was able to deflate his ERA by four runs. He made two starts in four appearances, pitching a total of 11 innings, and allowed just one earned run off of four hits and two walks with a 2.76 FIP.

Could Urquidy develop into a front-line starter for the Astros in 2020? It’s possible, but he has an adjustment (or two) that will need to be made if he hopes to maintain his efficiency long term.

Urquidy was a relatively unheralded prospect; he currently sits at 19th in the Astros system on THE BOARD. Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel described him as having plus command, describing him at the time of their report as a “spot-starter type” but also noting there is a “chance that he actually has 7 command and is something more than that.” (That command is especially important given the diversity of arm slots from which he throws his pitches, but more on that in a moment.) With his future value rated at 40, it’s hard to imagine the rookie having the kind of outing he did on Saturday. Sure, you can point to the results of his seven starts and two relief appearances in 2019. During that stretch of 41 innings, Urquidi posted a 3.68 FIP, a 24% strikeout rate, and 4.2% walk rate. While that sounds great, it’s hardly enough data to infer future performance.

Below are the three main pitches Urquidy relies on– the fastball, changeup, and slider. He produces good movement, but notice how the fastball and changeup (sitting in the middle) arm slots are fairly close, but the slider is not:

A more drastic example appears below (with the curveball included):

Allow Brooks Baseball to show how disjointed they actually are, with Urquidy’s regular and postseason release points:

Read the rest of this entry »

When the Nationals took an early lead in the World Series, there was a popular cry for the team to knock the Astros out while they could. Expend resources you were planning on saving for later in the series, turn Patrick Corbin into a reliever, maybe bring back some starters on short rest: what does it matter if you hurt your chances of winning Game 7, the thinking goes, if Game 7 never happens?

A softer version of this came up as the Cardinals walloped the Braves in Game 5 of the NLDS. The game was already decided. Why not pull Jack Flaherty so that he could pitch Games 1 and 5 of the NLCS rather than Games 3 and 7? It’s not an identical situation, but it relies on the same logic: earlier games happen more often, so get your pitchers into those.

Tomorrow night, there will be yet another version of this discussion. The Astros are a win away from ending the series. If the game goes into extra innings, say, or Justin Verlander gets knocked around but the offense keeps the team in it, would Houston use Zack Greinke in an attempt to end things right then and there? And should they?

While these questions are similar, they’re not identical. Does this reallocation of win probability matter? The answer, as it often is, is “it depends.” I believe the answers to these three questions are “not much,” “not at all,” and “more than you’d think,” respectively, and I’ll attempt to lay out why I think that is the case here.
Read the rest of this entry »

Some change is coming to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Over the last month, the team has fired long-time manager Clint Hurdle and President Frank Coonelly, and today the news came out that GM Neal Huntington is out of a job as well. Owner Bob Nutting is still the one making the calls in Pittsburgh, but the team has hired a new President, with former Pittsburgh Penguins hockey executive Travis Williams taking over the business side of the operation in hopes of duplicating his success with the city’s hockey team. As for Huntington, his departure signals a major change in operations for the Pirates. But a change in operations doesn’t necessarily mean a change in direction, and some skepticism regarding the latter is warranted given the last few decades of Pirates baseball.

Every franchise experiences inflection points, where the team charts a new course in an attempt to move forward. The Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 2018; a year later, they fired Dave Dombrowski and brought in Chaim Bloom to help sustain his predecessor’s success while avoiding the failings that precipitated Dombrowski’s departure from Detroit. After sustained failure, the Cubs hired Theo Epstein and the Astros brought in Jeff Luhnow. Both were enlisted to tear down and then rebuild their respective franchises in the hopes of striking out on a new path and contending for the playoffs and championships. It’s not entirely clear that this is what’s happening in Pittsburgh. The club missed its opportunity to capitalize on its three-year playoff run from 2013 to ’15, and faces a future that doesn’t look too different from most of its past. Read the rest of this entry »

The Houston Astros evened up the World Series in convincing fashion Saturday night, defeating the Washington Nationals 8-1 in a game that was only in doubt for a few, relatively brief moments. With this win, the Astros reset the World Series into a best-of-three in which they have home-field advantage. By forcing a Game 6, regardless of the outcome of tonight’s Game 5, Houston guarantees that their last game of the year will be in front of their fans.

If there’s one thing that no one should be surprised about, it’s baseball’s ability to surprise. If you were talking to a friend who hasn’t been following the World Series, and told them a tale of a clutch Astros starter throwing five shutout innings on the sport’s biggest stage, they might think you were referring to the team’s 225-win, future Hall of Famer. Or maybe the Cy Young favorite who went undefeated for most of the season, or at least the ace pitcher picked up from the Diamondbacks in a blockbuster July trade.

