We talk all the time about whether or not the playoffs crown the best team in baseball. Is it more important to be the best team for six months, or is it more important to be the best team for one month? What are we even celebrating, anyway? When you look at the playoffs too hard, and when the playoffs tell a different story than the regular season, it can be difficult to know what to think. You can start to think about these things more than they were ever intended to be thought about. It’s deeply unfulfilling. I can speak from experience.

This year, we get a break. We get a break from having to overthink the tournament, and having to compare it against everything we saw before. The Red Sox won the World Series in five games over the Dodgers. The Red Sox had led all of baseball with 108 wins. In the first two playoff rounds, they eliminated the two other teams that reached triple digits. My favorite standings fact: For true talent, I prefer to look at run differential, or BaseRuns. The four best teams in the regular season were the Astros, Red Sox, Dodgers, and Yankees. The Red Sox knocked out the Yankees, the Astros, and the Dodgers, in order. They lost only one game in each round. Their playoff record was 11-3. Only three champions in the wild-card era have lost fewer games. The Red Sox did that against incredible competition.

All things considered, the Red Sox were the best team of 2018. They presented a lot of the evidence from March through September, and then in October, they made a convincing closing argument. It was what happened in October that turned this from a great team into maybe the greatest Red Sox team in history. By winning the championship, the Red Sox accomplished as much as they possibly could. And there’s something about the title run that’s striking to me. In terms of execution, the playoff Red Sox played almost flawless baseball. Yet they were largely carried by their supporting cast.

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The ZiPS projection system will update these tables after every game and as the starting-pitcher probables change. They are based on the up-to-date ZiPS projections of the strengths of the teams and the projected starting pitchers. They are different than the playoff odds that appear elsewhere at this site. The FanGraphs playoff probabilities are based on 10,000 simulations using the updated projections in the depth charts. Where ZiPS differs is by guessing the game-by-game starting-pitcher matchups and using the ZiPS projections, including split projections.

First, here are the game-by-game probabilities:

And here are the overall series probabilities.

It would take some doing to have a more difficult postseason on either side of the ball, particularly at a pivotal time in one’s career, than Yasmani Grandal has had. As the Dodgers’ starting catcher during the regular season, the switch-hitting 29-year-old (who turns 30 on November 8) hit for power, showed typically excellent plate discipline, and stood out as one of the game’s best pitch-framers. Alas, he’s looked hapless this month, and between some bad breaks defensively and a deepening offensive slump, he’s lost his starting job for the second straight postseason. As a pending free agent, he could be headed for a rough winter, though he should get at least another shot to help the Dodgers overcome their two-games-to-none deficit in the World Series.

In his seventh season in the majors and fourth with the Dodgers, Grandal hit a solid .241/.349/.466 with 24 homers for a 125 wRC+. The last mark was the best of his career as a regular (he posted a 144 wRC+ in 226 PA as a rookie in 2012) and one point shy of the Marlins’ J.T. Realmuto, who was the the majors’ best among catchers. Admittedly, his season was streaky. Here’s how it looked by month, straight from our splits:

Holy fluctuating BABIPs! I haven’t shown his ISOs (SLG – AVG), but you can do the mental math; he swung from two straight months in the .160s to a July with a .364 ISO. About the only thing he did with consistency was knock the ball out of the park. He even had a month (June) where he drew just four walks. On a rolling average basis, however, Grandal wasn’t much streaker than he’d been in 2017, when he hit .247/.308/.459 for a more modest 102 wRC+. Here are his last three seasons by 15-game rolling wOBA (15-game Rolling wOBA is also the name of my new band):

 
That’s a bit of a rollercoaster ride, but not one that’s especially more dramatic than that of the similarly offensively productive Realmuto, who had a 107 wRC+ in 2017 and a 111 mark (to Grandal’s 116) in 2016:

 
Realmuto had just one calendar month in 2018 with a wRC+ lower than 100 (79 in August), but he also had a drastic first half/second half split (147 before the All-Star break, 99 after) whereas Grandal was somehow Mr. Consistency in that regard (124 and 126). Go figure.

By our version of catcher defense, which does not include pitch framing, Grandal was nine runs above average en route to 3.6 WAR, second among all catchers behind Realmuto’s 4.8. By Defensive Runs Saved, he ranked ninth out of 47 qualifiers with nine runs above average, including 10 above average in terms of framing (rSZ). By Baseball Prospectus’ numbers, he was an MLB-high 15.7 above average in framing and 17.7 runs above average overall, second to Jeff Mathis‘ 18.2. By BP’s other components of catcher defense, he was 0.8 runs above average in pitch blocking (preventing passed balls and wild pitches), ranking 22nd out of 82 catchers with at least 1,000 framing chances. (For reference, the top-to-bottom spread there was just 8.2 runs.) He was 0.1 runs above average in terms of throwing out baserunners, which either ranked 30th (as displayed on the page) or was in a 21-way virtual tie for 15th (there’s no second decimal place shown) in a category where the top-to-bottom spread is all of 1.9 runs.

