Triston McKenzie was 19 years old and pitching for High-A Lynchburg when he was first featured here at FanGraphs in May 2017. Five years later, he’s one of the top starters on a talented Cleveland Guardians staff. In 31 appearances this season, the lanky right-hander logged a 2.96 ERA and a 3.59 FIP with 190 strikeouts in 181.1 innings. Last week, he tossed six scoreless frames and allowed just two hits in Cleveland’s Wild Card Series-clinching win over the Tampa Bay Rays.

McKenzie, the scheduled starter for ALDS Game 3 versus the New York Yankees on Saturday, discussed his evolution as a pitcher and the mindset he takes with him to the mound during the Guardians’ final home stand of the regular season.

———

David Laurila: We first talked five years ago. What have you learned about pitching since that time?

Triston McKenzie: “The biggest difference is that I’m in the big leagues. Mindset-wise, how I attack hitters hasn’t changed much outside of adapting to this level and understanding that guys are more disciplined in what they do in their approach. I’ve figured out that you can’t always be the the young gun, the kid who is going to throw his best stuff over the heart of the plate. These guys can hit that. So I’d say it’s a mix of finding my identity as a pitcher, figuring out what my strengths are and where I can beat guys, but not getting so headstrong that it’s to my detriment.”

Laurila: How much better do you understand how, and why, your stuff works? You’re obviously working with smart coaches and seeing a lot of data. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — When Gerrit Cole signed his nine-year, $324 million deal with the Yankees in December 2019, he no doubt envisioned starting big playoff games in the Bronx in front of a packed house full of screaming fans. But while he’d taken the hill four times for the Yankees in the previous two Octobers, until Tuesday night’s Division Series opener against the Guardians, he’d never gotten to do so while wearing the home pinstripes. In his long-awaited postseason debut at Yankee Stadium, Cole shook off a recent rough stretch, dodged trouble early, found a groove, and turned in an impressive performance, allowing one run over 6.1 innings in a 4-1 victory.

Facing a contact-centric Cleveland team that posted the majors’ lowest swinging strike rate (9.1%) and strikeout rate (18.2%), Cole collected 19 swings and misses from among his 101 pitches (18.8%) and punched out eight hitters (29.6%). He allowed just four hits, including a solo homer by Steven Kwan, walked one and hit one batter. If it wasn’t an overpowering performance, it was nonetheless a rewarding one.

“It was very special for me,” said Cole of leaving the mound to an ovation from the 47,807 fans in the seventh inning, by which point the Yankees had come from behind to secure the lead. “The game’s not over, I left with traffic [on the bases], so it’s not the most comfortable time to acknowledge the crowd, but I certainly felt it and appreciated it… What a wonderful experience to have them behind us.” Read the rest of this entry »

Decision-making in the playoffs is a micro-focused as you can imagine. The level of preparation which goes into these games will never be fully known in the public sphere, but if a team wants even the slightest competitive edge, you better believe the details are as granular as the fine sands of Puerto Rico’s Playa Negrita.

Every opposing hitter has a zone and/or pitch that is a weak spot. You must know who on your pitching staff is best suited to throw to those weaknesses, and what hitters are most adaptable to use pitch sequences that will play to those same weaknesses. The following matchups are a few areas that could sway any given game in either direction. They are certainly not the only of high importance, but the statistical or situational holes make them worth mentioning. I’ll go through series by series and pick one that deserves attention, starting with the Yankees against the Guardians.

Guardians’ offense vs. Yankees’ sinkerballers

The Yankees’ bullpen is loaded with turbo sinkers and groundball pitchers. Lou Trivino, Jonathan Loáisiga, and Clay Holmes, to name a few, all feature a sinker as their primary fastball. Each of them will be used in high-leverage scenarios against any layer of the Guardians’ lineup, which has been the very worst in the American League against the sinker, posting the second-lowest wOBA (.317) and the lowest xwOBA (.319).