Your friend in this theoretical may be extraordinarily well-informed and name Jose Urquidy, but three months ago, few would have expected Urquidy to be Houston’s firewall to prevent the team from falling to a 3-1 World Series deficit. The 24-year-old rookie not only isn’t an established veteran; he can’t even claim to be a phenom prospect making good on unlimited potential. Urquidy was barely on the prospect radar (he is currently 19th in the org on THE BOARD), a pitcher with a decent fastball and changeup, and good command, but little dazzle and an injury-shortened minor league career.

With their rotation ranking fourth in baseball in WAR, the Astros didn’t envision having fourth-starter questions in the playoffs. The acquisition of Zack Greinke appeared to make Wade Miley one of the game’s best fourth starters, completing the team’s playoff rotation. But Houston also didn’t envision that Miley, who sported an ERA under three as late as August, struggling immensely down the stretch. Miley pitched himself out of the rotation and then the playoffs entirely, leaving the Astros with something of a situation. A fourth starter wasn’t needed in the ALDS with its ample off-days, and any awkwardness in the ALCS was compensated for by the fact that the Yankees had the same worry. Read the rest of this entry »

Thad Ward didn’t make our Red Sox Top Prospect List prior to this season. Baseball America wasn’t bullish on the 22-year-old right-hander, either. Their rankings went 30-deep, and Ward didn’t make the cut.

Next year will be a different story. Ward was a revelation in his first full professional season, fanning 157 batters, and allowing just 89 hits, in 126-and-a-third innings. Those numbers came between low-A Greenville and high-A Salem, where his cumulative ERA was a sparkling 2.14.

His slider is his best pitch.

“It’s a Chris Sale slider,” is how Red Sox pitching guru Brian Bannister described it to me in late September. “It’s a sweeping slider, with a similar shape to Jhoulys Chacin’s or Corey Kluber’s. It has that extra horizontal component to it.”

That’s long been the case, although Ward’s understanding of the how-and-why is recent. When he reported to spring training this year, the 2018 fifth-round pick out of the University of Central Florida got a crash course in Pitching Analytics 101. Read the rest of this entry »

In a technical sense, Game 3 wasn’t a must-win for the Astros. In a practical sense, the odds of Houston winning four straight games against the Nationals are under 10%. The Astros needed the win, and they got it with a 4-1 victory. For those purists of the game who enjoy pitchers batting, Game 3 of the World Series highlighted one of the big differences in strategy between the American and National Leagues: pitchers as hitters.

Greinke’s Bunt

The first potentially important pitcher plate appearance occurred in the top of the second inning. Zack Greinke came to bat with one out and runners on first and third. Greinke’s season wRC+ of 123 doesn’t really represent his true hitting talent, but his career 60 wRC+ also understates his value in this situation. Greinke got down a successful bunt and advanced the runner to second, but the Astros’ win expectancy went down about five percentage points. If Greinke had done nothing, it would have only gone down a single percentage point more. While a double play would have dropped the win expectancy by about 10 percentage points, a sac fly would have moved the Astros up four percentage points, while a single would have moved them up six.

Greinke’s career wRC+ indicates he isn’t a particularly good hitter, but it’s mostly due to his inability to walk or hit for power. With a .225 lifetime average, he hits a decent number of singles, which is what the Astros needed in this situation. With a runner already on third, moving a single runner to second doesn’t help much when there are two outs. The expected situation is a Greinke out, which drops win expectancy by six. The bunt is only one percentage point so we’re really dealing with the chances of a double play versus the chances of a single. Given the large bump from a single compared to the expected out, versus the small drop from the bunt to a double play, the double play would have to have been much more likely than the single to make bunting the right choice. That isn’t in the case here, particularly with Aníbal Sánchez giving up a bunch of loud contact in the first few innings. George Springer followed the bunt with a groundball out to keep the game at a one-run deficit for the Nationals. Read the rest of this entry »

As the World Series shifts to Washington, the Astros already find themselves in a two-games-to-none hole, and now they have to contend with another loss, namely that of the designated hitter slot. While Yordan Alvarez hasn’t been able to replicate the impressive regular season showing that’s made him the presumptive favorite to win AL Rookie of the Year honors, he’s shown signs of emerging from a slump by getting on base a team-high five times in the series’ first two games. Given his defensive limitations, playing him in the field is no trivial concern, but the Astros — whose offense in October has rarely resembled the juggernaut it was during the regular season — probably need his bat more than they do a better outfield defense.

In Thursday’s media session, manager A.J. Hinch conceded that he was wrestling with the problem:

I do like the at-bats he’s had specifically in the last game or two. The balance of where to play defense, where to keep your weapons on the bench, playing a National League game where you anticipate a few pinch-hits, having some resources on the bench in order for a big at-bat. I put Tucker in that at-bat yesterday with first and second with Strasburg at the end of his outing.

