It doesn’t take deep analysis to realize that if your starting pitchers combine to allow 13 runs and record 14 outs, your chances of winning a short series aren’t very good. Likewise if the two superstar MVP candidates atop your lineup go 1-for-21, your four 100-RBI guys combine to drive in one (1) run, and your entire team slugs .250. With numbers like that, it’s not too hard to explain the fate of the 2023 Dodgers, who were swept by the Diamondbacks in the Division Series that concluded on Wednesday night at Chase Field. Despite a slow start to their season and considerable upheaval in their rotation, the Dodgers won 100 games and cruised to their 10th division title in 11 years, but for the third year in a row, they were ousted by a team that finished the regular season miles behind them.

Indeed, the Dodgers’ exit from the past three postseasons accounts for three of the largest differentials in winning percentage between winner and loser in major league history:

Note the increasing frequency with which such upsets have happened, owing to the continued expansion of the postseason. When the two pennant winners went straight to the World Series, it was less likely their records would differ so greatly unless one won at least 70% of its games. And where we once had one postseason series per year, now we have 11, creating so many more opportunities for what look to be mismatches — except that in a short series, anything can happen, a fact we’ve known for well over a century. Just ask Tinker, Evers, and Chance about the 1906 White Sox, the Hitless Wonders who pantsed their crosstown rivals despite the Cubs having the highest single-season winning percentage in AL/NL history. Read the rest of this entry »

PHILADELPHIA — When Bryce Harper sees a breaking ball middle-middle or middle-in, the most common outcome is not what you might think: He fouls it off. Over the course of the regular season, he saw 61 such pitches and hit 25 of them foul. Six others he took for strikes, nine more he swung at and missed, 11 others were hit in play for outs. Only two of those 61 balls went into the seats.

That still makes him one of baseball’s most dangerous hitters on such pitches. On breaking balls middle-middle and middle-in, he slugged an even 1.000 with an ISO of .524. This season, 161 hitters saw 750 or more pitches from the left side; Harper was 12th in wOBA, fifth in xwOBA, 16th in ISO, and tied for 11th in slugging percentage.

You don’t want to pitch him there. Because what if he doesn’t foul it off?

In the Phillies’ 10–2 win over the Braves in Game 3 of the NLDS, Harper saw 19 total pitches, 16 breaking balls. Three floated into the middle-middle or middle-in region. Sure enough, Harper fouled one of them off. The other two decided the game. Read the rest of this entry »

After splitting the first two games in Houston, the Astros and Twins faced off in Minneapolis. But after Pablo López shut down the Astros’ bats in Game 2, it was Cristian Javier mowing down a lineup this time around, leading his team to a 2–1 series lead with a 9–1 victory over Sonny Gray and Minnesota.

Javier dominated the Twins for five innings, surrendering just one hit and striking out nine. He was wild at times, walking five and hitting a batter and throwing quite a few waste pitches, especially fastballs. He also wasn’t able to get his slider down as much as he would’ve liked, though that didn’t seem to matter for Twins hitters, who came up empty on 13 of their 16 swings against it. Javier’s gameplan when he was on can best be seen in his three matchups against standout rookie Royce Lewis, whose streak of incredible hits with runners on base came to a screeching halt. Read the rest of this entry »

It won’t be remembered this way, but last night’s Braves/Phillies Game 2 clash provides an interesting bookend to the interminable Blake Snell discussion we’ve been having every October since the moment it happened in 2020. Let’s set the scene: Zack Wheeler looked absolutely dominant to start the night, bowling the Braves over to the tune of five no-hit innings, with an error the only blemish on his pitching line. He started to wobble in the sixth, with a walk and a single leading to an unearned run. The Phillies led 4-1, and Rob Thomson had the bullpen working overtime, but Wheeler struck out Austin Riley to end the threat and keep the bullpen at bay.

Clearly, the Phillies were considering going to a reliever, and you can understand why. They showed a ton of trust in their bullpen in the first game against Atlanta, and the ‘pen delivered: 5.1 scoreless innings fueled a 3-0 victory. After an off day, the gang was rested, and today is another off day, which meant there would be more time to recover, particularly considering there were only three innings to cover. Read the rest of this entry »

The Braves can thank Austin Riley for pulling Monday night’s win out of a hat in the late innings. His two-run homer off Jeff Hoffman in the bottom of the eighth inning of NLDS Game 2 gave the Braves their fifth unanswered run and a 5–4 lead. His heads-up throw to first base to double up Bryce Harper at the tail end of a wild, spectacular play secured the game’s final out, helping the Braves escape Truist Field with a split after spending most of the night looking like they would be heading to Philadelphia on the brink of elimination.

That game-ending double play occurred with Nick Castellanos at the plate and Harper, representing the tying run after drawing a leadoff walk against A.J. Minter (who was then replaced by closer Raisel Iglesias), on first. Castellanos swatted a towering 101-mph drive an estimated 392 feet to deep center field. Center fielder Michael Harris II got on his horse to run down the ball, making a leaping catch at the wall to take away a sure extra-base hit that could have tied the game. Harper, who had been running on contact, had to turn back after passing second base, and though Harris’ relay throw bounced past cutoff man Ozzie Albies, Riley alertly backed up the play, backhanding the ball and side-arming a peg to first baseman Matt Olson in time to nab Harper for one of the craziest endings to a postseason game in recent memory. Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday, three of the four home playoff teams lost the opener of their respective Division Series. The losses ranged from 3-2 dramas to 11-2 laughers. Sunday, the American League teams played their second games, and the home teams went 0-2. Now that we’ve seen six games and the home teams are 1-5, it’s time to ask the obvious question: Is this format irrevocably broken?

