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The Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds are set to play each other in a three-game postseason series beginning on Wednesday. But before we break down that matchup, let’s start with how they got here.

The Braves were projected to go 33-27, and they finished just above that at 35-25. Meanwhile, the Reds were projected to go 31-29 and hit that mark exactly. Does that mean both teams saw their seasons — COVID-19 permutations excepted — pretty much go as expected? Not in the least.

The NL East champs persevered despite the decimation of a starting staff that was supposed to comprise some combination of Mike Foltynewicz, Max Fried, Cole Hamels, Felix Hernandez, Sean Newcomb, and Mike Soroka. Between injuries, ineffectiveness, and King Felix’s opt out, that sextet combined for just seven wins. All were credited to Fried, whose spotless record was augmented by a sparkling 2.25 ERA.

Fried will be joined in Atlanta’s opening-round rotation by youngsters Ian Anderson and Kyle Wright. The duo exudes potential — each is a former first-round pick — but to this point in time they’ve combined to make all of 18 big-league starts. It’s hard to imagine either having a particularly long leash in the days (and possibly weeks) to come. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s grimly fitting that San Diego’s playoff drought would end in a year like this. After nearly 15 years of baseball as forgettable as the half-dozen jerseys they cycled through in that time, of course the Padres snapped their October skid in such an exciting matter — and in such killer threads — right when nobody could come watch them do it. Par for the course for arguably the country’s most luckless sports city.

But for any Friars fan who can overcome the first half of “bittersweet,” the deck is actually stacked pretty well for them here. While any fair bracket would slot them in the two-seed most years, this season’s weird format actually plays to their advantage. Anything can happen in a short series but at least this set isn’t as short as it would have been normally: Were this any of the past eight seasons, San Diego would have suffered the misfortune of posting the league’s second-best record and getting a trip to the coin-flip round for their trouble.

Instead, they’ll live to fight another day if Game 1 goes south, an extra benefit given their opponent. Few clubs would be at a significant disadvantage in a best of three, but if you were looking to tip the scales toward one side, you’d have their foe limp into the series physically and mentally drained. Such is the case here, where the Padres battle the beleaguered St. Louis Cardinals, who are still catching their breath from playing 10 double headers over the past 45 days.

A baseball season is said to be a marathon, not a sprint; for St. Louis in 2020, it was arguably both. Given their daunting schedule, the Redbirds can be slightly forgiven for mediocre underlying metrics. I’ll buy the idea that they’re a little better than they played. Read the rest of this entry »

As the final day of the season dawned, there were no fewer than six possible matchups for this series, with the Twins, White Sox, and Indians all having paths to second place in the AL Central and the number four seed, and likewise for the Yankees and Blue Jays in the AL East and the number five seed. The Yankees fell to the Marlins, 5-0, their sixth loss in the past eight games, but because the Blue Jays blew a 4-1 lead and lost to the Orioles, New York finished 33-27, barely holding onto second. Meanwhile the Indians dug their way out of a 6-2 hole against the Pirates, and only when the White Sox’s comeback from a 10-1 deficit stalled at 10-8, with the tying run at the plate in the bottom of the ninth on a questionable called strike was this matchup set.

The Indians finished with the better record, going 35-25, but a slightly worse run differential (+39 versus +45), but how the two teams got there is very different. The Yankees led the AL in scoring (5.25 runs per game) and wRC+ (116) while ranking sixth in run prevention (4.50 runs per game). The Indians, on the other hand, tied for second-to-last in the AL in scoring (4.13 runs per game) and were second-to-last in wRC+ (86), but they were the stingiest team in the AL, allowing just 3.48 runs per game. As this series will be played entirely at Progressive Field, the Yankees’ offensive advantage may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

Worth noting: Indians manager Terry Francona has been sidelined by gastrointestinal and blood clot issues for most of the season, managing just 14 games, during which his team went 8-6. First base coach Sandy Alomar Jr. has been serving as acting manager since mid-August and will likely remain in that capacity through the postseason, though Francona has entered the bubble to keep that option in play. The team has gone 28-18 on Alomar’s watch.

Rotations

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Baseball’s playoff format has always thumbed its nose at analysis. Five games in a divisional series, five piddling games, to determine which team is more worthy of a championship? Those teams might be separated by 20 games in the standings, and still, three hot starts by so-so pitchers could send either squad home.

This year, that arbitrary nature is in overdrive. The Blue Jays and Rays will play at most three games to settle who moves on and who goes home. Blink, and the Rays could be a game away from elimination despite winning eight more games in the regular season, the equivalent of a 22-game gap in a 162-game season.

