After a dominant run through the American League East this year, the Tampa Bay Rays have punched their ticket to the World Series. Down 2-1 in the ALCS, they reeled off two straight wins in Cleveland over the weekend to take a 3-2 lead back home. And with a chance to put the series away, following a wild weekend of rain, rescheduling, and bullpen games as far as the eye could see, the Rays rose to the occasion, jumping all over the Guardians early and tacking on late to cruise to a 7-3 Game 6 win on Monday night. It was a comprehensive victory for the top seed in the American League, and it showed off their ability to do whatever is needed to win, whether it’s one-upping the opposition at their own game or putting a contest to bed with late-inning power.
Cleveland is a club that needs to make the most out of every opportunity to outscore its opponents. The team’s much-ballyhooed “Guards Ball” style depends a lot on a dominant pitching staff and a little on turning balls in play into baserunners, pressure, and eventually runs. But time and again on Monday, the Rays were the Guardians’ match when it came to the small plays that can flip the game – and they showed off an extra gear when push came to shove. Time and time again, they turned the Guardians away in big moments and extended the lead when they got their own chances.
One sequence was emblematic of the night: In the top of the fourth inning, the Guardians staged an all-too-rare rally against Freddy Peralta. Jo Adell led off the inning with a roped line drive double. Nathaniel Lowe battled back from 0-2 to draw a walk. After a fly out, Patrick Bailey came up and chopped a grounder over Peralta’s head. It was the kind of ball that could rattle around and lead to chaos. But Taylor Walls was having absolutely none of it. He rampaged across second, waved Richie Palacios out of the way, and snared the ball at a full sprint, headed directly toward Lowe, who panicked and slammed on the brakes, but to no avail. Walls ran him down, brushed a tag as Lowe fell out of the basepath, and fired to first to complete a double play. What might have been a big inning instead ended without a run scoring. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’ve been following the postseason closely, you probably know why every Guardians player celebrates a single by turning to their dugout and flashing their teammates a thumbs down. “When a Guardians hitter notches a single, he stands on first base, peers toward the dugout and flashes either two thumbs up or two thumbs down, depending on how hard he struck the ball.” That’s how The Athletic’s Zack Meisel described the celebration back in July, in an article documenting the remarkable way that Steven Kwan was turning things around after a dismal start to the season.
The celebration is actually more specific than that, though. The Guardians aren’t just indicating whether they hit the ball hard. They’re indicating whether it met Statcast’s official threshold for a hard-hit ball. Travis Bazzana explained the premise to some sort of FanDuel-affiliated Instagram influencer at the All-Star Game back in July:
“Yeah, so it’s funny. When you hit it hard, if you hit it over 95 mph, you’re supposed to give a thumbs up. And if you hit it a little soft, like dink hit or groundball, it’s a thumbs down. The joke in today’s game is you want to hit the ball hard, you want to hit the ball in the air. And so it’s like, ‘Oh it’s a bad hit if I hit it soft.’ It’s kind of a funny joke.”
If you’re wondering why Bazzana felt the need to bookend the explanation with avowals that the joke was indeed funny, it’s because he delivered it with all the enthusiasm of a recently dissected frog. Clearly, life has taught Bazzana that if he wants someone to pick up on the fact that he’s telling them a joke, he’ll need to say so explicitly both at the beginning and end of that particular instance of hilarity. I would love to see him attempt stand-up comedy. Read the rest of this entry »
For the third consecutive year, I voted for the Fielding Bible Awards, Sports Info Solutions’ annual recognition of the best defenders in major league baseball. They’re a Gold Glove equivalent for the majors as a whole, created by SIS and John Dewan in 2006. A panel of video scouts and baseball experts vote for five players at each spot; there are also awards for the best multi-position defender, the defensive player of the year, and the defensive team of the year. The awards will be released this Thursday, October 22, and this article will be updated to note the winners once they’re announced. Update: the winners have been announced, and are denoted by asterisks below.