There’s plenty to suggest the Yankees’ bullpen will give the Guardians issues. Because of those turbo sinkers, New York’s bullpen led all of baseball in GB% (49.1%) and Run Value (-20.3 runs). The next best in both categories was Baltimore, which trailed in each by a decent margin (1.5 percentage points and 1.9 runs). In today’s game, being better than every team at throwing sinkers provides a significant competitive advantage, as it keeps batted balls out of the air and on the ground. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you watch the Guardians and the Rays in their Wild Card Series? It was extremely fun, especially if you hate runs. Everyone got out so much! Both teams had a better WHIP than Justin Verlander. The Guardians batted .171. The Rays batted .115. Together they batted .143. That’s Robbie Ray’s career batting average. Robbie Ray is famously not a hitter.

While Cleveland and Tampa Bay pushed the boundaries of modern science searching for new and innovative ways to not get on base, I noticed that one player seemed to take his failures a bit harder than the rest. See if you can spot it as well. Turn your sound all the way up, especially if you’re at the office. If you’re at an elementary school or a place of worship, see if there’s a public address system you can plug into:

Read the rest of this entry »

The National League’s adoption of the designated hitter this season eliminated the most noticeable difference between it and the American League. Now, the National League is what makes grown men in scarves weep on public transit, and the American League comes with a slice of melted cheese on top. (No, I have not updated my pop culture references since 2009, and I have no plans to do so.)

The only remaining difference is that the AL gets an extra off day during the Division Series. MLB announced in August that contrary to prior practice, the Division Series would no longer have a travel day between Games 4 and 5. But while the NL would play two games, get a day off, and then play three in a row, the American League gets an extra day off without travel between Games 1 and 2.

When the league announced this new scheme, an obvious question occurred to my colleague Dan Szymborski: How would this affect pitcher usage? Previously, a Division Series contestant could run four pitchers on full rest, and have both its Game 1 and Game 2 starter on full rest for the decisive match, if necessary. Or it could bring back its Game 1 starter on short rest for Game 4, and have everyone else start in order on regular rest. Moving or eliminating the off day throws that practice into chaos. Read the rest of this entry »

Will the real 2022 Yankees please stand up? Projected to win 91 games, they spent the first half of the season looking a whole lot stronger than that, winning 61 of their first 84 (a .726 winning percentage and a 118-win pace) and building a 15.5-game lead in the American League East. Injuries and a disappearing offense — besides Aaron Judge — led to an epic slump as the team went 18-31 (.367) from July 9 to September 3 while that lead dwindled to four games. They righted the ship by going 20-9 the rest of the way, finishing 99-63 with their first division title since 2019 (and just their second of the past decade). While Judge set a franchise and American League record with 62 homers and several injured players returned, major questions linger as they attempt to win their first World Series since 2009.

Meanwhile, before issuing a two-game sweep to the Rays in a Wild Card Series capped by Oscar Gonzalez’s 15th-inning walk-off home run, the Guardians — the majors’ youngest team, with a weighted average of 26 years — surged down the stretch as well, going a major league-best 23-6 from September 5 onward. At 92-70, they ran away with the AL Central and were the division’s only team to finish above .500. Of course, as I’ve noted before, there’s very little correlation between a team’s September performance and their October success:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Tampa Bay Rays’ season came to an end yesterday, and as a result, so did Stan Boroski’s coaching career. An underrated part of the A.L. East club’s success for over a decade, Boroski joined the staff prior to the 2010 season — he’d previously tutored pitchers in the Houston Astros organization — and became the bullpen coach in November 2011. He announced last month that he’d be retiring at the end of the season.

I recently asked members of Tampa Bay relief corps about their highly-regarded coach. What’s made him so good at his job?

