Watching playoff baseball is like cramming for a test. Most people watching are either casual fans of the sport or diehard fans of one team only, so it’s incumbent on national writers and broadcasters to get their audiences up to speed quickly. Sometimes that takes the form of an information dump; other times, a team gets distilled down to a couple of talking points. And for a team that was not expected to make the World Series, has a lot of young players, and doesn’t play in a particularly fashionable media market — like, say, the Arizona Diamondbacks — the talking points can be a little crude.

In this case, the Diamondbacks are like a preschooler on a sugar high: Young, small, and always running.

For the first five games of the NLCS, this bullet point looked a little silly, as Arizona attempted just a single stolen base against a Phillies team that holds runners well. But in Games 6 and 7, the Diamondbacks opened up the taps and reaped the rewards: eight stolen bases in eight attempts, leading directly to two runs. Which in turn led to, as you know, winning the pennant.

Can they repeat the trick against the Rangers in the World Series? Read the rest of this entry »

One of the nice things about the playoffs is that there’s often just one game happening at a time. Don’t get me wrong. I love a summer day with a full slate of 15 games, but you are where your attention is, and there’s too much baseball happening in any one day for us to be present for all of it. When the whole of the baseball world gets compressed down to one high-stakes game, you catch little things that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.

During the NLCS, I noticed a little thing about Kevin Ginkel. It was about how he holds runners on second base, and man, does he hold runners on second base. Here’s the pitch that caught my attention:

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The World Series. It’s a playoff-capping battle that’s so iconic that other sports and activities borrow its name. The World Series of Poker, of Darts, of Snooker, the FINA Marathon Swim World Series, even briefly the World Series of Country Music Proudly Presents Stock Car Racing’s Entertainers of the Year – these events didn’t pick their name by accident, they’re basking in the glory of a long-running staple. Even as baseball matters less and less, the World Series is a big name on the marquee.

One of the best parts of playoff baseball, at least in my eyes, is that the brightest stage isn’t exclusively the domain of the top couple of teams in the game. Sure, the Dodgers and Astros have been there a lot in the last decade. Sure, the Cardinals and Yankees have a bunch of rings. But baseball is a variance-rich sport, and the playoffs are short. Make the dance and you might end up one of the last few teams standing, even if your squad doesn’t have its own wing in Cooperstown. One obvious example? This year’s clash between the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks.

The Rangers are the closest thing we’re going to get to a postseason standby here. Sure, their last playoff appearance before this run came in 2016, but their roster is packed with playoff heroes. Corey Seager carried the Dodgers to a 2020 title. Max Scherzer seems to always be pitching in win-or-die games. Nathan Eovaldi saved Boston’s bacon in 2018 and has made a career out of coming up big in important spots. Will Smith pitched for the last two World Series winners (seriously!). Aroldis Chapman isn’t what he once was, but at his peak, he was a key figure in breaking the century-long Cubs curse. Their manager is Bruce Freaking Bochy, an October legend who has never lost a Game 7. The Rangers as a franchise might not be a World Series name brand – their trips to the Fall Classic in 2010 and 2011 ended in losses — but the ingredients are no different than what you’d expect to get in the luxury aisle. Read the rest of this entry »

PHILADELPHIA – “A lot of people don’t believe in us,” Diamondbacks infielder Geraldo Perdomo said before Game 7 of the NLCS. “I think that’s why we play with the patience we’re playing with right now, to prove to everyone we can do it.”

“Nobody believed in us” is such a hackneyed trope in sports motivation, one that’s been co-opted over and over by teams that everyone believed in. But Perdomo was absolutely right to invoke it; the Diamondbacks were the lowest seed in this year’s playoffs, and before that a dark horse to make the postseason at all. They were under .500 in August, for goodness’ sake. Manager Torey Lovullo was asked after Game 7 if, in mid-August, he thought he’d be in this situation now. “To be totally honest, no,” he said.

But here they are. They took two must-win games against the defending National League champions in one of the most hostile environments in baseball, the latest by a score of 4-2. And now the Diamondbacks, pennant in hand, are off for Texas and a shot at the second World Series title in club history. Read the rest of this entry »

PHILADELPHIA — In the franchise’s biggest game in 22 years, the Diamondbacks played their best game of the NLCS. They finally did serious damage against the Phillies’ rotation, tagging Aaron Nola for four runs in five innings. Merrill Kelly navigated a rough opening stretch and grew stronger as the game grew on, holding Philadelphia to a single run in five innings of his own.

