Both the Astros and White Sox dominated their respective divisions in 2021. For Houston, this was the team’s fourth division title in five years; for Chicago, its first since 2008. With the Rays having run away with the AL’s best record, these two clubs have been in each other’s sights for a while now. Both teams are filled with offensive stars, hard-throwing pitchers, and deep rosters; on paper, this looks like an even matchup.

The Astros are vying for their fifth consecutive trip to the American League Championship Series, which they’ve won twice, first in 2017 and again in ’19. They backed into the expanded playoffs last year as the only AL team with a record below .500 but came alive in the playoffs and nearly completed an 0–3 series comeback against Tampa before falling in Game 7. As for the White Sox, they’ve now made the playoffs in consecutive seasons for the first time in their franchise history — appearances that are the culmination of a long rebuilding cycle that began more than half a decade ago. And this series will be a rematch of the 2005 World Series, Chicago’s last title and back when Houston was still a National League club.

For the third time in the last five years, the Astros led the majors in wRC+ and also finished first in runs scored, batting average, on-base percentage, and strikeout rate. That last statistic is perhaps most important to their playoff success. As previous research has shown, high-contact teams do well against high-velocity pitchers, which every postseason team has in spades. A team’s regular-season strikeout rate also tends to correlate well with postseason success, as Eno Sarris found over at The Athletic. That tracks with the foundation of the Astros’ success over the last half-decade.

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Do you subscribe to the notion that styles make fights? I’m not 100% sure what that means — I’ve never been a boxing fan. But styles make for entertaining baseball games, and the Cardinals and Dodgers set out to prove that during Wednesday night’s National League Wild Card game.

The Dodgers brought the heavy artillery: a coterie of MVP winners, Silver Sluggers, and All-Stars who led the NL in scoring. Their splendor was slightly diminished by Max Muncy’s absence, but the offense still felt like a battering ram. Their starter? None other than Max Scherzer, the modern avatar of power pitching, all glowering stares and challenge fastballs.

The Cardinals? They’ve got star hitters, too, but nothing like the Dodgers’ onslaught. They thrived this year both by smacking home runs — Tyler O’Neill and Paul Goldschmidt are large and powerful — and by playing the best defense in the majors. Their pitcher of choice Wednesday? Crafty old Adam Wainwright, who rarely tops 90 mph on the radar gun but makes up for it with a time-bending curveball and pinpoint command. Read the rest of this entry »

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Editor’s Note: You can find the Dodgers and Cardinals Wild Card rosters and announced lineups here and here.

While it’s not the blood rivalry Yankees-Red Sox pairing of the AL Wild Card Game, the NL Wild Card matchup does not lack for story lines. The Dodgers are the reigning World Series winners, and despite tying the franchise record for wins (106), finishing with the majors’ best run differential (+269) and outperforming last year’s 43–17 juggernaut over their final 60 (45–15), they finished second to the upstart Giants by a single game, ending their eight-year run of NL West titles. They’re just the third 100-win team to wind up as a Wild Card, after the 2002 A’s (102 wins), who didn’t have to play a do-or-die game, and the 2018 Yankees (100 wins), who won theirs. That their season comes down to a single game despite their dominance over the long haul is either evidence that the current playoff format needs overhaul or that it’s perfect as is; you’re guaranteed to hear both points of view somewhere in the run-up to the game, and probably during and after as well.

The Cardinals (90-72) are the upstart comeback kids. Beset by injuries to an already-thin rotation, they were just 51–51 at the July 30 trade deadline, and their acquisitions of the well-shellacked Jon Lester and J.A. Happ drew more snickers than raves. They were below .500 as late as August 8 (55–56), at which point their Playoff Odds were a season-low 1.3%. Thanks in significant part to the league’s strongest defense and a suddenly-lively offense, they went 35–16 the rest of the way, better than all but the Giants (36–14) and Dodgers (39–11). While they were still just 69–68 as late as September 7, they embarked upon a 17-game winning streak, the longest in franchise history and in the NL since the 1935 Cubs won 21. The streak turned what looked to be a hectic five-team race for the second Wild Card spot into a laugher; St. Louis won going away, clinching on September 28 and outdoing the next-closest team, the Reds, by seven games. The 2.8% odds the Cardinals had on September 7 now stand as the lowest September mark of any team that has rallied to make the playoffs since 2014.

