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 »

Ryan Mountcastle has a relatively straightforward approach to hitting. To say that it works for him would be stating the obvious. Since debuting with the Baltimore Orioles in late August of last year, the 24-year-old first baseman/outfielder has gone deep 37 times in 706 plate appearances. There are admittedly swing-and-miss issues — Mountcastle’s 26.1 K% is less than ideal — but his .273/.326/.492 slash line and 118 wRC+ are rock solid for a player with barely more than a full season under his belt. Power is Mountcastle’s calling card. Earlier this month, the former first-round pick set an Orioles rookie record for home runs in a season when he left the yard for the 29th time. He’s since added three more.

Mountcastle talked hitting on a recent visit to Fenway Park.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with one of my favorite ice-breaker questions: Do you view hitting as more of an art, or as more of a science?

Ryan Mountcastle: “Man, that’s tough. I would say more of an art. Everybody’s got their own swing, and everybody’s got their own mindset when it comes to hitting. So I think it’s more of an art for each person, how they picture it in their minds.” Read the rest of this entry »

This is the fourth 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.

We’re down to the final six days of the 2021 regular season, and while the National League picture has cleared up somewhat thanks in part to the Cardinals’ 16-game winning streak — the Padres and Mets have finally been put out of their misery — the America League Wild Card picture is still rather dizzying, as Dan Szymborski can attest. The good news is that we’ve still got a substantial chance at bonus baseball, which is what this series is all about. Let’s dive in.

NL West and NL East

While the Brewers have officially clinched the NL Central, the Senior Circuit’s other two divisions remain in play. In the NL West, the Dodgers (100-56) suffered a stunning loss to the Diamondbacks on Saturday while the Giants (102-54) beat the Rockies, restoring San Francisco’s division lead to two games. In this unbelievable race, San Francisco has gone 37-15 since the start of August, allowing Los Angeles (37-13) to gain just one game in the standings.

Even with Brandon Belt now out due to a broken thumb, the Playoff Odds give the Giants an 83.4% chance of bringing this one home, because they not only have the lead but the easier schedule the rest of the way, as they finish by playing host to the Diamondbacks and Padres while the Dodgers host the Padres and Brewers. If the Dodgers do make up the ground and tie but don’t overtake the Giants, the tiebreaker game — which has a 13.9% chance of being necessary according to our Playoff Odds Tiebreaker page — would be played in San Francisco on the basis of their 10-9 season series edge. The winner of that game would be crowned division champion and get the NL’s top seed, while the loser would host the Wild Card Game, with whoever wins that turning around to play the NL West champion in the Division Series. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series returned this summer after being on hiatus last year due to the pandemic. Each week, we’re hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features Gerrit Cole on his curveball and Austin Davis on his slider.

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Gerrit Cole, New York Yankees

“A.J. Burnett taught Charlie Morton and me the grip when we were in Pittsburgh. He would take me in the cage and do drills with me that his dad would do with him when he was a kid. The curveball is something he’s basically had since the first time he started playing catch, which is different than me, but similar to Jameson [Taillon]. So I had to learn it. He showed me the grip, showed me the drills, and kind of described what he was feeling and what he was looking for. This was in 2012, in spring training. Then in 2013, in the big leagues, we worked on it a lot.

“I’d been pretty much slider only. I had tried a bigger curveball. I’d tried to make the slider bigger. I’d tried to throw a shorter cutter. But I never really had a true downer breaking ball. At first, I incorporated it in Pittsburgh [and] a lot was changing speeds. It’s kind of developed a little bit beyond just that.

“One of [the drills] was with an L screen. We played catch in the cage a few times. He’d back me up to 50-55 [feet] — just in front of the mound — and I would play catch with the curveball. Then he would slide the L screen over. The objective was to throw the curveball and make it go right over the shorter portion of the L screen. It would get to the correct height at the finish. We practiced that a lot. Read the rest of this entry »

With a doubleheader win on Friday, a bizarre 3-2-5-4-2-8-6 double play and a ninth-inning comeback on Saturday, and more late-inning heroics on Sunday, the Cardinals ran their winning streak to a franchise-record 16 games. The streak is the longest in the majors since Cleveland won 22 consecutive games in 2017, and the longest in the National League since the Giants won 16 in a row in 1951 as part of the comeback that culminated in Bobby Thomson’s pennant-winning homer, “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World.”

The Redbirds’ winning streak has turned a team that was 71-69 with just 5.0% Playoff Odds into one that’s on the verge of cinching the NL’s second Wild Card spot, suddenly giving the Cardinals a look of invincibility. “With 16 Straight Wins, the St. Louis Cardinals May Never Lose Again,” reads one headline. “Cardinals Look Unstoppable Right Now,” reads another.

For as unbeatable as the Cardinals appear right now, the history of late-season winning streaks tells us that while this run may certainly help the team secure a playoff berth, it doesn’t tell us anything about how they’ll fare in October. Look no further than that aforementioned Cleveland team for a harsh reminder of that lesson. From August 24 to September 15 of the 2017 season, the defending AL champions steamrolled opponents, piling up wins in close games and in blowouts until they’d set an American League record. The team finished with 102 wins, the highest total by the franchise since 1954, and hopes were high that they could secure the title that they’d come so close to winning just the year before. Yet when the postseason rolled around, Cleveland was unceremoniously bounced, losing a tight five-game series to the Yankees.

The story was similar for the team whose AL record they broke. The 2002 A’s won 20 straight games from August 13 to September 6 and finished with 103 wins, the franchise’s highest total since 1988. Yet they too were defeated in a five-game Division Series, losing to the Twins.

In fact, no team that’s run off a late-season streak — starting in August or September — of more than 11 wins has even reached the World Series during the division play era (1969 onward):

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There are tons of great hitters in the game today. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is having the breakout season presaged by his pedigree and minor league success. Shohei Ohtani has 45 home runs and somehow also pitches. Fernando Tatis Jr. has a .618 slugging percentage and plays shortstop. I haven’t even mentioned the old guard of “best hitters” — Mookie Betts, Bryce Harper, and ringleader Mike Trout.

They’re all great — and they’re all worse than the best overall hitter on the planet, Juan Soto. Soto is comical. He put on a rookie performance for the ages, and has done nothing but improve since then. The Ted Williams comps he’s drawn aren’t given out lightly. All those wonderful hitters — and Wander Franco, and whoever else you want to name — are looking up at him.

Normally, I’d try to write a “here’s how he does it” article. That doesn’t work with Soto. How does he do it? My best guess is that he’s a time-traveling wizard from the future who set his sights on being the best hitter he could be. Since I’m not an expert in either time travel or wizardry, you’ll have to settle for three vignettes about Soto’s unparalleled excellence. Read the rest of this entry »