Okay, fine, that’s not really a fair question. But there’s been a lot of hue and cry about the playoff system recently, headlined by an article by the estimable Ken Rosenthal that came out this morning in The Athletic, and as the resident “I don’t see what all the fuss is about” guy at FanGraphs, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. What better time to dive into the numbers and see if we can find some interesting facts on either side of this debate.

The biggest gripe, as far as I can tell, is that the layoff between the end of the regular season and the start of the Division Series unfairly disadvantages teams that secured a bye. Their opponents get to play baseball, while they’re forced to sit on their butts. It’s a daily sport, goes the argument; disrupting that rhythm leads to a disadvantage even if extra rest sounds like a carrot rather than a stick.
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If the Twins were supposed to be a speed bump on the Astros’ familiar path to the World Series, nobody sent them the message, as they got revenge for Game 1’s 6-4 loss with a convincing 6-2 victory that wasn’t even as close as the score. By winning Sunday, the Twins ensure that we’ll finally have at least one series this postseason that isn’t a sweep as the teams head to Target Field for Game 3.

While nearly everyone on the Twins contributed in Game 2, I don’t think many people will disagree with me when I say that this was Pablo López’s game. While he held the Blue Jays to one run in his Wild Card start, I wouldn’t call that outing a dominating performance. This one was. Against the Astros, a better offense than the Jays, López went seven strong innings, striking out seven and allowing six hits. Bill James’ Game Scores might not be a whiz-bang Statcast measure, but I think they do a great job of giving a general feel of starts from a historical, fan perspective, and López’s Game Score ranks very high among Twins’ postseason outings since the Senators moved to Minnesota:

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BALTIMORE — “We need to start taking a little bit of pressure off our pitchers and start scoring earlier in the game,” Orioles manager Brandon Hyde said before Game 2 of the ALDS against Texas. The previous afternoon, Baltimore had lost a cagey affair, playing from behind most of the way. And despite numerous opportunities, the Orioles never could tie the game back up.

In the bottom of the first inning on Sunday, Hyde’s offense obliged him, stringing together three singles (including an honest-to-God Baltimore chop from Ryan Mountcastle) and a walk to pull in front, 2–0, against the previously unhittable Jordan Montgomery. The Orioles had the lead and the initiative, and the Camden Yards crowd was out for blood.

Fifty-five minutes, three pitching changes, and just seven outs later, the Rangers led 9–2 in the top of the third. Though the Orioles cut the lead to 11–8 by the end of the night, the game was basically over then, leaving the Rangers in the driver’s seat and Baltimore in need of a mighty comeback in order to extend a Cinderella season. Read the rest of this entry »

Caleb Ferguson is far from the biggest name on a Los Angeles Dodgers team that won 100 games during the regular season. Much for that reason, people who don’t closely follow the perennial NL West powerhouse probably don’t know how effective he’s been. To little fanfare, the 27-year-old southpaw made 68 appearances and went 7-4 with three saves while posting a 3.43 ERA and a 3.34 FIP over 60-and-a-third innings. Moreover, his numbers were even better if you discount the seven times he served as an opener. As a reliever, Ferguson won seven of nine decisions with a 3.02 ERA and a 3.07 FIP. His K-rate out of the pen was a tasty 27.5%.

Home cooking has been to his liking. Pitching at Chavez Ravine — Dodger Stadium if you will — the Columbus, Ohio native logged a sparkling 1.10 ERA while holding opposing hitters to a paltry .190/.258/.267 slash line.

Those things said, Ferguson is a square peg in a round hole when it comes to one of the organization’s well-known strengths. Analytics aren’t his thing.

“I guess it has the characteristics of a high-spin fastball,” Ferguson replied when I asked about the movement profile of his mid-90s four-seamer, a pitch he relied on 66.5% of the time this year. “But I don’t really look at the metrics, to be honest. I just come in and try to make good pitches. More than anything, I try to throw the ball in the safest spot to each guy. When I look at scouting reports, it’s basically just the safe zones and the danger zones.”

Ferguson likewise claimed not to know the metrics on his 33.5 percent-usage slider (Baseball Savant classifies the pitch as a cutter). Nor is he interested in knowing. Read the rest of this entry »

BALTIMORE — The Orioles were one of the toughest teams to put away in the regular season, as their record, status as the AL’s top seed, and distinction of never having been swept all attest. But in Game 1 of the ALDS against a Rangers team that kept going the wrong way in the standings in September, the script was reversed.

In front of a capacity crowd in a game delayed an hour by rain, it was the Rangers who clung to a narrow lead for six innings, as every Baltimore rally fell short. Despite the conditions and an unfavorable pitching matchup, Texas took an upset 3–2 win behind the tandem of Andrew Heaney and Dane Dunning. With that win comes control of the series. Read the rest of this entry »