The Diamondbacks’ 5–1 win pushes this series to a Game 7, the first in franchise history for the Phillies, a club that’s been around longer than 12 U.S. states. It also raises a new set of questions: Can Brandon Pfaadt recreate his series-changing Game 3 magic? Can the Phillies right the ship offensively after a dud of a performance in an essential game? And the aliens who abducted Nola before the second inning: Who are they? Where did they come from? And what do they want? Read the rest of this entry »

On the back of a seven-inning near-shutout from ace Zack Wheeler, three round-trippers, and a Bryce Harper steal of home, the Philadelphia Phillies convincingly beat the Arizona Diamondbacks, 6-1, to push the latter to the brink of oblivion. The Phillies got to Diamondbacks starter Zac Gallen often, scoring two runs in the first, a lead that Arizona never really threatened. The NLCS now heads back to Philadelphia, where the Diamondbacks have to win two games or all that will be left to do is to grab a couple cheesesteaks and a roast pork and fly back home for the winter.

The Phillies got things going quickly with a fun-filled first. The action started with a Kyle Schwarber infield hit and ended with a double steal. Totally Traditional Leadoff Hitter Schwarber’s little dribbler to third against the current iteration of the infield shift was way too far for third baseman Evan Longoria to reach in time, and he legged his way to first. While fans often overestimated the ease with which hitters could magically just go the opposite way during the shift’s heyday — as if that’s so simple against big league pitching — Schwarber actually was fairly good at it. Despite not being quick, even deceptively so, Schwarber ranks 20th since 2015 in groundball hits the opposite way against shifts and shades, with 38 of them in 69 attempts. That .551 BABIP is nearly 100 points above the league average of .460 over the same timeframe! Read the rest of this entry »

This is going to sound harsh right at the start, but here’s the deal. Craig Kimbrel is an objectively good major league pitcher. Alek Thomas is an objectively mediocre major league hitter. I’m not trying to say anything bad about Thomas, to be clear. I think he’s an awesome player, the kind of guy I’d like to have on my team for his impressive defensive ability. But Thomas started the day on the bench, and Kimbrel started the day as the Phillies closer. Neither of them look likely to head back to that role any time soon.

Why? Because after three hours and 14 pitchers, Game 4 of the NLCS came down to a simple matchup. Kimbrel stood on the mound. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. lounged on second base after a double to start the eighth. With a two-run lead, Kimbrel had a simple mission: keep the ball in the ballpark. His opponent? Thomas, who came in to pinch hit for Emmanuel Rivera. Thomas isn’t anyone’s idea of an ace pinch hitter. He compiled a 71 wRC+ this season, which brought his career mark to 72. He came into the game with a 56 wRC+ in the playoffs. The Phillies started a lefty, and it looked like Thomas might spend Friday’s game like he did Thursday’s, hanging out on the bench and then pinch running.

There was just one problem for Philadelphia: Kimbrel didn’t have his curveball. He’s built a Hall of Fame career on two pitches, but the standout is a knuckle curve that seems to tear the fabric of spacetime on its way home. It’s one of those pitches that, when it’s working, can’t be countered. It starts right in the middle of the plate, and then poof, it’s in the dirt while you flail helplessly. But on Friday, none of that was true. The first three curves Kimbrel threw missed badly. The fourth spun invitingly in the zone, and Evan Longoria barely missed it, socking a 96 mph line drive to deep left that landed in Brandon Marsh’s glove. Then Kimbrel missed with two curves to spot Thomas a 2-0 count. Read the rest of this entry »

With his team down two games to none in the NLCS and practically having been blown off the field by the Phillies on Tuesday night, Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo had his work cut out for him, particularly given that he had little alternative but to send rookie Brandon Pfaadt, he of the 5.72 ERA and 5.18 FIP, to the Chase Field mound for a must-win game. But from the reconfigured lineup to the decision to pull Pfaadt after he’d put up a string of zeroes, just about everything Lovullo set in motion paid off. In a nailbiter, the Diamondbacks won, 2–1, on Ketel Marte’s walk-off single off Craig Kimbrel.