I’m weighing all of that. This is a really big left field, and I’m taking that into consideration… I can probably talk myself in and out of every scenario. I don’t think we play all three games here without him seeing the outfield. I’m not sure that will be tomorrow. Right now I’m kind of leaning against it. But I’ll make that decision when I have to.

Since arriving in the majors in early June, Alvarez has been one of the game’s most productive hitters. From his debut on June 9 — during which he homered off Dylan Bundy, the first of nine longballs in his initial 12 games — to the end of the season, his 178 wRC+ (via a .313/.412/.655 line) was virtually tied with Nelson Cruz for third in the majors, behind only Ketel Marte (183) and Alex Bregman (182); his slugging percentage ranked fourth in that span, his on-base percentage fifth, his 27 homers tied for 10th, and his 3.8 WAR tied for 11th — and that’s with the positional adjustment penalty that comes with regular DH duty. Read the rest of this entry »

In Game 1 of the World Series, the Nationals found themselves with an interesting decision. They were up three runs on the Astros, but Max Scherzer had labored mightily to hold Houston to two runs. After five innings, he’d thrown 112 pitches. He wouldn’t be heading back out for the sixth.

The Nationals don’t really trust their bullpen. Sure, they could get innings from Sean Doolittle and Daniel Hudson, but they had four innings to cover. Tanner Rainey? Break glass in case of emergency only, and that still leaves an inning. Here is a list of all the relievers the Nationals had used this postseason (as of Game 1) who aren’t Rainey, Doolittle, or Hudson:

Yeesh. Strickland wasn’t on the World Series roster, Suero only made the NLCS roster as a replacement during Daniel Hudson’s paternity leave, and Fernando Rodney — well, we all know the Fernando Rodney Experience. Rainey is no great shakes, either — he was fine this season but uninspiring. Javy Guerra would later pitch an inning in Game 2, but the cupboard was pretty bare.

But Dave Martinez had an answer. Patrick Corbin stepped to the mound to start the sixth. He did his job admirably, striking out two Astros on his way to a scoreless inning, the only blemish a single to Yordan Alvarez. And then he was gone, replaced by Rainey.

Rainey wasn’t good (his four batters: homer, strikeout, walk, walk), but Hudson and Doolittle held on, recording four outs each as the Nationals won 5-4. Martinez squeezed just enough out of the bullpen to make it through the game. Corbin’s inning loomed large: the final margin was one run, and while it’s not automatic that a lesser pitcher would have given up a run in his place, his inning was important. Read the rest of this entry »

Mark Trumbo has always had pluses and minuses as a hitter. He’s consistently hit for power, but at the same time he’s displayed sub-par on-base skills. A free-swinging approach has been the major culprit. The 33-year-old slugger has walked just 299 times in 4,419 big-league plate appearances, largely because of a 50.6% Swing% and a 37.1% 0-Swing%. When he does make contact, he hits bombs. Trumbo has 218 home runs, and that includes a 47-home-run season.

He’s long recognized his limitations. Moreover, he’s owned up to them. An interview that ran here in April 2016 was titled “Mark Trumbo on Home Runs and (Not) Drawing Walks“. How to change for the better has been the issue, and truth be told, Trumbo’s reached a point in his career where that probably can’t happen. Not because he’s incapable of adopting a more disciplined approach — that would actually be a priority now — but rather because his playing days may be coming to an end. Trumbo played in just 12 games with the Orioles this year due to a knee injury, and even if he does return to full health, he’s somewhat of a square peg in a round hole. Today’s game is anything but kind to one-dimensional boppers.

Trumbo talked about the art and science of his craft, including his recent role as a mentor and the likelihood of one day becoming a hitting coach, on the last weekend of the 2019 season.

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David Laurila: You’re a veteran player on a young team. Do you see yourself as a mentor?

Mark Trumbo: “I enjoy talking hitting. As far as being a mentor, just by age alone there’s probably an element of that. But hitting is the thing I’ve done the longest in life, and it’s what I’m surrounded by the most, so I find myself naturally segueing into conversations that delve into all aspects of it — be it the mental, or physical, component. Adjustments have always been particularly interesting to me. That’s whether they come over the winter, or in-game. Regardless of when that is, there are a lot of things that can allow you get to another level.”

Laurila: Adjustments obviously vary in size and scope.

Trumbo: “Yes. The bigger changes usually happen over the winter. People are making fairly drastic swing changes, or their entire approach becomes different from what it was before. The day-to-day adjustments usually relate more to timing, rhythm, and pitch selection. As someone who has taken quite a few at-bats, I can usually offer insight into those topics.

“That said, I’m very much interested in the mechanics of a swing. I’ve always looked at guys who are getting it done at a highly-consistent level, and tried to see if I can steal some of their moves, so to speak. I’ve tried to figure out what is allowing them to be as productive as they are, in hopes that I can incorporate some of those things into my own game.” Read the rest of this entry »