PHILADELPHIA – It’s dangerous to draw conclusions from one game of a playoff series, but after Game 1 of the NLDS, you can take this lesson to the bank: Nobody’s perfect.

Cristopher Sánchez was on the verge of completing six imperious innings, until the last three batters he faced — the last pitch he threw, really — sent the Phillies into a spiral. Teoscar Hernández committed a borderline-unforgivable defensive gaffe, then atoned with interest by the end of the night with a game-winning three-run homer.

Shohei Ohtani, making history by leading off a playoff game as a starting pitcher, looked not just like a two-way player but like two different people. Ohtani has seldom looked so hapless at the plate, striking out in each of his first four plate appearances. He made a slightly less glorious brand of history, becoming the sixth player in the pitch tracking era to strike out looking three times in a playoff game.

But on the other hand. Ohtani came out the winning pitcher: nine strikeouts in six innings, with just four baserunners allowed. Hernández’s seventh-inning homer off Matt Strahm made the difference in a 5-3 Dodger win. Read the rest of this entry »

The Brewers and the Cubs played nine innings of baseball on Saturday, but Game 1 of the National League Divisional Series was decided before the end of the first. Every series starts off with its share of questions. Did the Brewers have enough pitching to withstand injuries to Brandon Woodruff and Shelby Miller? Could Kyle Tucker and Pete Crow-Armstrong locate the MVP form they’d showed earlier this season? How would a Brewers offense that loves to work the count fare against a strike-throwing Cubs pitching staff? Would the Brewers be rusty after a five-game layoff? Would the Cubs regret starting Matthew Boyd on short rest after he threw just 58 pitches against the Padres on Tuesday? In Game 1, those last two questions were all that mattered.

The Brewers were not rusty, and Boyd may well have been. The Cubs jumped out to an early lead, but in the bottom of the first, the Brewers exploded on Boyd like they’d spent the past five days packing themselves into a cannon. During the regular season, the Brewers scored only 9% of their runs in the first inning, the third-lowest rate in baseball. Maybe they were saving it all up for the playoffs. Milwaukee raced to a 6-1 lead in the first and extended it to 9-1 in the second. “I’m proud they came out ready,” said manager Pat Murphy during the game. “The guys came out ready to swing, and when they’re ready to swing, a lot of good things can happen. They’re a great bunch.”

By virtue of their first-round bye, the Brewers lined up ace Freddy Peralta to pitch Game 1. After an early hiccup, Peralta looked every bit the guy who led the NL with 17 wins and notched three of them against the Cubs. He missed well outside with a 95-mph fastball on the first pitch of the game, then came back with a belt-high heater over the center of the plate, which Chicago leadoff hitter Michael Busch fouled off. Peralta repeated the pattern: four-seamer well outside, belt-high four-seamer over the middle. Busch was ready for the second one. He turned on it and sent it 389 feet over the right field fence. Four pitches in, the Cubs had a 1-0 lead. Peralta recovered quickly, retiring the next three batters in order. He’d allow just one more base hit over the next four innings.

In the bottom of the second, Jackson Chourio squared to bunt on the first pitch from Boyd, then took it for a ball inside. Looking back, it’s tempting to wonder what would have happened had Boyd put the pitch in the strike zone. Maybe if Chourio would have actually bunted the ball, and maybe the whole game would have gone differently. But it was tight and Chourio pulled the bat back, then ripped the fourth pitch he saw down the third base line for a double. Brice Turang knocked Chourio in with a double of his own, lining the first pitch he saw on a hop off the right field fence. The Brewers had tied the game at one after five pitches. William Contreras ripped the next pitch just past a diving Ian Happ for a double into left field, scoring Turang. With doubles on three consecutive pitches, the Brewers grabbed a 2-1 lead. They were far from done.

Chicago pitching coach Tommy Hottovy walked out to settle down Boyd, who induced a grounder to short from Christian Yelich, then deepened his trouble by walking Andrew Vaughn. Much earlier than the Cubs would have liked, Michael Soroka started warming up in the bullpen.

