In the bottom of the fourth inning of last night’s Game 1, there was a moderately humorous moment when Salvador Perez “struck out” on an 0-2 pitch in the dirt. Buster Posey retrieved the loose ball and tagged Perez for the “out,” all while Perez looked on in amazement, insisting he’d fouled the pitch off.

As it turned out, he had, and after a brief discussion the call was overturned, but you can certainly understand why home plate ump Jerry Meals figured no actual major leaguer would have offered at a pitch that had bounced so far in front of the plate:

Perez would end up striking out anyway, and while this entire post isn’t going to be just about Game 1, I can’t help but show you what are easily some of my favorite Gameday maps of the postseason. At left is Perez’ first plate appearance of the night, a second inning double play that erased a Billy Butler single. At right is the fourth inning appearance we just talked about:

Madison Bumgarner threw eight pitches to Perez in two plate appearances, and not a single one was really close to being a strike. He still managed to get three outs from it. Bumgarner, obviously, was outstanding. He also got at least a little help from Kansas City’s free-swinging catcher.

Perez has always been a free swinger, of course. At The Hardball Times just last week, Perez was ranked among the 10 worst hitters in the game at making “correct” swing choices. If he’d had enough plate appearances to qualify in 2012 (a knee injury cost him most of the first half), he’d have been tied with teammate Mike Moustakas for 18th-highest O-Swing%. In 2013, he was tied for Ichiro Suzuki for 20th. That’s just who he is. He’s never had a walk rate of even five percent, and even in the minors, he’d walked more than 18 times in a season just once. He’s not as talented a hitter as Pablo Sandoval, but the profile is similar. It’s who he is.

This year, the O-Swing% jumped to second, but at least it had remained somewhat steady through the first three months of 2014. But then…

In the second half of this season, his O-Swing% was 52.6, easily the highest rate in the big leagues. More than half of the pitches that head to the plate that wouldn’t be within the PITCHf/x strike zone, Perez offered at, and that’s a tough way to succeed. And he didn’t — in the second half, Perez hit just .229/.236/.360, good for a 61 wRC+, which was not only one of the worst marks in the bigs, it was basically identical to the last few months of the Derek Jeter retirement tour.

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The Giants beat the Royals 7-1 last night, and in any game that lopsided, it’s going to nearly impossible to say that any one play was the cause of the outcome. The Giants just did too many things well, and the Royals too many things poorly, to pin the loss on a single play. But if we were going to isolate one mistake by Kansas City that might have had more of a difference on the outcome than any other, it may very well have been Alcides Escobar’s trip to the plate in the third inning.

Already down 3-0, the Royals entered the bottom of the third with just a 21% chance of winning, by Win Probability, and likely a bit less than that in real life, given that Madison Bumgarner is better than the average starting pitcher. But thanks to a Brandon Crawford error and a Mike Moustakas double, KC got their first two batters into scoring position, bringing up the top of the batting order with three shots to get on the board. Those two players reaching base moved the Royals win expectancy all the way up to 36.5%, so the change in WPA (.155) from the start of the inning was nearly as large as the change in WPA (-.169) on Hunter Pence’s first inning home run.

With runners at second and third with nobody out, the Royals run expectancy for that third inning was 1.91 runs. Both runners should have been expecting to score, and even great pitching by Bumgarner would probably result in at least one run. The hallmark of the Royals offense is making contact, and that’s all they really needed to do in that situation. Hit the ball up the middle or to the outfield and you get a run, most likely. Do it twice and you might get two, even without needing another base hit.

Alcides Escobar stepped to the plate. Escobar’s not a great hitter by any stretch of the imagination — he probably shouldn’t be hitting leadoff in the World Series, but the Royals offense is bad, so there aren’t many better alternatives — but he more than held his own against lefties this year, posting a .319/.342/.442 line against them that was good for a 119 wRC+. His career splits aren’t as dramatic (83 wRC+ vs LHPs, 73 vs RHPs), but Escobar isn’t totally helpless against southpaws, and his primary offensive skill is the one the Royals needed the most; make contact.