Voting for any award is a prestigious honor, and voting on this panel has great personal import to me. Over the years, the panelists have included basically every writer who got me into baseball statistics when I was younger. Bill James, Peter Gammons, the founder of Strat-o-Matic – you get the idea. It’s a group I’m honored to be a part of, and I take my voting responsibilities very seriously. To that end, I spent some time this year updating my previous voting methods. Let me walk you through it.
Earlier this year, MLB Senior Data Architect Tom Tango did some work on blending multiple defensive systems together. I had actually landed on a similar method after discussing my inaugural ballot with Tom two years ago, but there’s never a bad time for a refresh. I started with Tom’s approach, added in Baseball Prospectus’ DRP as an additional number, and created blends for each position group based on how well each metric tracked itself year-to-year, as well as how well it predicted other metrics from one year to the next. Of note, I moved around my infield weights a bit, increasing the importance of DRS; it has narrowly been the best metric in the post-shift-ban world, a change in defensive rules meaningful enough for me to strongly prefer sampling from it for my initial rankings. Read the rest of this entry »
The Tampa Bay Rays are one win away from their third trip to the World Series. After pulling away from the Cleveland Guardians late in Game 4 for a 7-3 victory, the Rays scored a run in each of the first three innings of Game 5. While they left six men on base over that span, they forced Guardians ace Parker Messick to work so hard that he lasted just two innings, and because the game remained within reach, Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt called upon four of his best relievers to record four outs or more. Meanwhile, Drew Rasmussen stifled the Guardians, holding them to one run on four hits over seven innings, and a trio of relievers shut the door for a 3-1 victory and a three-games-to-two series lead. The series now heads back to St. Petersburg, and because the travel day was erased by Friday night’s rainout, the Rays will have the opportunity to clinch the pennant at home on Monday night.
For as great a rookie season as Messick had, the 25-year-old lefty has been anything but dominant during the postseason. He lasted five innings in just one of his three previous starts while putting up a 4.13 FIP and 5.25 xERA to go with a comparatively tidy 3.09 ERA in 11.2 innings. If a 15.1% walk rate, more than double his regular season mark of 6.6%, has been the primary culprit, his previous workload may be a contributing factor as well. Messick ranked fourth in the American League with 186.1 innings — the most of any rookie since 2012 — and with his postseason work prior to Sunday, he had pushed his odometer to 198 frames, up from a combined 138.1 innings between Triple-A and the majors in 2025.
After pairing Messick with backup catcher Austin Hedges for all but one of his starts in 2026 — David Fry caught the first three innings of his September 27 outing — Vogt called upon Patrick Bailey instead… on the basis of his offense. That’s an odd thing to say about a catcher with a career 75 wRC+, and an anemic .146/.213/.183 line when he was traded from the Giants in May, but the 27-year-old backstop has been a credible threat at the plate since joining the Guardians, and he entered Sunday having hit .333/.379/.556 (163 wRC+) during the postseason, with a homer and a single off Rasmussen in Game 1. Said Vogt before the game, “With the way Patty is swinging the bat, [I] just wanted to keep his bat in the lineup, and you know, obviously there is some risk. There’s some concern with Patty never having caught Parker. But you know what? If I’m going to trust two human beings to go out and navigate a game, it’s Parker and Patty.” Read the rest of this entry »
Dax Kilby is among the higher-profile prospects currently honing his skills in the Arizona Fall League. A 19-year-old shortstop whom the New York Yankees drafted 39th overall last year out of a Georgia high school, he ranks third in the Bombers system and No. 103 on The Board. Making up for missed time is part of why Kilby is in the desert. As Eric Longenhagen explained in his AFL preview, the 50 FV prospect dealt with a severe hamstring injury for much of 2026. He has shown promise with when healthy. This season, Kilby slashed a solid .242/.427/.403 with a 143 wRC+ over 154 plate appearances with Low-A Tampa.
How does the youngster view his early-career acclimation to pro ball?
