The St. Louis Cardinals are having a terrible postseason at the plate. They were no-hit for seven and two-third innings by Aníbal Sánchez for goodness sake, and while their subsequent struggles against Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg made more sense, it’s fair to say the team has a problem. But St. Louis had the worst non-pitcher wRC+ among teams to qualify for the postseason, so it’s hardly a surprise to see its roster scuffle against playoff rotations.

The Cardinals’ recent three game stretch of futility leaves their team postseason slash line at .207/.264/.331, a truly grim line. No one is questioning their credentials as the worst postseason offense. The next team on the list, though, might surprise you: it’s the Houston Astros, who are hitting a collective .218/.281/.367 through seven games. A dramatic Carlos Correa home run evened their series with the Yankees 1-1, but they’ve still only produced three runs over two games of the ALCS.

Houston’s offensive ineptitude hasn’t yet caught up to them, but it’s still concerning. Heck, the team literally cracked the code in their shelling of Tyler Glasnow in the ALDS, and their offense has struggled mightily even after accounting for that. There’s some chance, however remote, that the Astros’ offense is doomed, that everyone turned into a pumpkin at once. There’s a higher chance that we should just completely ignore this result; during the regular season, the offense produced a 126 wRC+, easily the best in baseball. But rather than take either extreme course, let’s take a closer look at what has happened and see if we can find any takeaways.

One thing you’ll hear ad nauseam at FanGraphs is that context is important when it comes to looking at a team’s season-long stats. Postseason rosters can be constructed quite differently than a team’s regular-season squad, and looking at 162 games of fill-ins and getaway day lineups can obscure a team’s true talent level. Read the rest of this entry »

With the Nationals, it’s always the damn bullpen. Over the past eight seasons, that unit has provided the franchise with more embarrassment and grief than relief, from Drew Storen‘s ninth-inning meltdown against the Cardinals in Game 5 of the 2012 Division Series to manager Matt Williams‘ passivity in the late innings of Game 4 of the 2014 Division Series against the Giants, to Jonathan Papelbon‘s attempt to choke Bryce Harper near the end of the 2015 season, to the ongoing fiasco of the past two years, including Trevor Rosenthal’s reach for infinity. Washington’s bullpen ranked among the majors’ very worst this year, and while its overall numbers in the postseason aren’t pretty, some stellar high-leverage work has helped the team advance further than ever, winning the Wild Card game over the Brewers, defeating the Dodgers in the Division Series, and taking the first two games of the NLCS from the higher-seeded Cardinals in St. Louis.

Indeed, while the headline-grabbing no-hit bids of Aníbal Sánchez and Max Scherzer are the primary reason for that 2-0 lead, the unit with the 6.04 ERA thus far in October — third-worst among the 10 postseason teams, ahead of only the now bygone Twins (9.00) and Dodgers (6.75) — has come around lately. In winning their past four games, the Nationals’ relievers have allowed just one run and five baserunners (four hits, one hit-by-pitch) while striking out eight in 9.1 innings. Driven by a combined seven innings from Sean Doolittle and Daniel Hudson in that span, that small-sample stinginess probably can’t be maintained to the same degree over the remainder of October, but it’s a refreshing rebound given the bullpen’s work over the first three games of the Division Series, when the group allowed five homers and a ghastly 14 runs in nine innings, even with one exhilarating inning from Scherzer in their NLDS Game 2 victory:

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It’s amazing how quickly a baseball game that has gone on for four hours and forty-nine minutes can end. On the first pitch of the bottom of the 11th inning — before the broadcast had even gotten a chance to fully cut away from its commercial break housekeeping — Carlos Correa ended Sunday night’s epic affair with a single swing.

It was a no-doubter right off the bat, and as Correa watched it fly, he pulled off one of the best postseason home-run celebrations we’ve yet seen. He walked down the line, bat parallel to the ground in his hand, before casting it aside; he cocked a hand to his ear, waiting for the cheers, daring any disapproval. Then, taking off down the bases, he pointed a finger upward, to all the fans leaping from their seats, before shooting his batting helmet into the waiting arms of his teammates, gathered around home plate to greet him.

One has to go on quite a journey to reach a point of such inspired triumph, and Game 2 certainly provided such a journey. Far from the one-sidedness of Game 1, Game 2 saw the Yankees and the Astros exchanging narrow leads before spending five innings knotted in a 2-2 tie. While the Yankees’ bats and the individual performance of Masahiro Tanaka shared the spotlight in Game 1, it was pitching on both sides that took center stage for most of Game 2 — though the two teams constructed their dominant performances in rather different ways.

