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Josh Tomlin will be on the mound for the Indians tonight — and, with the World Series having moved to Wrigley Field, he’ll also be in the batter’s box. The right-hander isn’t complaining.

“I think getting to hit is cool,” opined Tomlin. “I enjoy being part of the game as a whole, as opposed to just being a part of it when I’m out there pitching. Being able to impact the game on both sides of the ball is more fun than sitting in the dugout, doing nothing. I take a lot of pride in trying to have good at-bats.”

Tomlin — using baseball parlance — isn’t “an automatic out.” He had two hits in five at-bats this year, and he’s 6-for-12 in his career. That’s not totally by accident. He was a shortstop at Angelina Community College, where one of his teammates was Clay Buchholz. The equally athletic Red Sox righty had designs on the position, but he couldn’t beat out Tomlin.

Whether or not Cleveland’s Game Three starter is able to help out his own cause tonight remains to be seen. Either way, he will step into the box with a good attitude.

“I always joke with [Michael] Brantley that I could hit .270 in the big leagues,” Tomlin told me. He tells me, “‘No, you couldn’t.’ I say, “I’m hitting .500.’”

Right-hander Josh Tomlin starts for Cleveland tonight in Game Three of the World Series. While he does a lot well, he also has a weakness — namely, that he gives up more homers than the average pitcher. It’s possible that, among the explanations you’ll hear regarding that weakness, most will relate either to how it’s because Tomlin lives in the zone or never gives in or something along those lines. He certainly doesn’t walk people, so there would seem to be some logic to that argument.

It’s also tempting to point to the relationship between his walk rate and his home-run rate because of the extremes he’s reached in both departments. Record-setting extremes, actually. This year, Tomlin gave up 16 more homers than he did walks. In over 5200 qualified starting-pitcher seasons since World War II, nobody has ever produced a greater discrepancy in that department. Only four times — Carlos Silva in 2005, Brian Anderson in 1998, Brad Radke in 2005, and then Tomlin this year — has that difference run into double digits.

Still. The walk rate is nice. And it’s probably not why he gives up homers.

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In 2014, the Cleveland Indians conducted a little experiment. Lonnie Chisenhall was still struggling as a third baseman, both offensively and defensively, and the club had had enough of Santana’s miscues behind the plate. In an attempt to maximize both the amount of offense in their lineup and Santana’s versatility, they began working him out at the hot corner in spring training, and an Opening Day, he was their third baseman. At first, things were OK — he’d field a bunt barehanded or make a diving play on a sharply hit grounder, but as soon as the Indians became comfortable enough putting Santana there everyday, things became a disaster. The experiment lasted just 26 games and 225.2 innings. Santana accrued -5 Defensive Runs Saved and a -6 UZR, good for a -39.5 UZR/150. He’s been a first baseman/designated hitter since.

Until tonight, apparently. Tonight, in a swing Game Three of the World Series, we’re apparently going to see the debut of Carlos Santana, Starting Left Fielder.

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It may be impossible to believe after the last two games — after all the front-door sinkers thrown by Corey Kluber that turned the Cubs’ bats into mush and after a similar experience last night facilitated by his apprentice Trevor Bauer — but the front-door sinker is not a hot new trend in baseball.

First, to review: the front-door sinker is thrown from a pitcher of one hand to a hitter of the opposite one. The intention? Essentially, to fake the batter into not swinging. It’s a sinker thrown at the hip that then moves into the strike zone. Here’s an example from August Fagerstrom’s piece on Kluber this week:

Seems like a rad pitch. In the era of the swinging strike, it’s a pitch that’s designed to elicit a take. It relies on command in an era when we wonder if pitchers even have any command. After all, as I noted in my for last year’s Hardball Times Annual, the average pitcher misses the catcher’s target by more than 11 inches on a 3-0 count.

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Kyle Schwarber was the show, or at least the story, in last night’s Game Two of the World Series. After five plate appearances in April without a hit — followed by a six-month layoff that prevented him from facing even one major-league pitcher in a game situation — Schwarber has been up to the plate nine times on the biggest stage baseball has to offer. In those nine plate appearances, Schwarber has reached base safely more often than he hasn’t, and has yet to be retired when hitting the ball in play. Last night, his hits proved timely, producing the second and fourth runs for the Chicago Cubs as they evened a series that now heads back to Chicago. How has Cleveland approached him, and how has he responded?

