Oh boy, are we ever going to learn a lot tonight. We’re going to learn, for example, how Bruce Bochy elects to use Madison Bumgarner. We’re going to learn about Bumgarner’s effectiveness out of the bullpen on short rest! We’ll learn about Ned Yost using and stretching out his big three relievers, and we’ll see how far Bochy and Yost are willing to go with Tim Hudson and Jeremy Guthrie. We’re going to learn how many runs the Giants score, and we’re going to learn how many runs the Royals score, and we’re going to learn the winner of the World Series. There aren’t a lot of situations where you know, absolutely, that a finish line will be reached. There’s nothing after this. Whenever Game 7 ends, there will be no more baseball, at least not for a few months, at least not as a part of this postseason.

We’ll learn about the game, and therefore the series. We’re not going to learn much of anything else. We’re not going to learn, conclusively, whether the Royals are better than the Giants, or vice versa. So we’re not going to learn whether one of these teams is the best team in baseball. What we get is hype and a show, with the stakes never higher. We’re going to get the most important baseball game of the whole seven months, and no matter what happens on the field, this is the point of the playoffs.

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With Robb Nen hanging out at AT&T park, throwing out first pitches and reminding everyone what extreme dedication to the team looks like, it seemed like an obvious question to ask Game Seven starter Tim Hudson: Would you trade your arm for a ring? After all, any Giants fan remembers how Nen put everything he had left into the Giants’ 2002 run to the World Series — his career ended with surgery that winter.

Hudson didn’t hesitate one moment. “Absolutely. This point in my career, yeah. Who knows how many more innings I have left in this old arm. If I could trade what I have left for a title, damn right I would.”

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So! Tonight, there’s going to be a Game 7 of the World Series. Your cheering allegiances aside, that’s a rare and wonderful thing. Appreciate it, because now we’ll have the most possible baseball before the long stretch of no baseball, and this isn’t an occasion that comes around all that often. We had a Game 7 three years ago between Texas and St. Louis, but it had been nine years since it’d happened before that, the longest stretch in big league history. Sometimes, you get classics like Curt Schilling & Randy Johnson against Roger Clemens & Mariano Rivera in 2001; sometimes, you get John Tudor allowing eight runners in 2.1 innings on the way to losing 11-0 in 1985. What’s important is that we’re set up for history, and often the biggest impediment to that is simply the opportunity for it to happen. Not tonight.

Jeremy Guthrie against Tim Hudson doesn’t really sound all that exciting, and maybe it won’t be. It’s difficult to imagine either pitcher going more than five innings, and perhaps it won’t even be close to that. It won’t be the worst-ever matchup of Game 7 starters — 1997’s Jaret Wright against Al Leiter probably still tops that list — but it will be the oldest, thanks to a combined 74 years of age. Or at least it will be for a few innings, since both managers are likely going to dig into their bullpens early, since it doesn’t get more “all hands on deck” than this. On the other hand, maybe that makes it more exciting. This could be baseball unlike baseball.

Obviously, any Game 7 is fascinating, but this one might just be moreso, if only because of the way the postseason has gone so far. You’ve heard in more than a few places that this is “the best postseason ever,” and while that’s probably a bit hyperbolic because of the effects of recency, you certainly understand the sentiment. To merely name a few of the lasting impressions — the AL wild card game madness, the divergent Octobers of Madison Bumgarner & Clayton Kershaw, an 18-inning NLDS game, Lorenzo Cain and the Royals defense, literally every single thing Ned Yost has done — is to unfairly neglect so many others. For a postseason like that to end with a Game 7, well, it seems like a fitting capper. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a post that probably doesn’t need to exist, but then, what post about baseball analysis does need to exist? If everything’s pointless, nothing is pointless, so let’s get to the subject! The Royals are shortly going to host the Giants for Game 6 of the World Series, and Kansas City is hoping to play again tomorrow, probably. If you imagine the whole baseball season as a baseball game, then we’re at the very end with an uncertain conclusion, meaning the leverage is enormous. If the purpose of every event is to help win a championship, well, now a championship hangs directly in the balance.