Boyd broke Sal Frelick’s bat, inducing a weak grounder to second base. Nico Hoerner, who may well end up winning his second Gold Glove this winter, charged the ball and then inexplicably biffed an easy hop. The ball kicked past him, allowing Contreras to score. The Brewers still had runners on first and second with one out, now with a 3-1 lead. Boyd struck out Caleb Durbin with a four-seamer above the zone, then got ahead of Blake Perkins, 1-2. He was one strike from ending the inning, but Perkins worked an incredible 12-pitch at-bat, fouling off pitch after pitch, then ripping a line drive right back up the middle – the thing that both he and the Brewers love the most in the world – scoring Vaughn and moving Frelick to third. The Brewers had a 4-1 lead and Boyd’s day was over after 30 pitches and two-thirds of an inning.

Soroka came into the game with a simple mandate: stop the bleeding and keep the game close. Instead, he walked ninth hitter Joey Ortiz on four pitches, loading the bases and bringing Chourio back to the plate. This might be a good time to note that Chourio ran a 307 wRC+ with two homers in last year’s Wild Card Series, his only previous playoff games. He pushed that career postseason mark even higher, rocking a single through the left side of the infield to drive in two more runs. The Brewers led 6-1. Mercifully, Soroka got Turang to chase a high fastball for strike three.

The Brewers hit for 26 minutes in the first inning. They saw 45 pitches from two pitchers. They notched five hits, walked twice, and reached once via error. They put seven balls in play with a 72% hard-hit rate. Curt Hogg of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel pointed out that it was the first time they’d scored six runs in the first inning all season. The incomparable Sarah Langs noted that teams to score at least six runs in an inning had gone 113-1 in postseason history. With that last single off the bat of Chourio, Soroka’s job changed. It was no longer to keep the game within reach. It was to eat as many innings as possible in order to keep the Cubs from annihilating their bullpen in addition to falling behind in the best-of-five series.

Peralta allowed a single to Crow-Armstrong, but he needed just 12 pitches to retire the Cubs in the top of the second and give the Brewers the chance to get right back to hitting. After leading off the first with three straight doubles, Milwaukee led off the second with three straight singles.

Contreras singled to left, Yelich singled to right, and Vaughn singled to center. The bases were loaded and Aaron Civale got warm in the Cubs bullpen. Frelick lined out to left field on a ball that was too shallow for Contreras to tag up on, then Durbin dropped a duck snort into shallow center field, knocking in two. Seventeen Brewers had come to the plate. Thirteen had reached safely. Eight had scored. Perkins grounded out to first base, pushing the runners to second and third with two outs. Ortiz walked on four pitches, loading the bases again, and Counsell made the slow walk out to the mound. Soroka lasted just one third of an inning longer than Boyd. The job of eating innings fell to Civale, whom the Brewers traded to the White Sox for Vaughn back in June and whom the Cubs claimed off waivers at the end of August.

Chourio greeted Civale with another grounder right down the third base line, this one for an infield single to push the score to 9-1. However, it came with a price. Chourio missed nearly the entire month of August with a right hamstring strain, and he aggravated the injury as he hustled to beat the throw from Matt Shaw. Visibly distraught, he spoke to a trainer, then left the field, and walked back to the clubhouse. The Brewers announced that he would be evaluated further after the game. Turang struck out to end the inning, and the TBS broadcast announced that Brewers were the first team in playoff history with nine runs and 10 hits in the first two innings.

The Cubs and Brewers played seven more innings of more baseball. Peralta pitched brilliantly, though he surrendered another solo homer to Happ in the sixth inning. He left one out shy of a quality start, and the Milwaukee faithful rewarded him with a standing ovation. He gave up three earned runs over 5 2/3 innings, striking out nine, walking three, and allowing four hits. Civale filled his role excellently too, scattering three hits over 4 1/3 innings and allowing Counsell to ask the bullpen for just two more innings. Hoerner added another solo homer off Jared Koenig in the eighth inning before Nick Mears closed things out in the ninth.