“As I didn’t go to college, I’m seeing a lot better pitching,” Kilby told me on AFL media day. “I think that reveals a lot about who you are as a hitter. My first year, I was hitting a lot of ground balls [a 54.4% rate across 58 PAs] and using my speed to my advantage. That was definitely a change from high school, where the pitching isn’t as good and you can get into balls more often, for more power.”
Longenhagen and Brendan Gawlowski are both bullish on Kilby’s potential to do damage going forward. Addressing the 6-foot-2, 190-pound lefty swinger’s quick hands in his recent scouting notebook, Gawlowski wrote that “the way he’s able to pull them in and turn around velocity is in a class with the Max Clarks and Kevin McGonigles of the world.”
Kilby worked on mechanical changes in the weeks leading up to the AFL season. As he explained, the Yankees have him starting narrower and more open, the objective being two-fold: (1) allowing him to be more adjustable to different pitches, and (2) getting him more into his back hip, increasing the number of balls he is driving in the air. While his 40.2 GB% this year was an improvement from 2025’s pro-debut, it was still far from optimal.
If you’re keeping score at home, the ALCS has now gone back and forth twice. On a frigid Saturday night in Cleveland, Tampa Bay’s big bats finally woke up. The Rays beat the Guardians, 7-3, to win Game 4 and even the series at 2-2. The game was originally scheduled for Friday night, but pouring rain destroyed that plan. The low temperature and a light west-southwest breeze kept multiple would-be homers in the ballpark, and the rain-soaked grass slowed down balls in the outfield. However, it didn’t stop the Rays from scoring more than three runs for the first time in the series. The Rays were more aggressive than the Guardians in terms of asking their best arms to get big outs. They countered a Cleveland bullpen game with a surprising amount of starting pitching, and they got big performances from Yandy Díaz, Junior Caminero, and Jonathan Aranda. The series is now guaranteed to end in St. Petersburg.
Both teams had the option to adjust their pitching plans after the rain banged Friday night’s game. The Rays could have thrown their ace, Drew Rasmussen on regular rest, rather than scheduled starter Nick Martinez. However, they knew they still would have needed Martinez later in the series, and it made sense for manager Kevin Cash to stick with his plan. Things were more complicated for Guardians manager Stephen Vogt.
With none of his most trusted starters available on normal rest on Friday, Vogt had no choice but to plan on a bullpen game, even though his bullpen was overworked. The postponement gave his relievers a much-needed game of rest. It also gave him the opportunity to hand the ball back to Game 1 starter Foster Griffin. Getting some length from Griffin would have been huge, because the postponement meant that if the series went seven games, the teams would play four games in a row, once again taxing the bullpen. However, Vogt stuck with opener Shawn Armstrong, and was cagey with reporters before the game when asked whether Griffin would pitch. It seemed like his plan for cobbling together nine innings was very contingent on how the game unfolded. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the great underrated joys of baseball is a competitive best-of-seven series that ends in five games. Think the 2024 World Series, when the only game the Dodgers lost was also the only game that was decided by more than three runs. The series scoreboard suggests that it was lopsided, but the individual games were absolutely riveting.
Even more overlooked is the enthralling four-game sweep, which is so rare that we are morally obligated to appreciate it when we see one. For that reason, it is my duty as a baseball writer to marvel at the NLCS that just transpired, when the Brewers came from behind in each of the four games to topple the dynastic Dodgers. Michael Baumann covered the series in Milwaukee and Los Angeles, and you should definitely check out his writingontheaction if you haven’t already.
In this week’s mailbag, we’re putting together the best all-time roster of players who’ve never played in the World Series, and considering whether they’d beat an All-Star team from the clubs in this year’s Championship Series. We’re also answering your questions on what would happen if hit-by-pitches were treated as regular balls, and 1-0 games that feature a first-pitch home run. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »
LOS ANGELES — The Brewers had the NLCS pretty much in the bag since they struck right back at Blake Snell in the top of the seventh on Wednesday night — it was just a matter of when the coup de grace came. You could argue when it became obvious that they’d log the Dodgers off with a sweep: Was it when they chased Tyler Glasnow, making it clear that this would become yet another battle of bullpens? When Jake Bauers worked his last climactic walk off Alex Vesia to tie the game?
