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Last night, the Blue Jays beat the Rangers 5-1 to extend the ALCS to a fourth game, keeping their season alive for at least one more day. But while the final score wasn’t particularly close, the Blue Jays did feel a bit of pressure in the seventh inning, when Marco Estrada gave up back to back singles with just one out and Rougned Odor coming to the plate. Odor didn’t represent the tying run, but the Jfays have seen him do enough damage to know that he was one swing away from making the game extremely tense again, and so, John Gibbons began to warm David Price in the bullpen. Without Brett Cecil, the team’s bullpen is thin on quality left-handers, and Gibbons wanted his ace to be prepared to put out a fire if need be.

Aaron Loup got Odor to ground out to short, and then Mark Lowe came in and struck out Robinson Chirinos, so Price ended up not pitching in last night’s game. But if Loup had failed to retire Odor, Price was apparently the man Gibbons was going to to turn to, even with three straight right-handed hitters due up. Per Arden Zwelling from Sportsnet:

Here are the situations that would have led to the 30-year-old Cy Young winner making his first relief appearance since 2010, according to the man himself:

In the bottom of the seventh inning, if Aaron Loup had not retired Rougned Odor, Price would have come in to face Robinson Chirinos and any subsequent batters in the inning.

In the bottom of the eighth, if Hanser Alberto and Delino DeShields reached base against Aaron Sanchez, Price would have come in to face Shin-Soo Choo, Prince Fielder and Mitch Moreland.

In the bottom of the ninth, if Roberto Osuna had gotten into any kind of trouble, Price would have come in to save or lose the game.

Price stayed hot throughout all three of those innings but said after the game he doesn’t think that will affect his ability to pitch in Monday’s Game 4 or a potential fifth game back in Toronto. He was slated to throw a short side session Monday night regardless, and if the series does go five games, he’ll more than likely get that Wednesday start at Rogers Centre.

The Blue Jays can’t lose again in this series, and putting your ace on the mound to stave off elimination is a perfectly natural reaction. Tonight, though, I’d suggest that Gibbons should resist the urge, and give David Price the night off.

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As most baseball fans are by now aware, Chase Utley was suspended for two games on Sunday evening by Major League Baseball. The suspension relates to Utley’s controversial takeout slide of Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada in Game 2 of the National League Division Series on Saturday night.

Utley’s agent, Joel Wolfe, quickly announced that Utley would be appealing the suspension, as is his right under MLB’s collective bargaining agreement:

“A two-game suspension for a legal baseball play is outrageous and completely unacceptable. Chase did what all players are taught to do in this situation – break up the double play. We routinely see plays at second base similar to this one that have not resulted in suspensions.

Chase feels terrible about Ruben Tejada’s injury and everyone who knows him knows that he would never intentionally hurt anybody. We will be appealing this suspension immediately.”

By appealing the suspension, Utley has temporarily delayed the imposition of his punishment, meaning that he remains eligible to play for the Dodgers until MLB holds a hearing on the matter and issues a final decision. However, with Utley conveniently already in New York City (the designated site of most appeals of this nature), MLB is reportedly planning hear Utley’s appeal today so that the matter can be resolved ahead of tonight’s Game 3 at Citi Field. Whether the appeal will actually go forward today or not, however, remains uncertain, as the Major League Baseball Players Association is reportedly pressing for more time to prepare Utley’s defense.

Given the unprecedented nature of Utley’s suspension, a number of commentators have already predicted that the punishment will either be reduced or entirely overturned. And while such an outcome is certainly possible, and perhaps even likely, it is not entirely inconceivable that the league will uphold Utley’s suspension.

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That’s it. That’s the whole thing. There are contact sports out there. A whole lot of contact sports. Baseball is not and never has been among them.

