Say this for the Cardinals: They do a very good job of keeping the band together. On Wednesday, the news broke that Adam Wainwright will return to the team for his 19th and final major league season. On Saturday, St. Louis revealed that Nolan Arenado has declined to exercise the opt-out clause in his contract, meaning that he will remain in the fold through 2027, making $144 million (much of it deferred) for the five-year period.

In his second season with the Cardinals, the 31-year-old Arenado set career highs in WAR (7.3) and wRC+ (151) — numbers that ranked second and fourth in the NL, respectively — and hit .292/.358/.533 with 30 homers. He made his seventh All-Star team and is a finalist to win a 10th Gold Glove; if he does win the award, he’ll tie Mike Schmidt for the second-highest total behind only Brooks Robinson (16). As he also led the NL in bWAR (7.9), and therefore edged teammate Paul Goldschmidt in both versions (Goldy had 7.1 fWAR and 7.8 bWAR), he stands a reasonable chance of winning the NL MVP award. But whether or not he does, the Cardinals couldn’t have asked for anything more from their third baseman.

When Arenado signed his eight-year, $260 million extension with the Rockies in February 2019, his contract included no-trade protection as well as the ability to opt out after the 2021 season. His relationship with the organization began to sour quite quickly after that deal came together, however, and he was traded to St. Louis in February 2021 along with $51 million in guaranteed and conditional payments. As part of the trade, he agreed to defer about $50 million, payable over the 2022–41 timespan; accepted a guaranteed salary of $15 million for 2027; and received an additional opt-out after the 2022 season. By opting out either after last year or this one, he could have saved Colorado about $20.57 million from that $51 million figure, but because he’s staying, his old team is on the hook for that money, which includes $5 million annual payments from 2024 to ’26. He’s the gift that keeps on giving to the Rockies’ beleaguered front office. Via Cot’s Contracts, he’ll receive $35 million for 2023 and ’24, and subsequent salaries of $32 million, $27 million, and $15 million. Read the rest of this entry »

How much should a team’s postseason strategy differ from its regular-season tactics? Overall, probably not that much; if your club makes it to the postseason, it ain’t broke, so to speak. Further, I generally believe the postseason is not the time to experiment with new gameplans that always carry some heightened risk. But historically, there are myriad ways that teams have shaken things up come October.

This especially seems to be the case when a team is down in a series. Take the Yankees in the ALCS this year — that squad went with three different leadoff hitters in four games, moves that had little to do with platoon splits. They faced one lefty starter during the series, Framber Valdez, and had righty Harrison Bader lead off that game, but Bader also led off in Game 4 against fellow righty Lance McCullers Jr.; lefty Anthony Rizzo and righty Gleyber Torres led off the other two games against right-handers. The Yankees also had three different starting shortstops in the series. Read the rest of this entry »

Craig Lefferts has a place in San Diego Padres history, and a good story that goes along with it. The 65-year-old veteran of 12 big-league seasons shared it with me prior to a recent Arizona Fall League game.

“My rookie year was 1983, with the Chicago Cubs,” said Lefferts, who is now a pitching coordinator in the Oakland Athletics organization. “We had two left-handers in the bullpen, myself and Willie Hernandez, and the two of us would play catch every day, trying to work on a changeup. We had a right-hander in our pen by the name of Bill Campbell who threw a screwball. He taught, or at least attempted to teach, us how to throw a screwball. Mine was terrible and Willie’s wasn’t very good either. [Pitching coach] Billy Connors told me, ‘I don’t want you to ever use that in a game. I want you to pitch with the stuff that got you here. You’re a rookie, so don’t go out there and try and throw a new pitch.’ So I didn’t, but I kept working on it. After the season, I went to winter ball and perfected it.