It’s often said at the beginning of spring training that the pitchers are ahead of the hitters; batters don’t yet have their timing back and can have difficulty recognizing pitches. The chart below depicts all 40 pitches Schwarber has seen this postseason, color-coded by the result of the pitch. From Baseball Savant:

Of the 20 or so pitches clearly outside of the box above, Schwarber has offered at just three of them. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the biggest strikeouts in last night’s World Series Game Two came in the seventh inning when Carlos Santana swung through a curveball from Mike Montgomery. The Indians had two on and two out, and trailed 5-1. One swing of the bat would have brought them to within a run.

The curveball has been Montgomery’s secret to success. The 27-year-old lefty began featuring it prominently after coming to the Cubs from the Mariners in late July. His sinker has also became a primary weapon. His pitching coach, Chris Bosio, deserves much of the credit.

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Potential rooting interests notwithstanding, last night’s World Series Game Two was pretty brutal, as far as World Series games go. It was a cold, wet, dreary night in Cleveland. One team’s win expectancy was greater than 90% by the fifth inning. It lasted more than four hours. The Indians made six pitching changes. The Cubs made more mound visits than pitches. Trevor Bauer started for Cleveland, and of his 87 pitches, just 53 were strikes. Jake Arrieta started for Chicago, and of his 98 pitches, just 55 were strikes.

Tough game to watch, all around. So, rather than dissect the game, let’s dissect Jake Arrieta’s postgame press conference. These things aren’t always very revealing, but in the spirit of the current political season, maybe some fact-checking can reveal some truths.

* * *

Q. You started off a little rocky and then you got it back. How did you turn it around?
JAKE ARRIETA: “Well, I think really controlling my effort is when I was able to get locked in. I kind of had my foot on the gas a little too much at the start, trying to do more than I needed to.”

The first pitch Arrieta threw was his hardest of the night! As easy as it can be to write off something like “I had to get locked in” as a ballplayer cliche, these are human beings who are prone to unintentional rushes of adrenaline, and this is, after all, the freaking World Series. Arrieta hit 95 on the first pitch of the night to Carlos Santana, and then never hit 95 again. He was all over the place in the first, throwing just 43% strikes, his lowest strike rate of any inning, and walking Francisco Lindor on four consecutive pitches with two outs. The adrenaline effect is real. It looks like it was real for Arrieta last night, and it may help explain part of his early-game troubles to command his pitches.

Q. You started off a little rocky and then you got it back. How did you turn it around?
JAKE ARRIETA (cont.): “Then I really got back to just executing good pitches towards the bottom of the strike zone. With the cutter going one way and the sinker going the other way, trying to be as aggressive as I could, and allow those guys to put the ball in play and let the defense work.”

In the first inning, 57% of Arrieta’s pitches were in the lower half of the zone or beyond. After that, it was 56%. The first-inning issue wasn’t necessarily leaving the ball up, but there’s a different between “pitches toward the bottom of the strike zone” and “good pitches toward the bottom of the strike zone.”

Lower-half pitches in the first:

After the first:

It’s tough to compare one inning to 4.2, but I think I’ll allow it. That really bad slider off the plate in the first didn’t come back. Those three middle-middle pitches didn’t come back. It seems like there’s a higher percentage of pitches catching the bottom edge of the zone.

Q. You started off a little rocky and then you got it back. How did you turn it around?
JAKE ARRIETA (cont.): “Then in the sixth, I think that maintaining a consistent feel and on a night like this with the weather the way it was can be tough. So I tried to keep the body warm and ready to go the best I could.”

Nope.

It was rainy, windy, and in the low-40s by a lake in Ohio. Wearing short sleeves is not how one tries to keep the body warm, you absolute madman.

Q. You mentioned the conditions, how did they affect your choices? And how would you compare tonight to that Game 2 you started in Citi Field last year?
JAKE ARRIETA: “Pretty similar, I would say. I think the temperature was probably close to what it was at Citi Field.”

Last night’s first-pitch temperature: 43 degrees, cloudy.

Last year’s first-pitch temperature: 45 degrees, partly cloudy.

Q. You mentioned the conditions, how did they affect your choices? And how would you compare tonight to that Game 2 you started in Citi Field last year?
JAKE ARRIETA (cont.): “I think keeping my hand as warm as I could in between innings to not lose feel in the fingertips, because for, not even just a starting pitcher, but for a pitcher, you want to have that consistent feel off your fingertips, especially on your breaking ball, to maintain consistency with how you execute those pitches.”

Arrieta may not have made the best life choice for keeping the body warm, but as far as keeping the hand warm, it seems like he did a fine job, because last night’s success had plenty to do with his breaking pitches. As our own Jeff Sullivan detailed back in late-August, a big part of Arrieta’s midseason skid had to do with his struggles against left-handed batters. This, coming on the heels of his excellent slider disappearing. Against lefties in 2015, Arrieta was able to paint the outer edge of the zone, back-dooring his breaking pitches in at the last second. During much of 2016, rather than starting his breaking pitches outside the zone and back-dooring them to the edge, he was too often starting them on the edge and moving them to the middle of the plate.