I’ll tell you the exact pitch when I knew that Thursday was going to be the Brewers’ night. William Contreras came to the plate with two on and two out in the top of the fifth, and the Dodgers still up 4-3. Evan Phillips started Contreras off with a first-pitch sweeper, right down the middle for a called strike.
Contreras stepped back from the plate and nodded theatrically. That’s when I knew the Dodgers were drawing dead. Read the rest of this entry »
The ALCS opened in Cleveland for Game 3 on Thursday afternoon, with the game time moved up five hours to account for the threat of heavy rain in the forecast. All that extra time turned out to be unneeded, however, as the Guardians dispatched the Rays 3-2 in a briskly played game to take a 2-1 lead in the series. Gavin Williams got the start in Game 3 and was perfect in all but one of his five innings of work. That lone blemish, coming in the fourth, temporarily put the Rays on top before Pummelin’ Petey Halpin gave Cleveland the lead for good an inning later. From that point onward, both bullpens worked so efficiently that it seemed as if there was more time spent on commercials for toothpaste and premium dishwasher pods than baseball.
There may be no hotter pitcher in baseball right now than the 27-year-old Williams, coming off starts of 11 and 12 strikeouts against the White Sox in the ALDS. The Rays are a far better contact team than the White Sox, but the story was the same to start off the game, as he cruised through the first three innings, nine up, nine down with five strikeouts. Williams is one of the most aggressive starters in baseball when it comes to peppering breaking pitches against any batter, in any count, and Game 3 was definitely no exception. He threw only six fastballs total over the first three innings. Honorable mention for Nathaniel Lowe, who clipped the corner of the seats while catching a foul pop on the first play of the game and hung on for the out, just barely missing a painful blooper reel moment.
Making his first start of the playoffs, Rays right-hander Griffin Jax appeared to be consciously pitching around José Ramírez in the first inning, walking the Cleveland third baseman with one out. An aggressive base-stealing team, the Guardians ranked third in the American League with 146 stolen bases this year, with an 82% success rate that led the Junior Circuit. Ramírez, who led the team with 37 steals during the regular season, wasted little time trying to get into scoring position, taking off for second on the second pitch to three-hole hitter Chase DeLauter. He got a great jump and picked an offspeed pitch to run on, but Rays catcher Liam Hicks made an even better throw to the right side of the bag, tailing into the runner, where shortstop Taylor Walls applied a perfect tag. Read the rest of this entry »
Whether or not you tuned in for Game 3 of the NLCS between the Brewers and the Dodgers, you surely know by now that the highlight of the game belonged to Jake Bauers. After working a back-breaking 12-pitch walk that hastened Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s early departure from Game 2, Bauers put the Brewers ahead with a homer in the seventh inning on the 11th pitch he saw from Blake Snell. Ben Clemens wrote about it in his game story. Michael Baumann wrote about it in his article about the perils of leaving a starter (particularly this starter) in too long. Over at Brewer Fanatic, Matthew Trueblood wrote about both it and the also-impressive walk that Andrew Vaughn worked immediately beforehand. This is the kind of of moment that deserves to be enjoyed from as many angles as possible. As such, what follows is a pitch-by-pitch breakdown of the at-bat, diving into the intention and execution behind each pitch.
Pitch 1: Slider, Called Strike, 0-1
That may look like a get-me-over slider, and that Snell assumed Bauers would be taking on the first pitch because he’d just walked the previous batter, but it’s not. In his first plate appearance, Snell had started Bauers with a four-seamer and Bauers had fouled it off. In his second, he’d thrown a first-pitch slider just below the zone, and Bauers had whiffed. He’d swung at the first pitch in both his previous times up, and as you can see, he wasn’t up there looking to take. He fired his hips and had to check his swing. In fact, although Bauers had one of the lower swing rates in the league this season, his 33% swing rate on the first pitch was actually slightly above the league average.