The Giants are up 3-2, but however much baseball remains will be played in Kauffman Stadium. And if you’ve been poking around today, you’ve probably seen some mentions of how that puts the Royals in a pretty decent position, all things considered. Not only do the Royals get to play at home — they get to play super-important games at home, with a super-frenzied atmosphere, and recent history might be on their side. I could cite any number of examples, but I will just cite this one:

And it’s the Jake they’d love to ride to a Game 6 victory, because a Game 7 would give the Royals a distinct home-field edge. (Giants fans can blame All-Star Game MVP Mike Trout for that possibility.) The home team has won each of the last nine World Series Game 7s. The last road team to win a Game 7 was the 1979 Pirates.

The Giants’ best bet, then, is to wrap this up in six.

What’s implied is that home-field advantage might get more significant as the stakes get higher and higher. Think of it as kind of a clutch home-field advantage factor. So can the Royals at least look forward to an extraordinary lift? No. I mean, no, probably.

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When Game Six of the World Series kicks of tonight, Jake Peavy will be on the mound for the Giants. Perhaps the biggest question of the night, however, will be how long he stays out there. Because if you’ve read FanGraphs for any length of time, you’ve probably heard us harp on the times-through-the-order penalty. By the time a line-up rolls over a few times against a starting pitcher, there are almost always more effective relief options than letting that starting pitcher remain on the mound.

More than any other strategy suggestion, the go-to-your-bullpen-early theory is probably the biggest area where the numbers and the traditional way of managing differ. Teams generally ride their starting pitchers until they get in trouble, removing them for a reliever after a rally has started. The data suggests that managers would do better to remove starting pitchers before the rally ever starts, though this would require managers to replace pitchers who haven’t yet failed. And for the most part, they don’t yet seem willing to do that.

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If you’ve been consuming baseball analysis for any meaningful length of time, TTO comes as a particularly familiar acronym. It stands for Three True Outcomes — walks, strikeouts, and dingers — and for me, personally, it makes me think of Adam Dunn. And it makes me think of baseball writing eight or ten years ago, when at least I was starting to come into my own. But TTO can and does also stand for something else, something we’ve been talking and reading about a lot over the past several weeks — Times Through the Order. As in, the times-through-the-order penalty, that describes how starting pitchers become less effective over the course of a game. All those things you’ve read about how Starter X was left in too long by his manager? The criticisms are mostly founded upon the idea that pitchers get tired and over-exposed.

Those are tricky things to separate. It stands to reason pitchers get worse because they get more tired. It also stands to reason pitchers get worse because their opponents get more and more familiar with the pitches being thrown. You think about “looks”, and whatnot. We know there’s a TTO penalty during a game. And if any of it has to do with familiarity, then it seems like there ought also be a TTO penalty within a series.

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On Sunday, the Giants and the Royals played Game 5 of the World Series, and an unusual thing happened. We’ll get to that. On Saturday, the same teams played Game 4, and in the bottom of the fourth inning, Yusmeiro Petit batted for some reason against Jason Vargas. Petit swung at the first pitch, maybe trying to catch the Royals off guard, as if the Royals even had a plan for effectively pitching to Yusmeiro Petit, who is a reliever. The bat hit the baseball and the baseball found the outfield grass. Remarked Andy McCullough:

Baseball!

— Andy McCullough (@McCulloughStar) October 26, 2014

“Baseball!” is the exclamation of those who understand that they’ll never understand the game. It’s an acknowledgment and an appreciation of the random by the learned, and classic Baseball! moments serve to underscore that there’s always a chance of anything, and baseball has a lot of repetitions. Weird things don’t usually happen, but there are enough events that the next one might be right around the corner. I mentioned that something strange happened yesterday, too. Madison Bumgarner didn’t need the help, but in the bottom of the eighth, Juan Perez faced Wade Davis and drilled a ball off the very top of the center-field fence for an RBI double. Perez is a player well-known for nothing and best-known for running better outfield routes than Michael Morse and Travis Ishikawa. Responded one David Cameron:

That was the most @cantpredictball play in history, maybe. — David Cameron (@DCameronFG) October 27, 2014

Basically, Cameron was calling it a Baseball! moment. So, which was the better Baseball! moment?

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Coming into this spring, Yusmeiro Petit didn’t have a roster spot locked down with the Giants. David Huff was ready to be the long man, and he started the spring off better than Petit. Manager Bruce Bochy showed confidence in his righty and eventually the team made what looks to be the right decision. Though only a little has changed about Petit since his early days in terms of his fastball command and four-seam/curve/change arsenal, perhaps Bochy saw what the hitters weren’t seeing so well: Petit has an invisiball.