Last night, Arrieta threw 36 breaking balls to lefties out of 71 pitches — 51%, almost double his season rate. And here’s the location of those pitches to lefties:

Arrieta absolutely lived on the outer half of the plate, and you see all the purple in the bottom-left quadrant of the zone, indicating well executed back-door sliders, and enough light blue in the area, too, indicating those big, looping curves that catch the zone at the last second.

He was wild, but he managed to keep the walk total down, and he was wild out of the zone, rather than being wild with hittable mistake pitches. When Arrieta was able to find the zone, it was with pitches that stuck to the game plan, and with his movement, pitches that stick to the game plan are tough to square up.

And the press conference? Good. More insightful than most. Mostly truthful and supported by the evidence. I give it an 8/10. But, my God man, put on some sleeves.

It would’ve been the thrill of his life to play in his first-ever World Series game, but I don’t think Anthony Rizzo’s going to be telling many stories. Though just being there is an achievement in and of itself, Rizzo finished the game 0-for-4, and he popped up against Corey Kluber three consecutive times. Rizzo is a fly-ball hitter, but he’s not a pop-up hitter. Kluber made him uncomfortable. He made the lot of them uncomfortable. The Cubs were defeated, and I’m sure Rizzo doesn’t want to talk much about it.

But don’t confuse a lack of discussion for a lack of remembrance. Rizzo might not have been successful on Tuesday, but he did pick up on a tell. And he brought that information with him into Game 2, a somewhat sloppy affair the Cubs took 5-1. Rizzo, in the first inning, doubled home Kris Bryant while facing Trevor Bauer. By WPA, it was the most important play of the game, and even just in the moment, it got the Cubs on the World Series scoreboard. Rizzo’s two-strike double was a big one, and had it not been for the night before, it very well might not have happened.

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As I write this, Kyle Schwarber just worked a 3-0 count against Indians starter Trevor Bauer in Game 2 of the World Series, and then Schwarber ripped an RBI single into center field. Now there’s a mound visit. Things aren’t going well for Bauer in his first start since his drone-shortened outing against the Blue Jays in the ALCS.

And in that outing against the Blue Jays, however short, I noticed something about Bauer that I made a note to keep an eye on the next time he took the mound. I’ve watched Bauer pitch his entire career, and I’d never noticed it before.

I want to show you a couple pitches. This first one is a fastball, Bauer’s first pitch of the game:

And now a curveball, the very next pitch:

The difference stuck out to me like a sore thumb. To me, Bauer sure looks like he’s decelerating his motion significantly in the second pitch, and slowing his arm action. I started trying to identify the curve as Bauer was throwing it with each pitch, and I was doing so with success.

I took a screenshot when Bauer’s arm stopped going back and started moving forward, at the moment when his glove reached its highest point. Again, the fastball is on the top and the curve on the bottom:

The MLB logo makes it easy to compare, and it’s noticeably higher on the curve, in the second clip. This is something our own Jonah Pemstein sort of wrote about this earlier today, that Bauer’s release point on the curve is unusually high, relative to his other pitches. But this has less to do with release points and more to do with timing.

Take these clips from Bauer’s best start of the year, back in June against the Mariners.

First, a fastball

Now the curve:

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m see more conviction with the curveball, and less slowing of the arm action. The same screenshots:

They’re almost indistinguishable. The bottom of the glove more or less lines up with the chalk.

Back to tonight. I’m seeing it again. Again, I’ve been trying to identify the curves as Bauer winds up, and I’m getting it right almost every time. If I’m getting it right from the press box, I have a hard time imagining Cubs hitters aren’t.

Here’s a couple of curves to Kris Bryant, and while FOX, somehow, still has not yet captured a full Bauer windup on a curve, the slowed arm action is still apparent:

And the comparison shot:

Again, the lettering makes it easy to compare, and it’s clear Bauer is reaching higher. Part of that is likely just by design, the nature of throwing a curve, but we see that it wasn’t as extreme earlier in the season, and it’s hard not to notice the change in arm action.

Either way, the curve is just missing. Bauer had trouble throwing it for a strike against the Blue Jays, and here’s his current pitch chart as I write this post:

He can’t throw it for strikes, and when he is getting it inside the zone, he’s leaving it up. Also, there’s this:

Bauer’s curveball spin is way, way off after one inning: 2514 RPM is his season average, in the first it was 2005 RPM.

— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) October 26, 2016

So, yeah. Something is up with Trevor Bauer’s curve.