Look at Will Smith’s glove as Snell delivers the ball. He’s got it all the way down on the ground. The plan was to repeat the first pitch from the second plate appearance, getting Bauers to chase another low slider for a whiff or maybe even hit a double-play ball. Instead, Snell missed — badly. The ball ended up right over the heart of the plate. This is a meatball, and Bauers failed to make Snell pay for it because he was focused on getting a fastball. “I was looking for a fastball, and I didn’t want to miss it,” he said after the game. “I said I’ll adjust to anything else, but get a heater, don’t miss it.” That’s certainly a reasonable approach, seeing as Snell throws his fastball half the time, and he’d already started Bauers with one earlier in the game. But it cost Bauers a chance at unloading on a good pitch and put him behind in the count.
Pitch 2: Changeup, Ball, 1-1
You can understand why Snell threw a changeup here. Bauers had tipped his hand with that check swing. He was way in front of that slider because he was looking fastball. You don’t want to give him a fastball, and you don’t want to give him two sliders in a row (especially because the last one ended up in murder-me territory). You want to throw something that starts out looking like a fastball, which eliminates the curveball. The changeup is all that’s left, but let’s be clear about how unusual that is. Snell throws his changeup to lefties just 3% of the time, and never in this situation. Over the past 10 seasons, he’d thrown just one 0-1 changeup to a lefty in the regular season. One. In 10 years. But he had also thrown one just 10 days earlier, to Drake Baldwin in Game 2 of the NLDS. The pressure of the playoffs can change even the most deeply ingrained tendencies.
Once again, Snell missed badly. The pitch was supposed to start out a strike and then drop below the zone, but it started too low and ended up bouncing. It never looked like a strike, and Bauers isn’t the kind of guy to chase on 0-1. This year, 206 batters saw at least 200 0-1 pitches. Among them, Bauers’ 35% swing rate ranked 200th.
Pitch 3: Fastball, Ball, 2-1
If we were talking about any other pitcher, you’d say this was supposed to be a get-me-over fastball, an attempt to get back on track after failing to execute two pitches in a row. But Blake Snell is not the kind of pitcher who lives up and chucks a pitch down the middle. Smith’s target was at the top of the zone. Snell had been racking up chases up above the zone for either whiffs or fouls all night, and he wanted another one. It sure looks like Snell yanked this one to his glove side because he was trying to put some mustard on it to make sure he blew it by Bauers. Instead, it was another bad miss and another easy take. This was a remarkable at-bat from Bauers, and it started out with him in an 0-1 hole against one of the best pitchers in the game, but it also started with Snell missing badly on the first three pitches.
Pitch 4: Changeup, Foul, 2-2
Now this is a gutsy pitch. You just walked someone. You’re behind 2-1 because you failed to execute your last three pitches. Why not aim another left-on-left changeup right at the very center of home plate, and just hope that it finishes with enough arm-side run to make it to the edge? If it doesn’t break as much as usual, or if you miss to your glove side, then it’ll just kind of sit there out over the plate begging to be pounded.
Incidentally, we should probably mention Statcast’s run values per 100 pitches. Did you know that when he saw left-on-left offspeed pitches this season, Bauers’ run value was 1.5, and the only lefties with a higher mark (minimum 25 pitches) were Jac Caglianone, Juan Soto, Yordan Alvarez, Shohei Ohtani, Gunnar Henderson, Pete Crow-Armstrong, and James Wood? Sort of sounds like a list of the very best left-handed hitters on the planet, right?
Luckily for Snell, this pitch was perfect. It clipped the very edge of the zone, and Bauers, still looking fastball, was way out ahead of it. He just managed to hold back long enough to nick it. Smith extended the catcher’s mitt toward his pitcher to congratulate him on a perfect pitch. That made it 2-2, and under normal circumstances, that would be a big deal. The league as a whole had a wRC+ of 70 from 2-2 onward this season. Had Snell missed the zone yet again, he’d be 3-1, when the league wRC+ was 214.