By BP’s numbers, Grandal’s 2018 defense was his worst season out of his past four in total but just the second in that span in which he was average or better in framing, blocking, and throwing in the same season:

In other words, there were no particular red flags about his defense heading into the postseason. And yet in the small-sample spotlight, he had a nightmarish NLCS against the Brewers, after a relatively quiet Division Series in which he caught every inning against the Braves without either a wild pitch or a passed ball, and threw out the only stolen base attempt against him.

Grandal’s troubles began in the first inning of Game 1 of the NLCS, with Clayton Kershaw on the mound. With Lorenzo Cain on first, he lost a low slider to Christian Yelich:

The ball didn’t get far but it was enough to advance Cain, whom Kershaw eventually stranded. Two innings later, with one out, men on first and second and Jesus Aguilar at the plate, another Kershaw slider squirted past him, with both runners advancing.

Two pitches later, Aguilar hit a screaming liner that first baseman David Freese dove and caught, but home plate umpire Scott Barry ruled that Grandal had interfered with his swing, and Freese was awarded first base. Cain then scored on an Hernan Perez fly ball, which would have been an inning-ender had Aguilar’s lineout been allowed to stand; the throw home from center fielder Cody Bellinger clanked off Grandal’s glove, allowing both runners to advance and costing the catcher his second error of the inning (the catcher’s interference having been the first).

Thus Grandal became the first catcher in postseason history to complete the trifecta of an error, an interference, and a passed ball in a single inning. Though Kershaw limited the damage in those two innings to a pair of runs, they loomed large in what became a 6-5 loss.

Backup Austin Barnes caught Game 2, but Grandal returned to catch Walker Buehler in Game 3. With the Dodgers trailing 1-0 and Travis Shaw having smacked a two-out triple, the 24-year-old righty bounced a knuckle curve on the plate that Grandal couldn’t come up with, as Shaw scored.

With one out in the eighth, and Shaw facing Alex Wood with Ryan Braun on first base, Grandal simply failed to catch a 91.9 mph fastball that missed its mark; Braun advanced but did not score.

Grandal has caught just eight innings since; two apiece in NLCS Games 4 and 6, with the balance coming in the two World Series games after entering as a pinch-hitter. In that limited time, he’s been party to another couple of wild pitches. In the seventh inning of Game 6, he caught Kenta Maeda with the Dodgers down 5-2. When the Brewers put runners on second and third with two outs, the lead became 6-2 after Maeda bounced a slider near the front left-hand corner of the plate that ricocheted away from Grandal. Aguilar scored and Mike Moustakas took third. In Game 2 of the World Series, with the Dodgers down 4-2, Grandal blocked a Scott Alexander slider in the right-hand batter’s box; Mookie Betts, who was on second, sped to third but didn’t score.

All told, that’s three passed balls, three wild pitches, a catcher’s interference and an error catching a throw on Grandal’s watch. By the Win Probability Added calculations in our play logs, the eight plays add up to -0.245 WPA for the Dodgers’. About half of that came on wild pitches (0.107 on Shaw scoring, 0.026 on Aguilar scoring, 0.003 on Betts advancing) — plays where that the official scorer judged Grandal not to be the primary culprit — but that’s still gonna leave a mark.

Meanwhile, Grandal has hit .120/.241/.280 in 29 plate appearances, with four walks and 12 strikeouts; two of his three hits have gone for extra bases. After striking out three times in four PAs in Game 1 of the NLDS, he homered off Anibal Sanchez in Game 2, walked three times in four plate appearances in Game 3 (he was batting eighth) and went 0-for-5 with two strikeouts in Game 4. He went 1-for-4 with two strikeouts in Game 1 of the NLCS, his defensive game from hell, grounded into a bases-loaded double play as a pinch-hitter in Game 2, and went 1-for-4 with a fifth-inning double (off Jhoulys Chacin) and three strikeouts in Game 3, the last with one out and the bases loaded in the ninth. In his four subsequent pinch-hitting appearances, he’s 0-for-3 with a walk, which was drawn off Ryan Brasier to load the bases in the seventh inning of Game 1 of the World Series.