“The next year, Willie got traded to the Tigers and I got traded to the Padres,” continued Lefferts. “Both of us threw a screwball as our best pitch. He won the Cy Young Award and I had arguably the best year of my career. I had 10 saves, but was mostly setting up Rich Gossage. Then Willie and I met in the World Series.” Read the rest of this entry »

Framber Valdez isn’t the marquee pitcher in this World Series. He’s a solid fourth by reputation, with the top trio some of the brightest pitching lights of the last five years: Justin Verlander, Aaron Nola, and Zack Wheeler. Two games into the series, that top trio have been uniformly bad. Each has given up five runs, hardly the dominant performances they’re known for. Valdez? He stands untouched and mostly unchallenged, allowing a solitary run over 6 1/3 innings to pace the Astros to a 5-2 victory in Game 2.

When Valdez is on his game – and he’s always on his game, setting the major league record for most consecutive quality starts this year – he mixes a snapdragon curveball with a sinker that warps gravity, drawing the ball inexorably downward. He was in fine form Saturday night against a tough Philadelphia lineup. He got awkward swings seemingly at will, weak grounders whenever he needed them, and had a beautiful curveball in his back pocket whenever the opportunity for a strikeout presented itself.

The Phillies have been swinging early and often this postseason. That’s a horrid plan against Valdez; his biggest weakness is an occasional lapse in command. Even tonight, in one of the best performances of his career, he walked three Phillies. If you can lay off his curveball – easier said than done – he’ll sometimes spray a few sinkers and put you on base. Read the rest of this entry »

Through the first three rounds of the playoffs, two competing storylines took shape: The Astros, indomitable, sheared through the American League undefeated. The Phillies, resilient, ebullient, and unpredictable, shocked the National League by dominating the senior circuit’s best.

When these two narratives finally intersected in Houston Friday night, spraying hits and disorder all over the field like debris from a train crash, the result was an instant classic. The Astros dominated early, staking out an early five-run lead that by all rights ought to have demoralized their opposition. But the Phillies, a $255 million monument to not knowing when you’re beaten, struck right back for a historic comeback win:

How historic? The Phillies’ 6-5 win was the biggest comeback by an NL team in the World Series since 1956. When Houston’s win probability peaked with one out in the top of the fourth, they were roughly 16-to-1 favorites to win the game. Instead, the Phillies erased that lead in two innings, hung around long enough for J.T. Realmuto to win the game in the top of the 10th, and survived a Houston rally that came within 180 feet of turning a series-changing Phillies win into a crushing loss. Read the rest of this entry »

8:02	David Laurila: Greetings all. Go Astros. Go Phillies. Go baseball.

8:04	David Laurila: I got both a flu shot and a Covid booster yesterday, and am really dragging today, but fortunately I have a few energetic colleagues joining the chat shortly.

8:04	Dan Szymborski: Greetings peoples!

8:05	Alex Sonty: Man, Justin. I remember us getting up with you in 2020 to play KBO DFS.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every October, I eagerly await the latest installment of Jay Jaffe’s series about the state of starting pitching in the playoffs (his look at relievers is also a highlight). Last year, that waiting was almost rubbernecking; I wanted to see how absurdly short the postseason starts had gotten, and I wasn’t disappointed – thanks, opener Corey Knebel. This year, I was excited to see a rebound because I’m a sucker for playoff pitching duels. Again, I wasn’t disappointed; as Jay noted, start length has exploded this year, to the highest mark since 2019 and second-highest since ’16.

That tracks perfectly with my experience of this year’s slate of games. Sure, there were some games like the deciding Padres/Phillies clash where neither starter escaped the first inning, but for the first time in ages, aces pitching into the seventh has felt more like the rule than the exception this year. Yu Darvish totaled 25 innings across four starts. Zack Wheeler has amassed 25.1 innings in four starts, and he’s coming back for more. Framber Valdez and Joe Musgrove have each averaged more than six innings per start. Six is the new seven; in modern baseball, these qualify as workhorse performances.