The questions going into Game 2 will revolve around Chourio’s health and Chicago’s ability to bounce back from such a thorough drubbing. The Brewers possess a capable fill-in in Isaac Collins, who ran a 122 wRC+ as a rookie this season, but Chourio is an awfully hard player to replace. His three hits pushed his career wRC+ in the playoffs to 361, and if the hamstring injury is anywhere near as serious as it looked, it’s hard to imagine him returning in time to play against the Cubs. With the 9-3 victory, the Brewers drew the season series with the Cubs even at 7-7. The good news for the Cubs is that they’ll have a day off before Game 3, allowing their bullpen to get some rest. Although Boyd threw just 30 pitches, he seems unlikely to go on short rest in Game 4.

The playoffs are off to a thrilling start, with three of the four Wild Card Series lasting the full three games and seven of the 11 games being decided by no more than three runs. We saw excellent defense in Chicago, an offensive outburst in Los Angeles, and a handful of great starting pitching performances.

The best part is we’re just getting started. Today, all four Division Series begin, which means we have another marathon day of baseball ahead of us. First up, we’ve got a pair of divisional foes squaring off, with the Brewers and Cubs set for 2:08 p.m. ET in Milwaukee, followed by the Blue Jays and Yankees at 4:08 p.m. ET in Toronto. In the third game of the day, Shohei Ohtani makes his postseason pitching debut against the Phillies; before he takes the mound, though, he’ll step into the Citizens Bank Park left-handed batter’s box as the Dodgers’ leadoff man at 6:38 p.m. ET. And then to cap it off, the Mariners host the Tigers at 8:38 p.m. ET. As always, we’ll be covering all the action here at FanGraphs.

Before we get to this week’s mailbag, I have one quick programming note to remind everyone of. We’ll still be doing our weekly mailbag during the postseason, but we might move around the specific day it runs depending on the playoff schedule. Our plan is to do one before every postseason round, as we are today. Also, I’d like to remind all of 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.

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How would you assess the current state of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry? Are these two teams going to be on a collision course for the next several years like they were in the early 2000s? Or is that more of a TV network pipe dream? — Connor G.

Alex Cora was asked a similar question during his pregame press conference at Yankee Stadium ahead of Game 1 of the Wild Card Series between the two teams.

“I think it is intense in October. During the regular season, there’s others that are more intense. The one in the West Coast is stupid, you know, the Padres and the Dodgers. That’s intense from the get-go,” Cora said. “It’s not that we’re not intense during the regular season, but it has toned down throughout the years.”

He’s right. Anyone who has watched the way the Dodgers and Padres have gone at it lately knows that it’s the closest thing baseball has to the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry of the early 2000s. When it comes to the on-field emotions between the two teams, the Yankees have had more beef with the Rays and Blue Jays, and then obviously with the Astros, than they have with the Red Sox in recent years. Some of that certainly has to do with the on-and-off success that Boston has had over the last decade, because the Yankees and Red Sox have only been in competition with one another for either the AL East crown or the AL pennant a few times.

But a larger part of why the rivalry has cooled off some is rooted in how the two organizations view themselves. Jay Jaffe and I were talking about this during batting practice this week while we were covering the series. Basically, because the Red Sox have won four World Series in the last 20 years (three more than the Yankees in that span), Boston no longer brings an inferiority complex to the park when it plays New York. As much as we here at FanGraphs are all about witchcraft and superstition, we can all agree that there was no literal Curse of the Bambino. However, there is a real emotional and psychological toll that comes from watching a competitor of yours win it all year after year after year while you get so close but can’t quite do it. It’s embarrassing and degrading, and over time, you develop a sense of defiance. You fight back instead of letting yourself get picked on. This attitude is one of the core symptoms of Little Brother Syndrome. The Padres arguably have it now vis-à-vis the Dodgers, and at times, the Rays and Blue Jays bring it to their matchups with the Yankees. But the Red Sox seem to have outgrown it.

That doesn’t mean the fans don’t get more passionate about Yankees-Red Sox games than they do for other matchups, because they absolutely do. With the exception of last year’s World Series, the atmosphere at the Stadium this week was different than it was for the other playoff series I’ve covered there over the last handful of years. The people in the stands understood the stakes, and it didn’t take much effort for them to conjure up their old emotions from when the rivalry was at its peak.