Beyond all of that and a marquee pitching matchup between Max Scherzer and Adam Wainwright, there’s the inevitable discussion of these two teams crossing paths in the postseason, where the Cardinals have gotten the upper hand four out of five times, leaving Dodgers fans smarting in the 1985 NLCS (Ozzie Smith, Jack Clark, Tom Niedenfuer) and the 2013 NLCS and ’14 NLDS (Clayton Kershaw, Hanley Ramirez, Matt Carpenter, and so on). That Kershaw wouldn’t have been the choice to start this one — he’s on the sidelines for October due to yet another bout of forearm discomfort — might only partially quell the anxiety of Dodgers fans given the continued presence of Wainwright and Yadier Molina. Oh, and Albert Pujols is here, too, albeit on the other side of the equation.

For as rich as those storylines may be, they’re not the same as actual analysis. There’s only so much one can do for a single game, but it’s worth touching on a few points. Read the rest of this entry »

There was a moment on Sunday when Randy Arozarena had just stolen second base in the eighth inning of a scoreless game. Wander Franco stood at the plate while Nelson Cruz waited in the on-deck circle; the Yankees hadn’t yet recorded an out. Meanwhile, 250 miles down I-95, the Nationals had just wrapped up a three-run fifth, pushing their lead over Boston to four runs. Making his major league debut, effectively wild youngster Joan Adon struck out Rafael Devers on perhaps his best breaking ball of the day. The Blue Jays were cruising. This was the moment when extra baseball felt most likely. Perhaps not All of the Extra Baseball, because of the Mariners’ deficit against the Angels, but some. Instead, to the annoyance of baseball hipsters everywhere, we’re left with a boring ol’ Yankees/Red Sox playoff game at Fenway Park featuring two Cy Young candidates.

This is only the second time the two franchises have met in the postseason since their heated, knuckleball-crushing, curse-breaking epic tilts of the early 2000s, with the other coming when Boston dispatched the Yankees 3-to-1 in the 2018 ALDS, a series that featured many of the same players we’ll see Tuesday, though not the ones directly involved in that series’ extracurricular activity. It feels like we see these teams play one another on national TV constantly (it’s convenient to haul equipment from Bristol, Connecticut to either Boston or New York), but they’ve only faced off six times in the last two-and-a-half months. The Yankees won all of those games, including the last two in dramatic fashion (not that that means anything). Our announced starters finished the season ranked one-two in American League pitcher WAR: Gerrit Cole is set to take the mound for New York, while Boston will start 11-year veteran Nathan Eovaldi. Here are your starting pitcher scouting reports:

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Like the majority of the people reading this, I spent my weekend doing little other than watching baseball. The possibilities for real chaos were endless, and while none of the various bingo balls fell our way for a meaningful game on Monday, the season still ended with plenty of drama and interesting tidbits.

Clayton Kershaw Walks Off The Mound

In the midst of the exciting games with all sorts of playoff implications, it was a jarring moment when Kershaw came out of Friday night’s start against Milwaukee with what is being described as forearm discomfort. Based on both his and Dave Roberts’ post-game comments, whatever is going on with one of the best left arms in the history of the game is not good, and his 2021 season is likely over. As far as his Dodgers career, that’s still to be determined; his contract expires after the final out of the World Series.