You should read Jay’s article if you haven’t already. It’s one of my favorite recurring features — it’s that and my postseason managerial report cards, except with Jay’s series, I get the great pleasure of reading instead of having to pore over every game log countless times myself. When you’re done reading Jay, though, I have a treat: I got my hands on a database of postseason game logs, which means I can do some fun permutations and take a closer look at this season’s postseason starters. Read the rest of this entry »

You can almost hear the hum emanating from the Astros’ player acquisition and development machine. It’s proven and precise, a system honed over 10 years that finds talent all over the place and then helps those players succeed while signing them to win-win extensions. It’s hard to say who the Astros’ core players are because they have too many, and from too many generations. They might be the best team in baseball when it comes to working with pitchers; they also have Yordan Alvarez, Kyle Tucker, and Jeremy Peña bolstering old hands like Alex Bregman and Jose Altuve.

The Phillies, meanwhile, should come with a sign for opposing GMs looking to emulate them: “Don’t try this at home.” The team is a high-wire act. After the previous regime mostly whiffed on developing an Astros-style new core, Dave Dombrowski arrived and worked out which pieces to keep, which to discard, and where to augment. He’s been wildly effective at it, but his options were limited by timeline. Need a new outfielder? Well, there are none in the system, so you’ll need to sign free agents and make trades. Bullpen? Hah! Better start working the phones.

The bones of a nice house were there all along – Bryce Harper, J.T. Realmuto, Rhys Hoskins, Zack Wheeler, and Aaron Nola make for a heck of a foundation – but Dombrowski found the rug that really pulls the living room together. You’d never try to build your team this way, but if you absolutely have to, Dombrowski is the man for the job. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to Part 2 of my new series, How Did Jose Altuve Hit in the Last 36 Innings? For those of you who missed Part 1, the answer last time was, well, badly enough to write a whole article about it!

Here in Part 2, I’m happy to report that Altuve’s performance over the most recent 36 innings has been upgraded to “still bad, but with reasons for optimism.”

Before we dig in, I should probably mention that Altuve is excellent. His playoff struggles are notable because he’s normally so fantastic at the plate. He posted a 164 wRC+ this year, fourth among qualified batters. He’s a great hitter. Now let’s talk about why he’s not hitting so great right now. Read the rest of this entry »

With a routine 73-mph comebacker off the bat of Aaron Judge, the Yankees’ season ended not with a bang but a whimper as the Astros completed their ALCS sweep to advance to the World Series for the second straight season, their third out of the last four, and their fourth out of six. Though two of this year’s ALCS games were decided by one run and another by two, the final result — the Yankees’ first time being swept out of a series since the 2012 ALCS — was a lopsided one, and it had an all-too-familiar feel.

Indeed, the Yankees have set a record by losing in five straight ALCS appearances (2010 by the Rangers, ’12 by the Tigers, ’17, ’19 and this year by the Astros). Including their 2015 AL Wild Card Game loss to the Astros, they’ve been bounced by Houston in four straight postseason meetings, an imbalance not unlike their own recent dominance of the A’s and Twins:

most consecutive times eliminating single opp in head-to-head playoff series:

2003-19 NYY over MIN: 6**
1923-62 NYY over NYG/SF: 5*
1941-53 NYY over BRO: 5
2015-22 HOU over NYY: 4**
1981-2018 NYY over OAK: 4**
1986-2008 BOS over LAA: 4

*=active
**= active + every PS H2H series

— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) October 24, 2022

Back in July, Yankees manager Aaron Boone spoke of the need for his team to surmount the Astros, saying, “Ultimately, we may have to slay the dragon, right?… The narrative’s not to going to change until you beat them in the playoffs, if that day comes.” But with another series loss, their season has ended in disappointment. Even if it’s by way of a short series — one of just four (out of 10) in which the team with the better regular season record triumphed — it’s a blow that has sent the Yankees reeling. Read the rest of this entry »