Which brings us to your question about whether this year’s series is going to be the first of many meaningful matchups between the two teams, and if so, whether that would that be enough to reignite the rivalry. I think these two teams are going to be competing with each other for the rest of the decade. With the exception of 2023, when everything went wrong and they missed the playoffs, the Yankees have demonstrated an organizational competence that makes me confident that they’ll be a perennial postseason team, while the Red Sox are just now opening their window of contention. Aaron Boone acknowledged as much late Thursday night on the Yankee Stadium infield, after his team popped champagne and turned their clubhouse into a lazy river of booze. “They’re a great team that’s getting better and better,” he said. “They’re going to be a scary club next year with where they’re going and what they’ve built the last couple of years.”

That level of competition could go a long away toward bringing the rivalry back. I think that could especially be the case if Massachusetts natives Cam Schlittler and Ben Rice become core players of these Yankees. Rice grew up a Yankees fan despite living in Red Sox territory, while Schlittler was a Sox fan and comes from a family of Sox fans. Boston fans could end of being more ruthless if they feel like they’ve been betrayed by two of their own. That’s what Schlittler experienced before his Game 3 start, and he said it fueled his historic performance.

And yet, even as I forecast a brighter future for this rivalry, I don’t think it’ll ever go back to what it was in the early 2000s. Those matchups featured so many massive personalities — Roger Clemens and Pedro Martínez, Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, Gary Sheffield and David Ortiz, David Wells and Curt Schilling — that when you combined them with the tribalism of the fanbases, the high stakes of the competition, and some Little Brother Syndrome defiance, it created a molotov cocktail of emotions that could explode at any moment. We will never again see anything like Pedro snatching a charging Don Zimmer by the head and flinging him to the ground, and that’s a good thing. I don’t ever want something like that to happen again.

Fortunately, there is a healthy midpoint between the narcoleptic just-another-game mentality and elder abuse, and after what we saw in the Yankees-Red Sox AL Wild Card Series this week and based on what we expect from these two teams in the near future, the rivalry appears to be on the rise.

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Hey team! First time, long time. Love the mailbag. Question as a long-suffering Reds fan.

Is this some cosmic cycle that’s currently benefitting the people of Cleveland like it did St. Louis 10 years ago, and that will eventually get around to me? Or is there something intrinsically special about these teams? Or am I just being punished for being born in the wrong Midwestern town? — Ari

Michael Baumann: So I want to push back a little bit on the idea that these Midwestern teams are unnaturally successful, because they don’t actually do much once they’re in the playoffs.

The Guardians have made it to the ALCS three times in the 21st Century. In 2007 and 2016, they had the best starting pitcher in the AL both years, multiple elite relievers, and dynamic, switch-hitting superstar position players. Nothing magical there; they were just legitimately good teams. Last year, they snagged a bye by default, thanks to a weak division and an indifferent Astros team. They then beat a team from the same division in the ALDS and the first actual good team they ran into caved their faces in.

The Brewers have won a round in only one of their past six playoff appearances. The Cardinals, the most magical team of the bunch, haven’t won a round since 2019. Their unlikely run to the championship in 2006 and penchant for winning dramatically in 2011 gave them an air of the supernatural, but they also got swept in the World Series as a 105-win team in 2004 and no-showed the NLCS in 2019.

As for how these teams keep getting to the playoffs so frequently, well, what your examples have in common is a weak division and a penchant for doing pitcher development well and on the cheap.

Beyond that, I think there’s a tendency to ascribe a quality of clutchness to teams that don’t have impressive lineups but perform well in the postseason. Given how much teams can shorten their rotations and manage their high-leverage bullpens, great pitchers can give you more bang for your buck in the playoffs than in the regular season. There are limits to this phenomenon (for example: I know how bad the Brewers have been in the playoffs because I keep picking them every year and they keep making me look like an idiot), but it’s worked for Cleveland, and Kansas City, and most notably in the recent past for the Even Year B.S. Giants.

It helps, of course, if you have a future Hall of Famer in the lineup. In short, if Cardinals Devil Magic is real (or was, because it sure isn’t happening now), the Great Satan’s name is Albert Pujols.