Sometimes, players do come into contact with one another. Sometimes, they do so violently, and sometimes, when they do so violently, they’re even on opposing teams. It’s not that the players are forbidden to touch, and it’s not like there’s anything you can do to totally eliminate all collisions. But baseball, at its core, isn’t a contact sport. It’s a bat-and-ball sport, part catch and part golf. Baseball should be played in the spirit in which it was intended.

You ever wonder why players don’t wear pads? I mean, catchers wear pads, almost from head to toe, but that’s because they’re getting shot at by a cannon 130 times a game. Batters wear helmets because sometimes the cannon has a calibration error or an attitude. Defenders wear gloves because sometimes the cannonballs come in hot. Defenders wear cups for basically the same reason. But there isn’t anything else. No other helmets, no other chest protectors, no other shin guards. It’s not because ballplayers are tough guys, impervious to pain. It’s because ballplayers aren’t supposed to run into one another, and when they do, it’s either a freak accident, or something that hasn’t yet been sufficiently codified.

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Did you hear the news? Last postseason, the Royals made quite a name for themselves. In the midst of their first playoff run in 30 years, Kansas City carved out their own brand of baseball. For the first time in a long time, “Royals baseball” meant something positive, something exciting, something worth watching. The Royals captured our hearts until the final out of Game 7, with their unique blend of speed, defense and a dominant bullpen — a postseason formula that had long lurked in the shadows of the traditional power pitching and power hitting approaches.

Did you hear the news? What’s written above still holds true, but there’s a new Royals in town. You might not have heard about them, because they haven’t yet made their feel-good World Series run that still only has something like a 1-in-3 chance of actually materializing. Also, the Old Royals are still here and they’re still quite good, and these New Royals don’t quite feel like the Old Royals, but that’s just on the surface. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that the Houston Astros are the New Royals.

Speed

The Astros are the New Royals because of their speed. Did you know the Astros had speed? I’m not even talking about Triples King, Evan Gattis. No, I’m talking about real speed. Did you know the Astros stole 121 bases this year? Most in the American League and 17 more than the Old Royals?

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Liam Hendriks bombed as a starter. Pitching almost exclusively in that role prior to this season, he went 3-15 with a 5.92 ERA. The ineffectiveness turned him into a nomad. The 26-year-old Australian was property of five organizations – including Toronto twice – from December 2013 to October 2014.

This year, he bolstered the Blue Jays bullpen. In 58 relief appearances, Hendriks fashioned a 2.92 ERA and a 2.14 FIP, and his strikeout (9.9 per nine innings) and walk rates (1.5) were exemplary. The righty was credited with a win in each of his five decisions.

Originally a Minnesota Twin, Hendriks was acquired by Toronto from Kansas City last Halloween-eve in exchange for Santiago Nessy. He talked about his successful transition when the Jays visited Fenway Park in September.

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Hendriks on the reasons behind his breakthrough: “I did a few things differently last offseason than I had in the past. For one, I went down to the Dominican and played there for two months. I joke around that maybe my velocity kicked up because all I ate was Dominican chicken. But no, I had a blast. Probably the main thing was doing a lot of Pilates with my wife. It’s a lot more core, a lot more stability; it’s a little bit of that explosive stuff that helps keep you strong.

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Today is one of the best (baseball) days of the year, and as such, we’ll be here to chat with you all day and all night long.

Here’s the lineup. Note that these things are constantly shifting, but this is the plan:

Texas vs. Toronto: Jeff Sullivan & David G. Temple
Houston vs. Kansas City: Craig Edwards
Chicago vs. St. Louis: August Fagerstrom
New York vs. Los Angeles: Paul Swydan & Neil Weinberg

There are rumors that Matthew Kory and Sean Dolinar may flit in and out as well. Either way, this is a murderer’s row of chatters. So stick with FanGraphs all day – we’ve got you covered like stink on a monkey!
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In the National League Wild Card game, we witnessed two aces going head to head in Jake Arrieta and Gerrit Cole. Arrieta pitched just as brilliantly as he had during the regular season, throwing a shutout against the Pirates and advancing to the Division Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. Gerrit Cole could not match the Cubs’ ace as the long ball plagued him, giving up as many home runs as Arrieta has in his last 156 innings. Cole had a fantastic season and possesses a very bright future, but he will no longer be a part of any matchup of aces the rest of this postseason. The rest of us can move on and look at the next one, as Dodgers’ ace and best pitcher in baseball for several years, Clayton Kershaw, is set to take on the Mets’ best pitcher and emerging star in Jacob deGrom.