Bauers himself ran a wRC+ of 87 after reaching a 2-2 count. Oddly, though, he was up at 127 after getting to 2-2 against lefties, because he walked 24% of the time, the second-highest rate in baseball. Considering Snell’s above-average walk rate and Bauers’ unusual ability to draw a walk in this exact situation, a walk seemed very likely.
Pitch 5: Slider, Foul, 2-2 (again)
This was the slider Snell meant to throw on the first pitch. It was maybe an inch or two higher than he would’ve liked – if he got it down a little bit more, maybe Bauers would’ve missed it entirely rather than fouling it off – but Bauers was again way out in front and on top of it. Look at the way the ball comes off the bat, straight down and hooked so hard that bounces in the left-handed hitter’s batter’s box. That’s not something you see every day. Snell had thrown three pitches in the strike zone, and Bauers was way out in front on all three of them.
Pitch 6: Curveball, Foul, 2-2 (again again)
Oh right, Snell has a curveball. It was his second-best pitch this season, but this was just the second one he’d thrown Bauers all game, because Bauers was one of the best left-on-left curveball hitters in baseball this season. He ran a .458 wOBA against them and had just an 11% whiff rate. Most of the time, he took them for balls. But what else was Snell going to do? The curve is his best non-fastball pitch. He couldn’t seem to get a whiff on the slider, and he’d already risked two changeups to a guy who crushes them. The curveball was the only thing left that could surprise Bauers, and surprise him it did. He took a late, defensive hack, and met the pitch just 20 inches in front of his center of mass. He threw his mechanics out of whack in order to do so, and ended up with another odd foul, chopping it straight down only to bounce back up into his torso as he nearly fell backwards out of the box.
Here, we should stop and note something. This was Bauers’ third foul of the at-bat, and he would go on to foul off three more. In one sense, it shouldn’t be surprising that he has worked some impressive long at-bats in this series. He averaged just under 4.2 pitchers per plate appearances in 2026. Of the 205 players with at least 400 plate appearances, that ranked 24th, putting him in the 88th percentile. However, he didn’t get all the way up there because he’s a wizard at extending plate appearances. To do that, you need to be great at fouling off two-strike pitches and Bauers is actually well below average in that respect. He fouled off 20% of the two-strike pitches he swung at this year, which put him in just the 13th percentile. His plate appearances are long simply because he’s very passive. His 41% swing rate landed in just the sixth percentile. That’s all it takes, people. If you want to be one of the best hitters in baseball at working a count, just don’t swing much. Sometimes it’s a very simple game.
Pitch 7: Fastball, Ball, 3-2
Snell had been busting Bauers inside with fastballs all night. Five of the eight pitches he saw in his first two plate appearances were four-seamers, and he’d flied out and struck out. Bauers was ahead on soft stuff, but not so far ahead that he was whiffing entirely. Perhaps that meant that he was somewhere in between, and after seeing soft stuff for three straight pitches and five of the last six, it would be possible to blow one by him.
But Snell again missed his spot, this time to the arm side. Smith’s target was up again, but Snell was off the plate inside. It wasn’t a comfortable take for Bauers, who was finally seeing the pitch he’d been looking for, but it wasn’t easy either.
Pitch 8: Fastball, Foul, 3-2
There it is. That’s the elevated fastball Snell had been trying to throw. Nice and tempting, impossible to lay off. And at 98.2 mph, it was harder than the first two and with more induced rise than Snell’s average four-seamer. But Bauers wasn’t in between after all. With pinch-runner Christian Yelich breaking for second in the background, he still managed to get a piece of it. It was very high, and very definitely ball four. That’s a pitch designed to rack up whiffs. It was located 3.82 feet off the ground. This year, pitches that came in between 98 and 99 mph and between 3.8 and 4.0 feet had a 53% whiff rate. Maybe if he hadn’t just seen a fastball, Bauers would have been just that little bit farther behind, and Snell would’ve gotten the strikeout.
Perhaps we should acknowledge, though, just how good Bauers was against left-on-left four-seamers this season. He put up a .521 wOBA against them, second only to Ben Rice. His four home runs against them were tied for second. Snell was truly going strength against strength here.