But the real answer to your question is here: About 50,000 years ago, prehistoric humans began to understand that while their environment followed certain natural rules and patterns, individual events could be unpredictable, as if they were being influenced by invisible spirits. Thus began shamanism, an attempt to communicate with and influence these spirits, and from there all forms of religion and spirituality.

Existence is probabilistic. How unlikely is it that atoms bumped together to form amino acids and proteins, and that they came together in just the right combination to create life? And even given that unfathomable fluke, how could single-celled organisms evolve into complex humans who can throw curveballs? I admit it seems pretty far-fetched that all of this could happen by chance. But working in a sandbox as big as the universe, on a time frame as long as tens of billions of years, unlikely things are bound to happen somewhere, sooner or later.

Sports, being as it is a religion, involves observing our natural world and its chaotic and capricious path, and trying to retrofit some explanation to make it all make sense. The idea that everything is meaningless (“a chasing after the wind,” to quote the holy book of a non-baseball-related faith) leaves us empty. So we stare into the abyss and try to find God. Or worse, the St. Louis Cardinals.

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Hi mailbag!

Cheers!
Brian

Dan Szymborski: The playoffs are a time of chaos — and small sample sizes — so there’s plenty of opportunity for goats to be come heroes and vice versa. I think my favorite example of this in recent years is that of José Abreu. He was pretty terrible his first season in Houston (the second year didn’t go any better!) and was largely seen as a drag on their postseason roster. Then he got into the playoffs, and while the Astros ended up losing the 2023 ALCS to the Rangers, Abreu hit four homers in 11 games, good for a .945 OPS that October. His career after that, which lasted all of six weeks, only had two more homers left in it. I’m not sure the Giancarlo Stanton contract is viewed as negatively, but he’s clearly fallen short of overall expectations in New York. Still, he’s had some really big postseasons with the Yankees.

On the pitching side, you brought up Zito, and he’s the pitcher whose name comes instantly to mind for me. His contract is widely seen as one of the most disappointing pacts of the last decade-plus, but he did net the Giants two huge starts: a 7 2/3 inning shutout against the Cardinals in the 2012 NLCS, and a one-run start a week later in the World Series. It’s still recognized as one of the worst contracts the Giants ever signed, but Zito did earn a bit of redemption given that the Giants won the championship.

That’s who most stands out to me now, but who knows, we might be adding Javier Báez to this list soon!
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Dearest FanGraphs Crew,

Thanks and keep up the good work. — sds

Ben Clemens: Before we try to walk through the theoretical implications, let’s just start out with a downer: No one wants this. What player would want this? What team would want this? From the player perspective, playing baseball is already a full-time job, and being a manager requires a ton of work too. Figuring out how to run a bullpen takes work. Managing player personalities and egos isn’t trivial. Working with coaches and analysts to sort out gameplans is important! You have to figure out player rotations, keep everyone happy, and spend a ton of time talking to the media to make sure that you are communicating team decisions well. These days, managers surely also have to spend a ton of time talking to the front office making sure they’re happy. The two and a half hours of game time where you get pride of place in the dugout and make pitching changes and pinch-hitting decisions is the payoff, but players are pretty busy during the game already, and I can’t imagine a lot of guys think to themselves, “You know what? I’m just not busy enough during games.”

Fine, though. Let’s put all of that aside and say that a star hits free agency, considers all of the stuff I just said, and decides that they want to be a player-manager anyway. If I were a team, I’d try as hard as I possibly could to dissuade them from making this decision. Sure, we can’t quantify the total impact that a manager has on his team’s chances of winning, but no one thinks that there’s no value to it. The Rays are always penny-pinching, but they don’t hire someone from a temp agency to manage the team. That’s because the job is difficult and doing it well has value.