The Kershaw-deGrom matchup lacks the urgency present in the Arrieta-Cole winner-take-all encounter, but strictly in terms of the pitching matchup, Game 1 of the NLDS between the Dodgers and Mets should rival the Pirates-Cubs Wild Card game.

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As we saw last night the Wild Card game can be wildly unfair, like a stand-up contest between Louis CK and your dad, who we both know just isn’t that funny no matter what he claims. The baseball season lasts 162 games and then two teams are plucked essentially at random, and told, “Okay guys, you get one game. Win and you get to play a real playoff series. Lose and you’re a miserable failure. Oh, and your season is over. Have fun!” It doesn’t matter how good (or bad) those teams were or what the difference between them was. One game. Go.

Much has been said about the unfairness of this system and the valid and reasonable concerns it brings up. How can we condense 162 games to one game? How can we pretend the randomness of baseball, a randomness which is often not sorted out in 162 games, can be sorted in one single game? Wouldn’t a three game series be better, or even five games? At least that would require a better accounting of themselves by the two teams involved.

It would, but how much better? I was curious what the difference would be if Major League Baseball changed the format from a one game playoff to a three game series, so I investigated and, with help from the crack team at FanGraphs, I found an excellent article by Steve Staude written for The Hardball Times from May 30, 2014. It contains a calculator that tells us, bizarrely, exactly what we are wondering. This, you understand, never happens.

Let’s get into it! According to Staude’s piece, the home team has a 54% chance of winning the game, irrespective of anything else. For purposes of simplicity, I should also note that I’m not getting into the team’s starting pitchers or lefty-righty matchups or anything like that. Just team-created winning percentages will be used here to ensure that my head does not explode. “Here lies Matthew Kory. He tried hard math. Oops.”

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It’s tough to get an athlete to say much of substance in a postgame press conference. Without the benefit of a personal, one-on-one setting, and without much time for the player to gather his thoughts and reflect on his personal performance, more often than not a reporter simply could pick the cliché responses they’re most likely to hear out of a hat and arrive at a close approximation of the real thing. I’ve found this to be especially true of a starting pitcher who’s just suffered a loss.

“[Insert pitcher name here], what was giving you trouble tonight?”

“Mostly fastball command. Just wasn’t locating my fastball.”

It’s a boring answer, one that a beat writer hears something like 100 times over the course of a typical season, but it’s also an answer with which it’s usually hard to argue after a starting pitcher struggles through a start. If you really had to boil down the art and science of pitching to a one, most important thing, you might pick fastball command. Pitchers throw their fastball more than any other pitch, by far, and without fastball command, a pitcher will almost always end his night with a high number in the walks or hits column of the box score.

If there’s something you know about Gerrit Cole, it’s that he’s one of the very best pitchers in baseball, largely because he has an amazing fastball. By average velocity, it’s the third-hardest heater in the league. By PITCHf/x run values, it was the second-most valuable fastball in the league. Cole complements that fastball with a great slider and a good changeup, but he largely lives, and subsequently dies, by the fastball.

In Wednesday’s 4-0 Wild Card loss to the Cubs, it was the latter.

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Yordano Ventura wanted more movement on his pitches, so he changed his arm slot. He got more movement in some ways, and less in others. He also pitched much better after he dropped his arm slot. It’s tempting to draw a direct line from one fact to the other, but it’s not that simple. There’s at least another huge factor here, and it comes from Ventura’s (secretly) nastiest pitch.

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