All told, Grandal has the sixth-lowest WPA of the postseason from an offensive standpoint, though he doesn’t even have the lowest mark on his team:

Meanwhile, Barnes is just 2-for-22 with -0.121 WPA int he postseason, that after hitting a disappointing .205/.329/.290 (77 wRC+) in 238 PA, down from .289/.408/.486 (142 wRC+) lasts year. A good framer (8.3 runs above average) and blocker (1.0 runs) but subpar thrower (-0.2 runs) according to BP’s metrics, he’s thrown out two out of five runners attempting to steal, but was unable to stop the changeup that Ryan Madson bounced in front of the plate on his first pitch upon entering the World Series opener, with both runners advancing and later scoring.

Grandal started 110 games behind the plate in 2018 and 113 in 2017, but this is the second straight October that he’s taken a back seat in the postseason. Last year, he went into a tailspin over the final two months of the season while understandably distracted by his wife’s high-risk pregnancy that culminated with the birth of his son on the eve of the World Series; Grandal traveled back and forth to his wife in Arizona on off days, sometimes making five-hour drives on back-to-back days. He started just twice in the postseason, going 0-for-8 with three walks while Barnes made 13 starts and hit .217/.288/.326 in 52 PA. Grandal now owns a dismal .099/.256/.197 line in 87 postseason plate appearances, all with the Dodgers. Among players with at least 75 postseason PA since 1969, only one has a lower batting average (Dan Wilson at .091) and only two have a lower slugging percentage (Wilson at .102 and Mike Bordick at .174).

As reported by the Orange County Register’s Bill Plunkett, Grandal credited the Brewers for holding him in check but blamed himself for “a horrendous job by continuing to not make an adjustment” at the plate. As for the defense, he struggled to accept the notion that he’s in some kind of slump:

“How much control do I have on a ball that hits the dirt? That’s the best way I can put it. … How many guys did I throw out during the two series? If you’re strictly basing a defensive slump off of three blocks that could have gone either way, three blocks that I talked to three, four other catchers about and they’ve all told me the same thing – if you go off of those three, then I guess you can say I’m in a slump.”

The catcher did say that after reviewing video of Game 1, he was too “flat-footed” in his setup, which affected his positioning in blocking a ball, but that he had fixed that issue. In his view, the bounces just haven’t gone his way:

“You’ve got one of the best defensive catchers in the game in [Gold Glove winner] Martin Maldonado and he’s blocking balls where they hit him dead on, the way it should be hitting, and the balls going other places. You’ve got [Brewers catcher] Erik Kratz, same thing in L.A. Ball hits him perfectly and it goes somewhere else. There’s nothing you can control as soon as that ball hits the dirt.”

Before Game 1 of the World Series, manager Dave Roberts said he anticipated starting Grandal at some point and was looking for the right matchup. With Barnes not hitting and with righty Rick Porcello on the mound, Game 3 would be a good spot. Grandal has been considerably stronger while batting from the left side of the plate, with a 120 wRC+ over the past three seasons and a 131 mark this year; he’s at 103 for 2016-2018 and 106 for this year from the right side. Via Statcast, he had a .447 wOBA against fastballs from righties this year, .365 for those 95 mph or faster (relevant for a potential Nathan Eovaldi start in Game 4).

As to what lies beyond this World Series, the assumption is that Grandal won’t be back in L.A., given that the Dodgers have, according to our own Kiley McDaniel, “two of the top three catching prospects in the game waiting in the upper levels” in Keibert Ruiz and Will Smith. They may need a stopgap to pair with Barnes in 2019, but don’t seem likely to make a multiyear commitment to Grandal, who will share top billing among the free agent catchers with Wilson Ramos.

Ramos has been slightly better hitter over the past three seasons (120 wRC+ to Grandal’s 116), albeit in about 300 fewer PA, but not nearly in Grandal’s class as a defender (79 runs above average to 6 via BP’s metrics, 39 to -11 via DRS). While the industry consensus is that Grandal may have cost himself money with his play this October, he’s 15 months younger and more durable than Ramos. He’s averaged 128 games per year to Ramos’ 104 over the past five seasons, and has had one knee surgery (2013) to Ramos’ two (2012 and 2016) — though he did also have A/C joint surgery in 2015.

We’ll have more to say on those two free agents — and all the others — after the World Series, of course. For now, we’ll see if Grandal can do anything to reverse the course of a very rough October.

Wobbly Dodgers starter pitches his way into a jam. Red Sox lineup turns over to the third time through the order. Manager Dave Roberts summons reliever Ryan Madson. All runners score, Red Sox take the lead for good. You could be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu regarding the basic template of the first two games of the 2018 World Series.