“I really think it’s his presence,” said Pete Fairbanks, a mainstay in the Rays bullpen for the past three-plus seasons. “It lends itself to the environment that we’re in down there. It’s a very loose and unfocused group, and Stan does a great job of managing that. There is also his ability to put across our message of attacking the strike zone, and just how valuable that is. That’s something he has preached all of the time I’ve been here, It’s like beating a dead horse, but it’s a horse that needs to continue to be hit, over and over again. It’s that important.”

The message has resonated well. Rays relievers walked just 2.79 batters per nine innings this year — only the Dodgers were better — and their 2.96 walk rate since 2018 is the lowest in either league. In order to reach base against Boroski’s bullpen, you’ve typically needed to hit your way on. Read the rest of this entry »

A day after playing the fastest postseason game since 1999, the Rays and Guardians combined for a game more than twice as long, lasting 15 innings and four hours and 57 minutes. Dominant pitching was the name of the game as both teams were held scoreless until the 15th inning — the longest scoreless postseason game in major league history. The decisive blow came when Oscar Gonzalez blasted a Corey Kluber cutter deep into left-center field for the walk-off win.

Between the two teams, 16 different pitchers combined for 39 strikeouts, eight walks, and 11 hits. They threw 432 pitches, 68% of which were strikes. Just 15 of the 58 balls in play were hard hit. No matter how you slice it, it was simply a masterclass in modern pitching by both teams:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Wild Card Series opener between the Rays and Guardians was quick-moving from the beginning. Rays ace Shane McClanahan worked around a few weakly hit singles in the early innings. Cleveland starter Shane Bieber’s only baserunner in the first four frames — Ji-Man Choi, who walked — was quickly erased by a Manuel Margot double play. The first five full innings were completed in just an hour and nine minutes despite playoff-length commercial breaks, largely due to the lack of offense and Bieber’s ridiculously quick pace on the mound. The matchup of two premier starters — the AL’s fifth- and seventh-best qualified pitchers by ERA — seemed to be everything fans were hoping for.

Bieber’s start was masterful, matching his MO from the regular season: steal strikes with four-seam fastballs, then get hitters to chase his cutter and slider off the plate. The Rays’ righty-heavy lineup couldn’t figure it out for the entire game, coming up empty on 17 of their 27 swings against those two pitches. Unsurprisingly, every single one of those swinging strikes was located down and to his glove side. Bieber’s impeccable placement of pitches on the outer half was especially noteworthy against the chase-happy Christian Bethancourt and Randy Arozarena, who went a combined 0–6 with five strikeouts, four of which came on breaking balls off the plate. Bieber’s 7.2 innings of one-run ball made for the longest playoff start by a Cleveland pitcher in 15 years and will likely be among the longest starts of any pitcher this postseason. That’s a continuation of the impressive volume he put up in the regular season; he was one of just three AL pitchers to cross the 200-inning threshold. Read the rest of this entry »

Austin Hedges is Cleveland’s primary catcher because of his defensive value. That’s no secret: The 32-year-old backstop has long been a well below-average hitter — his career wRC+ is a woeful 54 — but when it comes to working with a pitching staff, few do it better. Under his and backup Luke Maile’s guidance, the Guardians rank third in the American League in pitcher WAR and fourth in ERA. It’s fair to say that pitching is the postseason-bound club’s greatest strength.

Hedges fielded questions about his time behind the plate in Cleveland prior to a recent game.

———

David Laurila: Who has been the easiest guy on the team to catch, the pitcher for whom you’re kind of just sitting back there on a rocking chair?

Austin Hedges: “Our whole team does a really nice job of staying consistent with all of their pitches, which has made my job really easy. One of the guys in the bullpen that is surprisingly easy to work with — a pitcher with really good stuff — is Enyel De Los Santos. He doesn’t get the credit that a lot of the big dogs in our bullpen do, but he’s been a workhorse for us. He’s gotten big outs in leverage situations. He’s so consistent with all of his pitches that I always know what I’m going to get.” Read the rest of this entry »