The No. 7 pick in the 2006 draft out of a high school in the northern suburbs of Dallas, Kershaw came onto my radar that summer, when a veteran scout told me that he was the best pitcher at the complex level he’d ever seen over decades of experience. My first in-person look came the following spring during his full-season debut with Low-A Great Lakes. He reached Double-A that year as a teenager, and even though he walked nearly five batters per nine innings, much of that was the fault of minor league umpires who had no idea how to call a pure 12-to-6 curveball with more downward action than they had likely ever seen.

The first time I watched Kershaw for professional purposes came in March 2014 in a spring training game against the Padres. He was horrible, allowing nine base runners in his three innings of work; it was early, and he hadn’t ramped up. I still remember my report: “Fringy command of fringy weapons. Likely Cy Young candidate.” He’d go on to win his third in four years that season.

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Ralph Garza Jr.’s MLB debut was both forgettable and impossible to forget. The 27-year-old right-hander took the mound for the Houston Astros in a May 29 home game against the San Diego Padres, and the circumstances were anything but ordinary. Rookies rarely get their feet wet with games hanging in the balance, and Garza entered in the 12th inning with the score knotted at eight runs apiece. Moreover, the Friars — their eventual free fall still far in the future — had won 14 of their last 16 games. A hornet’s nest awaited.

“It wasn’t your stereotypical debut,” acknowledged Garza, who two months later was designated for assignment and claimed off waivers by the Minnesota Twins. “But it’s funny, because as a reliever you’re told to always prepare for the worst. And it was something, especially against that lineup at that time. They were hot. Basically, I was being thrown into the fire. It was extras, last guy available, ‘There you go.’”

When the bullpen phone rang, he knew that his debut was nigh. It was a moment where Garza needed to remind himself to “stay calm and remember what you do, and how to do it.” Easier said than done. As the Edinburg, Texas native aptly put it, keeping one’s emotions in check when climbing a big-league bump for the first time is “like trying to tell water not to be wet.”

Garza entered with a ghost runner on second and promptly issued an intentional walk to Fernando Tatis Jr. A harmless fly-ball out followed, but soon things went south. A few pitches later, Wil Myers launched a mis-located heater into the cheap seats, turning a coming-out party into a nightmare. Garza knew it right away. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the fifth installment of this year’s Team Entropy series, my recurring look not only at the races for the remaining playoff spots but the potential for end-of-season chaos in the form of down-to-the-wire suspense and even tiebreakers. Ideally, we want more ties than the men’s department at Macy’s. If you’re new to this, please read the introduction here.

The Mariners haven’t reached the postseason since 2001, and all season long, our Playoff Odds have strongly suggested that their drought — the majors’ longest active one — will continue. But as we head into the final weekend of the 2021 season, they’re on a 10-1 tear that has interjected them right into the thick of an American League Wild Card race with a decided East Coast bias. With the Yankees sweeping the Red Sox in Boston and then taking two out of three from the Blue Jays in Toronto while the Red Sox somehow dropped two out of three to the Orioles in Baltimore, we now have four teams separated by three games from top to bottom, with just three to play for each:

This is not a drill! I’ll get to the mechanics of how this will be sorted out soon enough, but first, I’m taking the opportunity to spotlight the Mariners’ unlikely run and the trends they’re up against. This isn’t a dive into individual performances; elsewhere on FanGraphs today, Jake Mailhot has a closer look at what’s fueled their September run. Here I’m looking at the bigger picture. But first, an illustration of the Mariners’ Playoff Odds over the course of the season:

It’s been awhile since the Mariners were anywhere close to this position. While they went 89-73 just three years ago before slipping below .500 in both 2019 (68-94) and ’20 (27-33), that ’18 squad fell eight games short in the AL Wild Card race and finished 14 games behind the Astros in the AL West race. They did finish three games back in the AL Wild Card race in 2016, going 86-76 while both the Orioles and Blue Jays went 89-73, but they were a distant nine games behind the Rangers in the AL West. Not since 2003, when they went 93-69 in Lou Piniella’s final year at the helm, have they come as close by both routes to the postseason; that year, they finished three games behind the A’s in the division race and two behind the Red Sox in the AL Wild Card. And not since that 2001 team set a modern record with 116 wins have they qualified for the playoffs. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the time of year when folks doubt the playoff odds. With the St. Louis Cardinals going from 71-69 long-shots to postseason clinchers, and the rollercoaster that is the American League Wild Card race, you’ve probably heard the skeptics’ refrains. “You had the Jays at 5%, and now you have them at 50%. Why did you hate them so much?” Or, hey, this tongue-in-cheek interview response that mainly makes me happy Adam Wainwright reads our site:

Adam Wainwright: “FanGraphs had us at like a negative 400 percent chance to make the playoffs, and we just proved everyone wrong. We're going to try to and keep doing that.”

— Zach Silver (@zachsilver) September 29, 2021

In that generic statement’s defense, it really does feel that way. In your head, 5% rounds to impossible. When the odds say “impossible” and then the season progresses to a point where outcomes are far less certain, what other impression can you take away than “these odds were wrong”?

I feel the same way from time to time. Just this year, the Cardinals and Blue Jays have been written off and then exploded back into contention. St. Louis bottomed out at 1.3% odds to make the playoffs – in August! It’s not quite negative 400 percent, but it sure feels that way. Can it really be that those odds were accurate, and that we just witnessed a one-in-100 event?

To investigate this question, I did what I often do when I don’t know where to turn: I bothered Sean Dolinar. More specifically, I got a copy of our playoff odds on every day since 2014, the first year when we calculated them using our current method. I left out 2021, as we don’t have a full season of data to use yet, but that still left me with a robust (some would say too robust) amount of data. Read the rest of this entry »

With five days remaining in the 2021 regular season, it’s abundantly clear that there won’t be much clarity offered in the National League Most Valuable Player race. Yes, Bryce Harper’s Phillies still have a mathematical shot at a postseason spot per our Playoff Odds, unlike Fernando Tatis Jr.’s Padres and Juan Soto’s Nationals, but not everybody is of the belief that an MVP needs to hail from a postseason-bound team or even a contender.

From a practical standpoint, it’s usually the case that an MVP does hail from such a team; in the Wild Card era (1995 onward), 42 of 52 (80.8%) have done so. The tendency shows an upward trend, the degree of which depends upon where one sets the cutoff. For example, three out of 18 MVPs from 1995-2003 missed the postseason, and likewise three of 18 from 2004-12, but four of 16 from 2013 onward; it’s just as accurate to say that from 1995-2004, four of 20 missed the playoffs, dipping to two of 20 from 2005-14 and then four of 12 since. Either way, all-time greats Larry Walker (1997), Barry Bonds (2001 and ’04), Albert Pujols (2008), Alex Rodriguez (2003) and Mike Trout (2016 and ’19) account for the vast majority of those exceptions, with Ryan Howard (2006), Harper (2015), and Giancarlo Stanton (2017) rounding out the group. That Rodriguez, Stanton, and Trout have doubled the all-time total of MVPs who have won while hailing from sub-.500 teams — a list that previously included only Ernie Banks (1958 and ’59), Andre Dawson (1987), and Cal Ripken Jr. (1991) — is perhaps the more notable trend, with Shohei Ohtani likely to increase that count this year. Effectively, that’s a green light for Soto’s late entry into the race, and also worth pointing out with regards to Tatis, as the Padres slipped to 78-79 with Tuesday night’s loss to the Dodgers.

From a practical standpoint, it’s also true that the notion of value is extensively tied to the things that can be measured via Wins Above Replacement. As old friend Eno Sarris noted at The Athletic (in an article on the value of Ohtani’s roster spot that’s well worth a read), in the past 14 years, only two MVP winners were not in their league’s top three by FanGraphs’ WAR, namely Jimmy Rollins in 2007, and Justin Verlander in ’11. Read the rest of this entry »