Don’t mistake the fact that three games feels short, however, for some statement that this series is a toss-up, a 50/50 proposition. The Rays are favored, and they should be! They’re better, and while better might not mean as much over three games as it does over 60, it’s not meaningless. Tampa Bay is a full-blown juggernaut, while Toronto is an exciting team that still has more work to do to build a year-in, year-out contender.

Statements that the playoffs favor offense or defense are short-sighted. The playoffs favor outscoring your opponents by any available means. The Rays aren’t favored in this series specifically because their pitching is better — but make no mistake, their pitching is better. In fact, they’ll inarguably have the advantage in all three potential games of this series, after accounting for starters and the bullpen. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past two days, the playoff picture has begun to come into full focus. The Marlins, Reds, and Astros all clinched playoff berths on Friday night — the last of those not with a victory of their own but one by the Dodgers, of all teams — while the Rockies and Angels were eliminated. On Saturday, the Mets bit the dust as well. Thus as we head into the abbreviated season’s final day, the eight AL teams have been decided, albeit not all of the seedings, while 10 NL teams remain alive.

In the NL, the top four seeds have been secured: the Dodgers, Braves, Cubs (who clinched the NL Central on Saturday night), and Padres will be seeds 1-4 in that order. Still at stake are the middles of the NL East and Central standings:

In the NL Central, with the Brewers splitting Friday’s doubleheader with the Cardinals and then winning on Saturday as well while the Reds lost, the three teams enter Sunday separated by a game, with St. Louis hosting Milwaukee and Cincinnati at Minnesota on Sunday. Apparently, I missed a memo regarding the potential make-up doubleheader involving the Cardinals and Tigers; they would play one or two games in Detroit on Monday only if it they have the potential to give the Cardinals home-field advantage (no longer the case) or determine whether they’re in or out; if it’s seeding in the 5-8 range, they’ll be judged on winning percentage. Read the rest of this entry »

The San Diego Padres are arguably baseball’s most-exciting young team. They’re unquestionably also very good. Heading into the final day of the regular season, the A.J. Preller-built squad boasts the second-best record in the senior circuit.

How do the 2020 Padres compare to the 2013 Tampa Bay Rays and the 2016 Texas Rangers? Given their respective relationships with those earlier playoff clubs, I asked a San Diego slugger, and the team’s manager, for their perspectives.

“I don’t think there are a ton of similarities, to be honest with you,” expressed Wil Myers, who played for the 92-win Rays in 2013. “Talent-wise, I would say that this team is definitely better than that team, especially from an offensive standpoint. The pitching for the Rays was obviously really good — David Price was a Cy Young guy — but we have Dinelson Lamet, who is a Cy Young guy. We have pitchers from top to bottom. So if you compare the 2013 Rays to the 2020 Padres, I believe from a pitching standpoint it’s pretty even, but from an offensive standpoint this team is much different, and more dynamic, than that team.” Read the rest of this entry »

As we head into the final weekend of the abbreviated 2020 season, we still have only limited clarity about what the expanded postseason — which starts on Tuesday, September 29 — will look like. Eleven teams have clinched playoff berths, seven in the AL and four in the NL. Five have clinched home-field advantage for the Wild Card Series, and four have clinched division titles, but that still leaves 10 teams vying for the five remaining spots, with the lower half of the NL pool particularly murky. We won’t get any tiebreaker games, and so it might feel as though Team Entropy is just going through the motions, but as I’ve already noted, there’s still enough chaos involved to cause headaches for anybody trying to figure out the matchups from day to day, and there’s a significant possibility that teams will be playing meaningful games even into Monday (more on which below). In that sense, this silly playoff tournament has already started.

Once more, with feeling, here’s how the system works:

• The division winners be seeded 1-3 within their respective leagues based on their won-loss records, the second place teams 4-6, and then the next two teams with the best records 7-8. For the best-of-three Wild Card Series, they’ll be matched up in the familiar 1-8, 2-7, 3-6 and 4-5 pairings, with the lower seed hosting all three games.
• Within divisions, ties will first be broken on the basis of head-to-head records. Since teams haven’t played outside their divisions except against their interleague geographic counterparts, this is of use only for determining first, second, and third place within the division. If three teams in a division end up tied, combined head-to-head records against the other two teams will be used.
• If head-to-head records are tied or not applicable, the next tiebreaker is intradivision record.
• If teams have the same intradivision records, the next tiebreaker is record in the final 20 division games. If that doesn’t break the tie, then record over the final 21 games is used, and then onto final 22, 23, 24, and so forth until the tie is broken.