“He knows how to pitch. He’s really hitting his spots and hits both sides of the plate with all his pitches,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “He’s a guy we can count on.” — Alex Pavlovic

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The eleven-pitch plate appearance with two outs in the sixth inning Friday night ended with the deciding run for the Royals, and so it was a work of beauty for those supporting the team in blue. But in practice, it was a workmanlike effort and a mistake that finally ended the battle between Eric Hosmer and Javier Lopez.

The first pitch was a mistake from Lopez. High in the zone is something that he’s mostly gone away from since his career renaissance. Look at his heat maps from early in his career and his heat maps from the last three years, when he said that he needed to concentrate on “being able to work down in the zone.”

But Hosmer only swung at about a quarter of the first pitches he saw this year, just barely less than league average, and so Lopez stole a strike.

The second pitch was a nastier pitch, on the outside corner, low and away, from an arm slot that should give Hosmer fits. Hosmer, after the game said that he was just looking to “stay the other way and put the ball in play.” The first foul went straight down.

The third pitch was probably supposed to finish off Hosmer one-two-three. A 71 mile per hour breaking pitch that just caught the bottom of the zone… against a guy that has slowly seen more slow curve balls and had his worst year against them this year. But Hosmer managed another foul ball. Hosmer said he was just trying to “shorten up.” The second foul ball went down the first base line.

The fourth pitch was probably another mistake. A bit of a hanging slider in the middle of the zone, Hosmer still didn’t quite square it up, but it looked close. Another foul ball, this time straight back.

Pitch five was more than a foot outside, relatively easy to lay off of.

Pitch six found the outside corner, but Hosmer was ready for it and again fouled off the pitch, this time down the third-base line. At this point, he felt that he had “fought off some good pitches” and that “the more balls you see off a guy, it really does lock you in there.” Normally it’s because you walk, but outcomes (and slugging percentage) do usually get better as the at-bat lengthens.

Pitch seven was a fastball in the dirt. Hosmer laid off. Despite having one of his worst years with respect to reaching, he was able to identify that pitch as in the dirt early enough to avoid swinging.

Pitch eight was a slider low. This time, Hosmer swung and was lucky to foul the ball off. Early on the pitch, though, he fouled towards his own dugout on the first base side.

Lopez walked off the mound and sighed often. Pitch nine was a slider, six inches off the outside corner. But Lopez hadn’t once ventured to the inner half of the plate, and so now Hosmer could hang off the outside corner. You could see from the earlier foul that he was ready to go the other way. He reached for the ball and fouled it off. Straight down.

Pitch ten was a fastball, in about the same location as pitch nine. Hosmer didn’t swing.

Pitch eleven was probably a mistake. A fastball, a couple inches off the bottom of the zone, and an inch in from the corner, with Hosmer looking in that direction, and “just trying to put the ball in play,” that was probably meant to be a little further outside. But by early results on command f/x, it seems that pitchers probably miss their spots by 13.8 inches on average.

And so, Hosmer, who was hoping to put his hands “in the load position as early as possible” and go the other way, put this swing on the ball.

Looks a little different from the swing he used to homer in the ALDS.

Javier Lopez made some mistakes. Throw eleven pitches to one batter, and you’re likely to make a mistake or two or three. But Eric Hosmer tailored his approach and his swing to best take advantage of that mistake, and deserves all the credit for his (game-winning?) run-producing single in Game Three of the World Series Friday night.

The World Series is headed to San Francisco, which means Bruce Bochy has a decision to make. The games in Kansas City allowed him to start Michael Morse at DH, getting another power hitter into the line-up without forcing Morse to run around the outfield, but under NL rules, Morse will either have to play left field or come off the bench as a pinch-hitter. Morse is a terrible defender when healthy, and it’s not clear that he’s recovered enough from his oblique strain to live up to even his own low standards with the glove, but then again, the competition is converted first baseman Travis Ishikawa, who isn’t exactly a defensive standout himself.

If you’re going to have a defensively challenged left fielder, might as well pick the one with the better bat, right? Well, I’m not sure that those should really be the two choices being debated here. I’d like to suggest that maybe the best option isn’t either Ishikawa or Morse; instead, maybe the Giants best chance to win would come from starting Juan Perez.

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