Basically, I’d offer meaningfully less on this deal if the player insisted that they were contractually required to be the manager the whole time and that no one else could fulfill any managerial duties. I’d offer more if we came to an agreement that they would just do the “glamorous” parts – meetings on the mound, postgame press conferences, standing on the top step of the dugout and looking worried – while letting me backfill the behind-the-scenes parts of the job with other staff. If this star really just wants the glory of managing, well, first I’d tell them that there’s a lot less glory in managing than there is in playing. But second, I guess I’d let them. If all they wanted to do was make in-game decisions, I wouldn’t even “charge” them much for it, assuming we talked through their pinch-hitting philosophy beforehand and it wasn’t “backup catchers only.” But my deal stops there. If a player insisted upon doing all of a manager’s tasks and also wouldn’t allow anyone else to do those jobs, I’d offer them meaningfully less money and basically tell them to go elsewhere.

Being a manager is a difficult job. In addition, “we can’t totally measure manager value” is really different from “manager value doesn’t exist.” Teams would absolutely balk at a player wanting to do all of the stuff a manager does, because there aren’t that many hours in the day, and failing to do those things really would be a problem. On the other hand, players almost certainly wouldn’t ask for this, because they see their own managers at work — they know what comes with the job.

SEATTLE — Every year, pitchers and catchers report for spring training, and just as spring represents a reawakening in the natural world, spring training provides a reawakening for every team, a fresh start, full of renewed optimism. No matter the team, fans across the league allow themselves to dream a little, to believe that this year might be the one.

You could be my silver springs
Blue-green colors flashin’
I would be your only dream
Your shining autumn, ocean crashing.

But for 29 teams, the season will end in heartbreak. For some teams that heartbreak might come as early as June or July, for others in August or September, and a few will experience the agony of October sorrow. Over the last several years, the Seattle Mariners have unwittingly built a tradition of remaining very much in the playoff hunt until the final week of the regular season, only to miss the cut by a harrowingly thin margin. They did make the playoffs in 2022, ending a 20-year postseason drought, but they struggled to cross that threshold again. Instead, they fell into a familiar rhythm, playing hard until the very end, but then their season was over. Their time was up.

Time cast its spell on you, but you won’t forget me
I know I could have loved you, but you would not let me.

This season is different. The Mariners not only secured a place in the postseason, but they also won the AL West for the first time since 2001. In doing so, they eschewed the Wild Card Series and advanced directly to the best-of-five Division Series, which begins on Saturday against the Tigers in Seattle. And all it took was a little witchcraft. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — In just the second winner-take-all postseason matchup started by two rookies — in one of the sport’s most storied rivalries, no less — 24-year-old Yankees righty Cam Schlittler utterly dominated the Red Sox lineup on Thursday, striking out 12 without a walk while scattering just five hits over eight scoreless innings. His opposite number, 23-year-old lefty Connelly Early, matched Schlittler zero for zero through the first three frames, making up with deception what he lacked in velocity, at least relative to the New York starter. Alas, a mistake by the Red Sox defense opened the door to trouble in the fourth inning, as five of the first six Yankees reached base en route to a 4-0 lead. Boston manager Alex Cora, who pulled starter Brayan Bello after 28 pitches in Game 2, left Early to throw 33 pitches in the fourth inning alone. That outburst was more than enough, as the Yankees eliminated the Red Sox from the postseason for the first time since 2003, when current manager Aaron Boone hit a walk-off home run off Tim Wakefield.

This was the sixth time the two AL East rivals squared off in the postseason, with the Red Sox riding a series winning streak that included the 2004 American League Championship Series, the 2018 AL Division Series, and the 2021 AL Wild Card Game. The only other time two rookie starters met in a winner-take-all game was in Game 7 of the 2020 NLCS, when the Dodgers’ Dustin May and the Braves’ Ian Anderson went head to head, though May pitched just one inning and Anderson three, and neither figured in the decision.