The Dodgers beat the Braves in the Division Series and the Brewers in the and League Championship Series in part because Madson, an August 31 acquisition from the Nationals, came up very big in a few key spots, but they’re down two games to none in this World Series because he’s failed to replicate that success. But whereas one could point to at least half-a-dozen other mistakes the Dodgers made en route to losing Game One, particularly in the field — to say nothing of Roberts’ ill-fated summoning of Alex Wood, who surrendered a game-breaking three-run homer to Eduardo Nunez — the Madson move stood out in Game Two, in part because the Dodgers played a cleaner game and in part because it cost them their only lead in this series thus far.

The Dodgers traded for Madson not only because they needed additional bullpen support due to myriad injuries but because the 13-year veteran is about as battle-tested as they come. His numbers at the time of the trade weren’t good (5.28 ERA, 4.36 FIP, 21.0% strikeout rate, 0.0 WAR in 44.1 innings), but he’d made 47 postseason appearances (fifth all-time) in six previous trips (2008-11 with the Phillies, 2015 with the Royals and 2017 with the Nationals), winning World Series rings with the Phillies and the Royals. “The numbers aren’t indicative of the stuff,” Roberts said at the time. “For us, we’re betting on the stuff and the person.”

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Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three Los Angeles Dodgers pitchers — Rich Hill, Ross Stripling, and Alex Wood — on how they learned and developed an important pitch in their repertoire.

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Rich Hill on His Curveball

“I remember learning how to grip and spin a breaking ball from my brother, Lloyd, who had a really good curveball when he was pitching. From there it’s just developed over the decades. I changed the grip after talking to Clayton [Kershaw] when I came here from Oakland. I believe that the spin got a little bit tighter, but it’s really more how the ball comes out of my hand. It mimics my fastball, then has that late break to it.

“I placed the horseshoe in a different position in my fingers. It’s how the seams get closer on a baseball, as opposed to having your fingertip on the outer half of the seam, the larger part of the seam.

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The worst I was ever fooled was in Game 2 of last year’s World Series. Before all the madness in extra innings — before all the madness in the following five games — there was Cody Bellinger, batting against Ken Giles with two out and none on in the bottom of the ninth of a 3-3 contest. Giles fell behind 1-and-0, and then he wanted to go away with a fastball. What he did instead was throw a fastball over the middle of the plate, just above the knees. Bellinger took one of his mighty rips, and he made what looked to be perfect contact. As the ball rocketed off the barrel, the fans in the background all rose to their feet. The camera showed much of the black night sky. At one point, the screen cut off part of the right fielder’s lower body, cementing the expectation that the ball would land several rows deep. Bellinger had hit a walk-off home run. Except that he hadn’t — Josh Reddick caught the ball on the track. The inning was over, and some time after that, the Dodgers would lose.

Bellinger is not the only guy to ever trick a viewer. Anyone who’s followed even a handful of games on TV or radio knows that even the professionals get fooled. It can be hard to read a fly ball, after all, so for the first few split seconds, you’re trying to read the swing. Sometimes a good-looking swing just gets under the ball. Sometimes a good-looking swing hits the ball off the end of the bat. Batted balls can be deceptive. I’m not telling you anything you didn’t know.

What seems to be true about Bellinger is that he’s deceptive unusually often. I don’t even watch the Dodgers on a regular basis until the playoffs get started, and I can recall multiple times that Bellinger has tricked me. He got me again yesterday, if only for a moment. Cody Bellinger seems to have a knack for hitting apparent home runs that aren’t home runs. Mostly, they’re outs. The opposite of a home run. Each one is an emotional roller-coaster, concentrated within a matter of seconds.

In honor of this weird Cody Bellinger quirk, then, I will present to you a whole bunch of videos. This isn’t even exhaustive or complete. A man has only so much time in the day. But, below, you’ll find 13 video clips of Bellinger not hitting a home run. They’re not all equally deceptive, but they’re all some degree of deceptive, each and every one. Let’s watch Cody Bellinger almost get all of it, together.

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Neither the Red Sox’ four-run margin of victory, nor the ease with which Craig Kimbrel finished off the ninth, really do justice to the intensity of Game One of the World Series. Despite the final score, only 10 of the game’s 80 plays took place with a run differential greater than two runs. There were 11 high-leverage plays overall, and the average leverage index was 1.14, which is higher than normal. It was a game with important, exciting moments — and none were more important than certain moments of the seventh inning.