Pitch 9: Changeup, Foul, 3-2 (again)
After throwing two fastballs in a row, and with Bauers clearly hunting velocity, Snell surely thought he’d set Bauers up so that he’d be out ahead of something soft. This changeup was much closer to where he wanted it, just an inch or so from the bottom of the zone. This time, though, Bauers didn’t look like he had to hold himself back for dear life. He was still very much ahead of the pitch, but by significantly less. You can tell because of the fact that he took a full, healthy hack, and Statcast backs it up; he made contact four inches deeper than he had on the first changeup.
Snell is no stranger to deep counts, but this is where things got scary. Bauers had been ahead of all the soft stuff he’d thrown at him. He took a defensive hack at that 2-2 curveball to stay alive. But then he got a piece of that absurdly high fastball, and on the very next pitch, a changeup down (though not quite as down as Snell would’ve liked it), he looked more comfortable. Look at the way he finishes his swing with a hop. This is what people mean when they say someone looks hitterish. That’s concerning.
Pitch 10: Slider, Foul, 3-2 (again again)
And we’re now escalating from concern to alarm. For Snell, it probably seemed like there was no right pitch to throw at this point. Even when he chased a fastball at his eyes, Bauers (like Vaughn before him) got a piece and stayed alive. He looked all too comfortable against the changeup, and how many left-on-left changeups can you really throw in one plate appearance? Until the playoffs, Snell had only once thrown more than one left-on-left changeup in a single game. The curveball might have made sense, but it also offered the least difference from the previous pitch in terms of velocity and movement profile. Snell had only followed a changeup with a curveball once all game, and it was to Vaughn in the previous plate appearance. The slider was the pitch Bauers had seen least recently, and sometimes it might just be that simple.
Regardless of the reasoning behind it, the pitch was nearly catastrophic. It was meant for the outside corner, and instead it ended up belt high out over the plate. Here’s a heat map that shows Bauers’ isolated power when he put the ball in play this season.
All the red and pink are up and out over the plate, right where this pitch was located. And it wasn’t just about the location. The location was a byproduct of the fact that this pitch was a hanger. Snell’s average slider this year had 7.2 inches of induced rise and 3.7 inches of glove-side break. This pitch had 9.4 inches of rise and 0.5 inches of horizontal break. It didn’t drop enough, and it basically didn’t slide at all. Snell hanged it and Bauers banged 305 feet — just foul. Whichever person at Dodger Stadium was caught on mic screaming for their life as this ball zoomed toward the foul pole was exactly right.
Pitch 11: Fastball, Home Run
Clearly, Snell wasn’t going back to the slider. At a certain point, the game theory starts to get too complicated to track. Sometimes you need to just throw your best pitch. Man cannot live on breakers alone. Snell threw Bauers his best pitch, and once again he couldn’t locate it. It ended up in almost exactly the same spot as the first pitch of the at-bat, and you should take that very literally. Pythagoras tells us that the ball crossed the plate a mere 0.87 inches closer to the very center of the zone than that first meatball. Bauers, who had been fighting to stay ready for the fastball throughout the entire at-bat, finally got one to hit. This was the ninth fastball Snell had thrown Bauers on the night. You don’t need to squint to see what’s different about it.
Aside from that one overthrown four-seamer earlier in the at-bat, every single one of those fastballs had been buried inside. Snell threw his second meatball of the at-bat, and Bauers was ready to dig in.
This was truly an impressive at-bat. Although Snell, at the end of a brilliant performance, failed to execute several of his pitches, most of his misses were either well out of the zone or within an inch or two of the edge. He threw Bauers every pitch he had, even the changeup. He changed speeds and eye levels. Across 11 pitches, he only threw the same pitch in a row once, and he only repeated the same two-pitch sequence twice. Bauers looked more and more comfortable as the at-bat went on, and when Snell missed over the fat part of the plate, he crushed the ball, twice. He went from taking defensive hacks to stay alive to punishing mistakes. It would be hard to ask for much more on an October evening.