The two starters in this one began the season in Double-A, and didn’t figure to contribute substantially this season. Schlittler joined a banged-up Yankees rotation on July 9 and pitched brilliantly during the second half, overpowering batters with a four-seam fastball that averaged 98.0 mph as well as an effective cutter. He posted a 2.96 ERA and 3.74 FIP with a 27.6% strikeout rate in 14 starts, and was an easy choice for Boone to start Game 3 following Max Fried and Carlos Rodón. By contrast, Early only debuted on September 9, and pitched brilliantly (2.33 ERA, 0.91 FIP) but might not have made the postseason roster — or at least would not have started — had Lucas Giolito not been sidelined by elbow trouble. While Garrett Crochet’s 7 2/3 innings in Game 1 required Cora to use only closer Aroldis Chapman in relief, the manager didn’t like what he saw from Bello in Game 2 and pulled him with one out in the third, leaving him to call upon six relievers, one of whom (Garrett Whitlock) threw a season-high 47 pitches and gave up the winning run. Read the rest of this entry »

Nobody likes a quick exit from the playoffs, but a brief October cameo would have been an especial humiliation for the 2025 Detroit Tigers. After spending much of the season fighting for the league’s best record, and collecting a 14-game divisional lead at one point, the Tigers went nine games under .500 in the second half. Not only was that bad enough to throw away the division title, Detroit nearly missed the playoffs altogether, only squeezing in thanks to a tiebreak advantage over the Houston Astros. So Thursday’s 6-3 win in Game 3 of the Wild Card series must come as a relief, especially given the measure of revenge that comes with beating Cleveland.

Jack Flaherty got the call in Game 3, his first playoff appearance for the Tigers. There had to be some trepidation about Flaherty, given that his last quality start came back in mid-August. While his 4 2/3 innings of work were short on highlight moments, and he allowed three 100 mph liners that fortunately found leather instead of grass or dirt, Flaherty confined the hits to two-out rallies, leaving Cleveland little room for any bunting or other little-ball shenanigans until the fourth inning. A George Valera double and a José Ramírez single got the Guardians on the board in the fourth, but the danger ended when J-Ram was caught stealing and Chase DeLauter hit into a double play. Flaherty did at least avoid angering the cruel deity that governs predictions; last offseason, he famously said that the Tigers would have defeated the Guardians in last year’s playoffs if he hadn’t been traded to the Dodgers at the deadline. Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday afternoon, I briefly thought that A.J. Hinch had lost his mind. I really don’t know how else to explain it. With runners on the corners and one out in the top of the seventh inning of Game 2 of the Wild Card Series between the Tigers and the Guardians — which Cleveland won, 6-1 — Detroit had Riley Greene, its best hitter, at the plate with a chance to break a 1-1 tie. The Guardians went to the bullpen, bringing in lefty Tim Herrin. Herrin, a 6-foot-6 curveball specialist, figured to be a tough matchup for Greene; he’s been lights out against same-handed batters throughout his career. But then Hinch made a surprising call to the bench. He pulled Greene back and pinch-hit with Jahmai Jones – and now here I am writing this article.

Jones had one key thing going for him here: Like Inigo Montoya, he is not left-handed. He’s also hit lefties much better than righties in his brief major league career, and in his minor league career, too. Greene, on the other hand, is a poor left-on-left hitter. So you can at least see where Hinch’s decision was coming from. I want to give this kind of shocking decision the full consideration it deserves before just laughing it out of the building – after all, what if it was the right call? So let’s do all the math to get an idea of what Hinch was giving up, and what he was getting.

To model pitcher-against-batter outcomes, I first took projections for both players, the granular ones that consider specific outcomes. I also calculated platoon splits for each player by taking their observed career splits and regressing them toward league average based on sample size. I put those two projections – hitter and pitcher – into a modified log5 formula and used it to predict the likelihood of each possible outcome of a plate appearance. Then I applied those outcomes to the game state when Greene’s spot came up in the lineup.

That’s a lot of explanation jammed into one paragraph, so I think an example is in order. Let’s say that the Jones-Herrin confrontation results in a single 25% of the time, a deep fly ball 25% of the time, a strikeout 25% of the time, and a walk 25% of the time. Those are nowhere near reasonable, of course, but just an example. A single would mean runners on first and second (at least) and a 2-1 lead, for a win probability of 73.4%. A deep sacrifice fly? That would get the Tigers to 66.6%. A strikeout? 50.1%. Walk? 65.7%. Average those four probabilities, and the Tigers come out with a 64% chance of winning the game. There are more than four possible outcomes, of course, but this process is how I turn outcomes into win probabilities. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — Jazz Chisholm Jr. was not a happy camper on Tuesday night. Despite a 31-homer, 31-steal season that included a solid showing against left-handed pitching, he spent the first seven innings of the Wild Card Series opener against the Red Sox on the bench instead of facing lefty Garrett Crochet. After the Yankees’ 3-1 loss, he was left muttering almost inaudibly at his locker with his back to reporters — a surreal scene. Back in the lineup on Wednesday night against righty Brayan Bello, Chisholm went 0-for-3 but made huge contributions on both sides of the ball, with two standout defensive plays and an eighth-inning walk that turned into the decisive run when he motored home from first base on Austin Wells’ long go-ahead single. The Yankees’ 4-3 win kept their season alive, pushing the series to Game 3.