In terms purely of win expectancy, Eduardo Nunez’s three-run homer in the bottom of the seventh off Alex Wood was the game’s top play. When Nunez stepped to the plate with runners on first and second, two outs, and a one-run lead, the Red Sox’ chances of winning the game were 77% — which is to say, good but far from from certain. After his three-run homer — which came off the bat with a launch angle just under 20 degrees but managed to clear the Green Monster, anyway — Boston’s win probability increased to 96%. The game was pretty much over.

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The World Series begins later this very evening, and I don’t know who’s going to win. Nobody knows who’s going to win. It is impossible to know who’s going to win. It’s even almost impossible to know which team ought to be favored. Yeah, the Red Sox finished with baseball’s best record. But the Dodgers added Manny Machado in the middle of the year. The Dodgers finished with baseball’s second-best BaseRuns record. The Red Sox finished in third. Each team deserves to be where it is, and each team would make a deserving champion. Whatever happens over the next four to seven games will mean both everything and nothing.

Given that this is literally the World Series, though, everyone’s looking for edges. We’re all just looking for edges. Potential x-factors, if you will, that could conceivably give one team a leg up. And there’s one statistical area I’ve seen discussed in plenty of spaces — the Red Sox’s seeming vulnerability against left-handed pitching. It’s a good lineup, but it’s a lineup that had a big platoon split. Perhaps that could be enough to put the Dodgers over the top. Handedness could effectively neuter Boston’s bats.

But it seems to me there’s not anything there. The headline already gave this post away. You don’t need to keep reading in case you’re in a rush. For those of you still sticking around, I’ll take a few minutes to explain myself.

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Tonight’s World Series game features two of the best pitchers in baseball, with Clayton Kershaw facing off against Chris Sale. Jayson Stark made the argument that it might be the greatest starting matchup of all-time based on the career WHIPs of the pitchers. Kershaw and Sale have amassed over 100 WAR combined, and the former is the older one at just 30 years of age. Kershaw is already a surefire Hall of Famer, while Sale is likely to finish in the top six of Cy Young voting for the seventh straight year.

Career accomplishments are great, but they don’t necessarily tell us how well a pitcher is performing at present. The Clayton Kershaw we are seeing this year is not the same as the one from a few years past. To that end, I took a look at every World Series Game One matchup dating back to integration in 1947 and used single-season WAR to get a sense of how good this Kershaw-Sale matchup is historically

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In October 1998, at a time when the Hall of Fame included just two relievers, the World Series featured a pair of Cooperstown-bound closers, namely the Yankees’ Mariano Rivera and the Padres’ Trevor Hoffman — not that anyone could have known it at the time, given that both were still relatively early in their careers. Twenty years later, while it’s difficult to definitively identify the next Hall-bound closer, the matchup between the Red Sox and Dodgers features what may be this generation’s best prospects for such honors in Craig Kimbrel and Kenley Jansen. In a striking parallel, both have a chance to close out the most challenging seasons of their careers in the ultimate fashion.

When the Yankees and Padres met in 1998, Rivera was in just his fourth major-league season, Hoffman his sixth. On the postseason front, their fates diverged: Rivera threw 4.1 scoreless innings in the World Series (with 13.1 that fall) while notching three saves, including the Game Five clincher, while Hoffman served up a go-ahead three-run homer to Scott Brosius in Game Three, the only World Series inning he’d ever throw. Still, both had numerous great seasons and highlights ahead. Hoffman would break Lee Smith’s career saves record of 478 in 2006, become the first reliever to both the 500- and 600-save plateaus in 2007 and 2010, respectively, and get elected to the Hall in 2018. Rivera would seal victories in three more World Series (1999, 2000, and 2009), break Hoffman’s record in 2011, and retire in 2013; he’s a lock to be elected in his first year of eligibility this winter.

Currently, there’s no obvious next candidate to join enshrined relievers Hoyt Wilhelm (elected in 1985), Rollie Fingers (1992), Dennis Eckersley (2004), Bruce Sutter (2006), Goose Gossage (2008), Hoffman, and Rivera — save maybe for Smith, who will be eligible for consideration by the Today’s Game Era Committee this December (the ballot hasn’t been announced). Billy Wagner remains stuck in down-ballot obscurity, and the likes of Joe Nathan, Jonathan Papelbon, and Francisco Rodriguez, whose excellent careers petered out before they could reach major milestones, don’t threaten to move the needle. Given the difficulty of their jobs, Kimbrel and Jansen could both meet the same fates. Both are still quite a distance away from Cooperstown, whether one measures by traditional or advanced statistical standards, murky as they may be, but as they cross paths, it’s worth taking stock of the distance they’ve traveled and the challenges they’ve faced while savoring the specialty of this matchup.

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