One couldn’t have blamed the Diamondbacks for entering this game in shell shock. Philadelphia put up five runs on ace Zac Gallen in Game 1 before Arizona closed the gap for a respectable 5–3 loss, then wore down Merrill Kelly and teed off on the soft underbelly of the Diamondbacks’ bullpen for a 10–0 rout in Game 2. Beyond the combined 15–3 score, the Phillies out-homered the Diamondbacks, 6–1 — all solo shots but mostly emphatic ones, with four of the six projected at 420 feet or more. They out-hit them convincingly, combining for a .313/.400/.688 line against Arizona’s .129/.167/.194 mark. Phillies pitchers collected 23 strikeouts against only three walks; the Diamondbacks struck out just 10 and walked nine.

With Phillies manager Rob Thomson tabbing lefty Ranger Suárez for the start, Lovullo switched things up, flip-flopping Marte and Corbin Carroll atop the lineup — a sensible move, given that the former posted for a 146 wRC+ against lefties, the latter just a 96. Marte responded by going 3-for-5 with the game-winning hit. Lovullo also moved slugging catcher Gabriel Moreno, another lefty-masher (139 wRC+ against) from fifth to third and started Emmanuel Rivera (92 wRC+ against lefties) at third base, put Evan Longoria at DH, and gave right field to Tommy Pham, who hadn’t played with a glove on since September 22 due to a bout of turf toe. With Pham in right, Carroll moved to center, with Alek Thomas (who hit for just a 12 wRC+ against lefties) on the bench; when Pham singled to start the seventh inning, Thomas pinch-ran and scored the game-tying run. Read the rest of this entry »

Every play in a scoreless postseason game is pivotal. The Phillies, despite being the better team on paper with a 1–0 series lead in the bag, could ill afford to give away cheap outs on either side of the ball. Six days ago, Brandon Marsh listed the lessons the team had learned from blowing a lead in Georgia two nights previous: “Put them out of it. Finish the job. Don’t let them climb back in the game.”

Trea Turner committed two errors in that game, the second of which led directly to Atlanta’s first run of the playoffs. It snapped the best offensive team of the regular season back to life and arguably started a stunning comeback that could’ve knocked the Phillies off their axis.

Aaron Nola was excellent in his first two postseason starts of 2023, but he’s been prone to big innings both in this regular season and last year’s playoffs. The last thing he needed was one of the fastest players in the league to reach base and cause trouble. Read the rest of this entry »

Both the Phillies and Diamondbacks entered this Championship Series on a playoff tear, combining for just one loss during their four series wins. But in the battle for the NL pennant, one team’s good fortune would have to end, and so far, Arizona has been unable to deal with the buzzsaw that is Philadelphia’s roster. A day after a close loss headlined by the three home runs Zac Gallen surrendered, the Phillies hit another trio of dingers off the Diamondbacks’ no. 2 starter, Merrill Kelly, and it only continued downhill from there.

While playoff games have been increasingly defined by the reliever parades enabled by an abundance of off days, this game was a battle of two workhorse starters. Aaron Nola and Kelly both rank in the top 10 in baseball in innings over the past two years, and are consistently available to go deep into games. A lot happened in the final three innings on Tuesday, a stretch that exposed the stark difference in the quality of these two bullpens, but we can focus much of our attention on the rotation members dueling from each team.

Nola’s performance this year was uncharacteristically poor by his standards. He’s always possessed some of the best command in baseball, and he throws a hellacious two-planed knuckle curve as his strikeout pitch. But despite that, he had a 101 ERA- and 90 FIP- this season. His strikeout and walk rates were still great, but his home run rate ballooned, as he couldn’t keep his pitches away from the middle of the plate. His pitches in the “heart” zone, as measured by Statcast, were too predictable, costing him seven runs compared to average after dominating that area previously. It meant that his results had a hard ceiling despite having great stuff and avoiding free baserunners. But his six scoreless innings in Game 2 brought his ERA this postseason down to a tiny 0.96; more impressively, he hasn’t allowed a single home run in his three playoff starts. Let’s see how his arsenal shut down Arizona’s bats. Read the rest of this entry »