Despite hitting a respectable .248/.322/.411 (106 wRC+) against lefties this year (compared to .240/.336/.508, 134 wRC+ against righties), Chisholm sat on Tuesday night in favor of righty Amed Rosario — who played just one game at second base after being acquired from the Nationals on July 26 — apparently on the basis of Rosario’s owning a 6-for-9 career line with two extra-base hits against Crochet entering play Tuesday. Rosario went hitless in three plate appearances against the Boston ace before yielding to Chisholm in the eighth inning; Chisholm flied out with the bases loaded in the ninth against Aroldis Chapman.

Manager Aaron Boone wasn’t worried that Chisholm’s disappointment at being left out of the lineup would carry over into Game 2. “I don’t need him to put a happy face on,” Boone said Wednesday afternoon. “I need him to go out and play his butt off for us tonight. That’s what I expect to happen.” Read the rest of this entry »

The first inning was a harbinger. The eighth inning featured an offensive explosion for a team that all too often struggles to score. The Cleveland Guardians plated five runs to break a 1-1 tie and went on to beat a thoroughly frustrated Detroit Tigers team 6-1. The season-saving rally evened the best-of-three Wild Card series at one apiece, setting up a decisive finale for tomorrow afternoon in Cleveland.

The Tigers had their chances. Make that many chances — the first of which came as fans at Progressive Field were just settling into their seats. Parker Meadows pulled a groundball into the four-hole that second baseman Brayan Rocchio could only smother, giving Detroit the first of its 17 baserunners (yes, 17) on the day. Center fielder Chase DeLauter — playing in the first inning of his first big league game — then lost a battle with the sun and wind, dropping a fly ball and giving the Tabbies an early opportunity to open up a lead. Cleveland starter Tanner Bibee survived the little-fault-of-his-own threat. Three strikeouts later, the game went to the home half scoreless.

It didn’t remain scoreless for long. Two batters in, George Valera — a rookie with just 17 major league games under his belt — took Detroit starter Casey Mize deep. It was the first of three Guardians home runs on the day, and while it gave them an early lead, it paled in importance to the two that came later.

One of the game’s biggest plays took place in the fourth inning. With the bases juiced courtesy of a Riley Greene double and a pair of free passes, Javier Báez laced a two-out single to give the Tigers a 2-1 lead… or so it seemed. Zach McKinstry was thrown out trying to go first to third, and the out was recorded just before Dillon Dingler crossed the plate with what would have been the second tally. Initially ruled safe, McKinstry was ultimately determined to be out per video review — this on DeLauter’s first career outfield assist. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK – One day before taking the mound at Yankee Stadium for the most important game of his life, Garrett Crochet sat in the visitor’s dugout with Alex Cora. A few members of the front office were out in the bullpen, and Cora told his ace that it’d be fun to give them a call.

“Tomorrow you are going to make one call to the bullpen,” Crochet said. “Maybe two,” the manager responded.

But the 26-year-old lefty was adamant. One pitching change, with Aroldis Chapman closing things out, was all it would take for the Red Sox to beat the Yankees in Game 1 of the best-of-three AL Wild Card Series.

So, naturally, that’s exactly what happened. Crochet dominated the best offense in baseball across 7 2/3 innings. He allowed one run, four hits, no walks, and struck out 11 before he was finally pulled after 117 pitches, the most he’d ever thrown in the majors. Cora called on Chapman, who secured a four-out save and a 3-1 Boston win. Read the rest of this entry »