In the early going, the game looked like it could easily get out of hand for the Yankees. Starter James Paxton walked George Springer to lead off the bottom of the first, which, unfortunately for him, turned out to be a harbinger of command issues to come. Paxton never seemed comfortable; there was some speculation that he was tipping pitches, or that the Astros were stealing signs. Whatever the cause, it didn’t take long for the Astros to jump on him. A single from Alex Bregman, a walk from Yordan Alvarez, and a double from Correa in the bottom of the second gave the Astros an early 1-0 lead. After Michael Brantley and José Altuve reached on back-to-back singles with one out in the bottom of the third, Aaron Boone went to his bullpen. Any hope of length out of Paxton was dashed early. Read the rest of this entry »

Two spring trainings ago I was at the Padres complex in Peoria, Arizona, chatting with Dave Cameron. The longtime FanGraphs frontman had recently joined the NL West club as an analyst, and he had a suggestion. “You should talk to Rowan Wick,” Cameron said of the non-roster invitee whom San Diego had claimed off waivers the previous month. “He’s a good story.”

Indeed he was. Wick entered pro ball as a catcher in 2012, converted to the mound in 2015, and possessed what was later described to me as “one of the shortest, quickest arms I’ve ever seen.” He’d had yet to throw a pitch in the big leagues.

I didn’t get a chance to talk to Wick before departing Arizona, but I remembered Cameron’s suggestion when I returned to the Cactus League this past spring. The right-hander — now with eight-and-a-third MLB innings on his resume — was in camp with the Cubs, a long shot to make the team. A full year after having the bug put in my ear, I wrote about the 26-year-old hurler from North Vancouver, British Columbia.

He proceeded to outperform all expectations. The bulk of his big-league action coming since mid-June, Wick logged a 2.43 ERA and a 2.82 FIP in 31 games out of the Chicago bullpen. Those weren’t even his most-impressive numbers. Opposing hitters slashed a paltry .183/.295/.233 against his overpowering arsenal — one which included a retooled secondary offering.

Wick pointed to just that when asked to explain his breakout campaign. Read the rest of this entry »

The best way to avoid a questionable bullpen is for a starter to pitch deep into the game. Aníbal Sánchez made for an unlikely candidate to do so, as he was the worst starting pitcher in baseball this season the third time through the batting order. But unlikely or not, Sánchez took a no-hitter into the eighth inning, was rarely in any trouble, and gave the Nationals exactly what they needed in the first game of the NLCS. Sean Doolittle got the final four outs of the game and Washington jumped out to an early series lead before its big three of Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Patrick Corbin could even take the mound.

Sánchez is known for mixing his pitches, and he played to the Cardinals scouting report, throwing fewer of the four-seam fastballs the Cardinals like and opting for a sinker he doesn’t use with regularity. On the season, Sánchez threw his sinker to right-handed hitters just 13% of the time, but through four innings he tripled that percentage. As the game wore on, he featured his fastball less as its velocity diminished, but the Cardinals couldn’t take advantage. And even when they got close, they were ultimately stymied. Ryan Zimmerman made what might have been a no-hitter saving play in the eighth inning on a hard-hit ball by Tommy Edman.

Sometimes it’s just not your night. Two batters later, Sánchez’s countryman, José Martínez (H/T Enrique Rojas), hit a solid single; with the no-hitter over, Sean Doolittle came in to get the final out of the eighth. Read the rest of this entry »

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“OUTCOME, n. A particular type of disappointment… judged by the outcome, the result. This is immortal nonsense; the wisdom of an act is to be judged by the light that the doer had when he performed it.” – Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

Coming up this early in this baseball autopsy series, the Padres find themselves in the midst of a number of disappointing teams in search of a direction. The Padres do have a direction, they just haven’t gone far enough along the road that they should be stopping for coffee and bathroom breaks. Of the teams that have been covered so far in this series, the Padres are the first one that I’m legitimately optimistic about when it comes to their 2020 record.

The Setup

People have a tendency to not use the word “mediocre” correctly. Many use it as a synonym for awful, which it is not. Mediocre is an eternal C- student, something of continually below-average quality without being a grand failure. The post-Gwynn Padres may be the best example of a mediocre franchise.

With losing records in 11 of the past 12 seasons, the Padres never really descended into the full “farce” category, never losing 100 games or failing to make the 70-win line in consecutive seasons. The Padres as a franchise never really elicit an LOL reaction, let alone a full-bore ROFLMAO; they’re the team that you’d occasionally remember exists when your favorite team is on a road trip. Even the uniforms reflected this state of affairs. The current blue-and-white uniforms aren’t cringe material like the White Sox experiment with collars and shorts, and they aren’t obscenely odd like the Turn Ahead the Clock jerseys that assumed everyone in the future would be extremely near-sighted. They’re just bland and forgettable, like if you were using the create-a-team feature in a baseball video game and forgot to change the jersey from DefaultTeam1. Read the rest of this entry »

After two very different Division Series, the two strongest teams in the AL by win totals and run differentials will meet in the ALCS. The Yankees (103-59) won just two games more than the Twins during the regular season, and were outhomered by one, yet they continued their post-millennial postseason dominance of Minnesota, beating them in a Division Series for the fifth time in the past 17 seasons, outscoring them by a combined total of 23-7 and producing the round’s only sweep. The Astros (107-55) looked as though they might sweep of the Rays as well after Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole produced two of the postseason’s most stifling performances to date, yet they needed the full five games to advance thanks to some strong pitching by the Rays, who kept most of the Astros’ big bats at bay.