If it has any bearing upon seeding in the NL, commissioner Rob Manfred may mandate the Cardinals — who have just 58 games scheduled through Sunday due to all of their COVID-19 outbreak-related postponements — and Tigers may be ordered to play a doubleheader on Monday, September 28 to get to 60 games.

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On Monday night, I was watching the Cardinals battle the Royals when I heard something that stopped me in my tracks. As Adam Wainwright labored in the sixth inning — two runs in and runners on the corners with two outs — the Cardinals announcers mentioned one of Wainwright’s greatest strengths — in their minds, at least. “That’s something that Adam Wainwright is really good at, is not compounding the inning… going back and getting the next guy.” I’ve been a Cardinals fan my whole life — and to that tidbit, I said, “Huh?”

It was, in truth, something I’d never thought about. Are some pitchers better than others at turning off the tap, amping up their performance when they need it and keeping crooked numbers from getting even crooked-er? My saber sense was tingling — something about this didn’t sound quite right. But of course, these spots are exactly where if a pitcher could bear down more than expected, it would make the most difference. I decided I’d try to find out how real this effect was.

Defining what I was looking for turned out to be a difficult. What, exactly, does “not compounding the inning” mean? The announcers seemed to think it meant that Wainwright pitched better after runs were in, or at least pitched the same while most pitchers in baseball got worse. Either way, the general idea was that his ones and twos turned into threes and fours less often than average.

One possible reaction to that might be “So?” His ERA is his ERA, regardless of whether it comes via a three-run spurt and eight zeros over nine innings, or three one-run frames and six zeros. To that I say: reasonable point. There are still reasons to care, though. For one, if a pitcher were actually prone to clustering, they’d tend to underperform their FIP over time. One of the reasons home runs are so bad is because they always result in runs, whereas other hits can be scattered around in otherwise dry innings without damage. A cluster-prone pitcher wouldn’t have that advantage; when you give up baserunners in bunches, a single and a home run become much closer in value.

In the same way, a pitcher who was prone to lots of singleton runs allowed but then mysteriously got better after letting one in would beat his FIP over a long time horizon. Base/out states tend to be more dangerous after a run has scored, naturally enough. Getting better then, or not getting worse while most pitchers do, would be quite the superpower. Read the rest of this entry »

With a 2-9 stretch from September 8-19, the Rockies plummeted below .500 for the season and faded from the playoff picture. Though they’re still technically alive-ish in the race for the NL’s eighth seed, they’ve squandered their 11-3 start, and their Playoff Odds are down to 1.7%; they need to overtake at least four teams in the season’s five remaining days. Their task will be that much harder without Nolan Arenado, who last played on Saturday and who was placed on the Injured List on Monday with what the Rockies described as left AC joint inflammation and a left shoulder bone bruise. His season is over.

Listening to the broadcast of the Rockies-Giants game on Monday night, one of the announcers — I forget which side it was, as I was in the midst of flipping around MLB.TV — noted that Arenado has been so durable that “the last time he was on the Injured List, it wasn’t even called the Injured List” or words to that effect. In 2014, he missed 37 games after fracturing the middle finger of his left hand while sliding head-first into second base. From 2015-19, he averaged 157 games per year from 2015-19, playing more games (787) than all but three players, namely Eric Hosmer (795), Manny Machado (793), and Paul Goldschmidt (791).

Arenado initially injured his shoulder during the season’s fifth game, on July 29, while making the kind of diving stop of a Stephen Piscotty groundball that has typified the seven-time Gold Glove winner’s career:

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With less than a week to go in the regular season, writers will soon vote on end-of-season awards, and the shortened season makes for some very tight races. That’s certainly true for American League MVP. Through play on Sunday, here’s the WAR Leaderboard for American League position players:

That’s a fine list of players, to be sure, but it doesn’t include one of the top players by AL WAR at the moment. Shane Bieber has made 11 starts and pitched 72.1 innings good for a 2.13 FIP, 1.74 FIP, and 2.9 WAR. He’s struck out 41% of batters, given up three runs in three starts, two runs in two starts, one run in one start, and no runs in five starts. He pitched at least six innings in every start but one, when he threw five frames against the Brewers on September 6, striking out 10 against one walk, giving up a single run. Given Bieber’s runs’ allowed, there is no real difference between his FanGraphs’ WAR and his mark at Baseball-Reference. He also leads the league in xwOBA over at Baseball Savant. Read the rest of this entry »