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The story of last night’s NLDS Game 3 is almost certainly going to be about how the Dodger bullpen, which was known to be awful, was awful. After Pedro Baez in Game 1, and J.P. Howell in Game 2, it was Scott Elbert’s turn in Game 3. Other than Kenley Jansen, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is literally nothing Don Mattingly can do that isn’t going to blow up in his face. He could be the best manager in the world (well, probably not) or the worst, and we might never know, because the relievers he has at his disposal just keep on failing. (Yes, it was the right call to take out Hyun-jin Ryu, in his first start back from shoulder issues, when he did.)

Somewhat lost in that is the reality that if the Dodgers had merely managed to put up more than a single run against John Lackey and friends, they might not have needed to actually rely so heavily on the leaky pen. There’s a not-small part of that which is on umpire Dale Scott, but you can also only put so much on questionable umpiring. There’s a whole lot more you can put on things like… wow, did Yasiel Puig strike out seven times in a row? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not a stretch to say that heading into the ALDS, the biggest concern in Detroit was about the bullpen — specifically how first-year manager Brad Ausmus had chosen to deploy it late in the season. Baltimore ended up sweeping the Tigers in three games, and the bullpen was directly involved in two of Detroit’s losses. At least one Ausmus decision — lifting Anibal Sanchez for Joba Chamberlain in Game 2 — was enough to get the manager torched by analysts and fans. There were some unhappy, as well, about Ausmus’ decision to bring in Chamberlain in Game 1 and with his choice to pinch-hit Hernan Perez for Andrew Romine in the ninth inning in Game 3 (as though that were really a thing that mattered at all).

Ausmus’ inexperience was perceived as a weakness. He made unpopular decisions that went poorly, and now his team is headed home. Guess we know where to place the blame, right? This is some quality #narrative, of course. It’s not necessarily wrong, entirely, because Ausmus certainly made some choices that didn’t require second-guessing, since they’d been first-guessed in the moment. It’s just a little too simplistic, a little too convenient.

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This is a story all about how an umpire flipped-turned a playoff game upside down.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming the outcome of Saturday night’s marathon game between Washington and San Francisco entirely on fourth-year umpire Vic Carapazza, working in his first MLB postseason. I would never do that. Despite what disgruntled fans might lead you to believe, the blame for a team’s loss can never be placed on the shoulders of one individual. Especially not in a game that lasted 18 innings.

There are countless factors that played into Washington’s loss, and that’s been reflected in the media’s coverage of this game. The offense went scoreless for 15 innings after taking a 1-0 lead in the third. Many have focused on manager Matt Williams‘ decision to remove starting pitcher Jordan Zimmermann after a walk in the ninth. Some have focused on… the male genitalia? But a lot of attention has turned to Carapazza, who had a shaky strike zone and ejected Williams and shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera in the bottom of the 10th for arguing balls and strikes.

Cabrera and Williams need to keep their cool in that situation, but, boy, did Vic Carapazza have himself a rough night.
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There’s no official chat today, so feel free to chat in the comments section for today’s ALDS games.

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Award season is upon us, and as far as the biggest pieces of individual hardware go, there will be relatively little debate this season. Clayton Kershaw would appear to be poised to sweep the NL Cy Young and MVP awards, and Mike Trout would seemingly be in line to finally (?) land his first AL MVP. That leaves us with the AL Cy Young, a heavyweight matchup between perennial contender and one-time winner Felix Hernandez and this year’s breakthrough pitcher, Corey Kluber. Conventional wisdom seems to hold that Hernandez would be the choice of traditionalists, while Kluber would gain the sabermetric vote. Should that be the case? Let’s take a deeper look. Read the rest of this entry »

Evaluating The Prospects: Texas Rangers, Colorado Rockies, Arizona Diamondbacks & Minnesota Twins

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

The Twins have both top-end talent and lots of depth in their system, which will likely rank their system among the best in the league when I get around to that later this off-season. It’s interesting to note that the Twins, known as a team that preferred to draft starters average fastballs and pitchability in the past, drafted almost all relievers with their early picks in 2014.

They drafted 8 pitchers in their first 10 picks last June with scouts projecting all of them to be relievers, though the Twins will develop some as starters for now.  Minnesota now has, by my count, 10 pitchers in the system that have recently hit 98 mph or higher, which is close to the most in baseball, if not the most. Twins execs say it was more situational that they drafted the pitchability type arms in the past, but that there has been a concerted effort to move more toward acquiring power arms, even if they project as relievers.

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A couple of weeks ago, we announced the creation of the FanGraphs Player of the Year Award, which we created to recognize the single best performance in a given season, regardless of the position the player plays or the league that he plays in. Just one award for one player, with everyone eligible, and all players measured on the strength of their own performance.

In that post, we announced that the voting panel would include 11 members of the FanGraphs staff, myself included. Today, we’re amending that slightly, as I am recusing myself from the voting panel this year, as our plan to reveal the winner — and all of our balllots — on October 20th means that my participation would reveal some of the order of the NL MVP ballot which I cast over the weekend. In order to avoid that issue, I’m surrendering my vote for the Player of the Year Award this season. To replace me on the panel, we have chosen to give you guys a ballot instead.

Before I link to the ballot, though, I need to explain the grading process that we have attached to the system. While the ballot does contain a normal 1-10 ranking system, we have added an additional evaluation layer, with a 0-100 grade also being recorded for every player you list on your ballot. The grade is actually the more important number than the ranking on the ballot, though both will be tabulated, and the player’s average ranking will be used as a tie-breaker, so position on the ballot matters as well. But the grade is the more important evaluation, so let me walk through how the grading scale works.

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What are you going to remember from the AL wild card game? Be honest, really.

You’re going to remember Ned Yost. Hooooooo boy, are you going to remember Ned Yost. There’s going to be no shortage of post-mortems in Kansas City about Yost, for about 40 different reasons, surprisingly not all about bunting. (Argue about whether it was smart to take out James Shields [yes] for an on-one-day-rest Yordano Ventura [no] all you want, I’m still not over the early botched Eric Hosmer / Billy Butler double steal that was actually called on purpose.) You’re not going to forget Brandon Finnegan, either, or Salvador Perez, or Jarrod Dyson on the base paths.

You’re going to remember Bob Melvin and that eighth inning, too, inexplicably leaving Jon Lester in to rack up 111 pitches, get three men on base, and (along with Luke Gregerson) turn a 7-3 lead into a 7-6 nailbiter. You’re going to remember Jonny Gomes in left field, and what should be by all reason the last game that Derek Norris ever catches in the big leagues. I’ll remember thinking that for every time we laugh and make jokes all while understanding that managers know a million times more than we do, every single thing in this game happened. Yost was often brutal in this one. Melvin wasn’t necessarily better.

There’s so, so much to unpack there, and I’ve barely scraped the surface of what was one of the weirdest, greatest, worst, best, ludicrous baseball games ever. So much happened, in fact, that what no one at all is going to remember is what seemed for much of the evening like the biggest story of the night: Brandon Moss, who had hit two homers in the previous two months, hit two in the same playoff game. Let’s talk about that, a little.

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