This series is a real heavyweight bout. It’s the fifth time that two 100-win teams have matched up in a postseason series during the Wild Card era, all of which have taken place within the past three years: the 2017 World Series between the Astros (101-61) and Dodgers (104-58), the 2018 Division Series between the Red Sox (108-54) and Yankees (100-62), the subsequent ALCS matchup between those Red Sox and the Astros (103-59), and the aforementioned Yankees-Twins ALDS this year. In terms of combined wins by the two teams, this pairing is second only to last year’s Red Sox-Astros ALCS. Additionally, of course, this is a rematch of the 2017 ALCS, which was won by the Astros in a seven-game series during which home teams went undefeated. Houston has home-field advantage this time around as well, though they’re the one team from this pair who has yet to win a postseason game on the road. The series opens in Houston on Saturday, October 12, at 8 pm. Read the rest of this entry »

After two elimination games on Wednesday night, the National League Championship Series has its two participants: the St. Louis Cardinals and the Washington Nationals. It’s not quite the matchup most predicted — only four of 32 FanGraphs predictors pegged the NLCS correctly a week ago — it’s hard to say that either team got there cheaply. The Game 5’s were very different; one was a fantastic blowout, the other a fantastic crushing of Clayton Kershaw’s hopes and dreams, and just like that, the National League’s two winningest teams saw their seasons end before mid-October.

The Washington Nationals were a ZiPS favorite going into their series with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Not a literal favorite — the Dodgers were still projected to win 51%-49% — but certainly a team that was hitting above their seasonal win total. Over 162 games, there’s no doubt that the Dodgers were the better club, but over a short series of five games, Washington’s Big Three of Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Patrick Corbin match up against any team in baseball. It didn’t always work (see: Corbin’s first relief appearance), but combine the Wild Card and the NLDS, and Nats were able to use that trio in just under two-thirds of their total innings (66.3%). In the regular season, that number was only 40.1%.

Similarly, while the Washington relief corps still isn’t a good unit, they’ve at least been able to use the shorter timeframe of postseason baseball to lop off some of the dreadful performances at the back of their bullpen. Kyle Barraclough and Matt Grace weren’t around to start any late-inning conflagrations (Trevor Rosenthal was mercifully released in August). The bullpen combined for an abysmal 5.68 ERA in 2019, but the seven pitchers brought in this October have combined for a 3.90 ERA. That’s certainly not going to remind anyone of the Yankees, but it’s at least a serviceable group if you’re forced to use them.

In a seven-game series, the Nationals undoubtedly will have to utilize the bullpen more than they did in the NLDS. The two extra games the NLCS can run do not come equipped with an additional day of rest, so it would be even harder to feature a surprise guest appearances from their top starters. Aníbal Sánchez will certainly get another start unless Game 4 is an elimination game for the Nats, and while I wouldn’t count out a Scherzer appearance in a truly high-leverage relief situation, I think you’ll necessarily see Washington rely on its relief pitching more. St. Louis’ offense is not L.A.’s, something that’s not necessarily captured in Win Expectancy calculators, so the average relief outing is slightly less frightening against the Cardinals than an identical game state against the Dodgers. Read the rest of this entry »

The ball left Justin Turner’s bat at 70.3 mph, with a launch angle of 34 degrees. Per Statcast, batted balls with that exit velocity, hit on that plane, have an expected batting average of .550. A little better than a coin flip. There were two out, and nobody on base, and Sean Doolittle on the mound; there were thousands still left at Dodger Stadium willing the ball to fall, thousands more in the empty stadium in Washington praying for it to find a glove. The Washington Nationals had a 99.9% chance of winning the game. And also, Michael A. Taylor, out in centerfield, sprinting toward it — at the last moment, stretching out his glove — the ball, barely missing the ground, centimeters from escaping his glove.

Had the ball fallen, it barely would have made a difference. The Dodgers’ win expectancy would have improved to something like 0.5%. But that’s not what it felt like. Not for the Dodgers fans who had remained through the preceding disaster, looking for a sliver of hope, the slightest graze of cowhide against grass. Not for the Nationals fans, hoping for something they hadn’t yet seen — a glove closed around a ball for a series-clinching out, an end to the years of futility, the beginning of something completely new. This is where the postseason takes you: Years of your life, untold amounts of time and emotional energy spent, seeming to rest in the inches between a ball and a glove and a few blades of grass.

Taylor rose up and took the ball in his glove, a confused expression on his face. Turner, on the basepath 200 feet away, motioned to the dugout. But even as the game hung, for a few moments, in the purgatory of umpire review, the fans knew, and Sean Doolittle knew, jumping off the mound and into the stratosphere, and Adam Eaton knew, leaping in from right field. It was over. The Washington Nationals had won Game 5. They were advancing to the NLCS. And the Dodgers’ historic, 106-win season had ended. They were nine games too short, nine innings too short. A few runs, a few pitches, maybe. A few inches. Sometimes cliches are cliches because they’re true. Read the rest of this entry »