Of course, Bumgarner would be trying to counter Escobar’s contact skills, because a strikeout (or an infield fly) was the best possible result he could get in that situation. And with a runner on third base, there’s a bit of an incentive to avoid breaking balls in the dirt, lest one get away from Buster Posey and allow the run to score without the Giants even needing to swing. As Jeff noted last week, Bumgarner has lately been leaning very heavily on his fastball, and his pitch location charts note that he strongly favors throwing high fastballs, because high fastballs get a lot of swinging strikes.

Alcides Escobar, though, is very good at making contact at pitches at the top of the strike zone. Here’s his Contact% vs LHP heatmap from 2014.

Up-and-in, Escobar almost never swings and misses. Up-and-away, it happens, but still not a lot, unless you get it to the very outer edge of the zone. For reference, here’s Bumgarner’s Contact% vs RHB heatmap for 2014.

Very high contact rates up-and-in, much lower up-and-away. Bumgarner certainly knows these trends, and the approach was pretty obvious; go up-and-away with high fastballs.

First pitch

94 mph fastball in the up-and-in corner, but still in the zone. Almost a perfect pitch, really, and Escobar was only able to foul it off. Tip your hat to Bumgarner; he didn’t hit the spot where Posey was setting up, but he missed into a very tough location to hit. If you’re going to miss your spots, miss them like this.

Second pitch

88 mph cutter at the very top of the strike zone. This pitch is probably not called a strike, and Escobar probably shouldn’t have swung at it, but it was in that very tempting slice of the zone that hitters have a tough time laying off. This was just another tough location for Escobar, especially since it had some appearance of a hanging breaking ball, but never really dropped enough for him square up.

Third pitch

94 mph fastball about as high as a pitch can be thrown and not end up at the backstop. PITCHF/x recorded the height of this pitch at 4.5 feet off the ground, or about a foot higher than the the top of the strike zone. Let’s put this in some context.

This year, Escobar was thrown 51 pitches with a recorded height of at least 4.0 feet, by PITCHF/x via Baseball Savant. Two of those hit him, three of them were pitchouts, and two more were thrown when a pitcher was issuing an intentional walk, so we can throw those seven out as non-swing-chances. That leaves 44 pitches where Escobar had to decide whether to swing or not. 37 of those times, he chose not to, and on all 37 of those takes, the pitch was called a ball.

Seven times, he swung at a pitch of that was at least 4.0 feet off the ground. Here’s how those swings went for him:

April 15th: Whiff (4.17 feet)
April 16th: Foul (4.06 feet)
April 17th: Foul (4.00 feet)
April 26th: Foul (4.56 feet)
May 2nd: Foul (4.12 feet)
July 5th: Whiff (4.15 feet)
July 18th: Foul (4.28 feet)

Seven swings, seven bad outcomes. I don’t know what his deal was in mid-April, but after some reckless swings in the first part of the season, Escobar hadn’t gone after one up here since right after the All-Star break. There was improvement at this particular weakness, at least, even if he didn’t get better overall in the second half.

But he picked a pretty lousy time to pull that old trick out of his hat. Yeah, he managed to make contact and foul it off, but a take there pushes the count to 1-2, and at least begins to move things a little bit in his direction. For his career, Escobar has a .400 OPS after 0-2 counts, but a .503 OPS after 1-2 counts. Not swinging at that pitch doesn’t make it likely he’d get a hit, but it makes it a little tougher for Bumgarner to go out of the zone again, and increases the likelihood that he could at least avoid the strikeout. But he swung, and it remained 0-2. Credit to Bumgarner for testing the limits of Escobar’s aggressiveness, but this was just an awful swing decision by the Royals leadoff hitter.

Fourth pitch

93 mph fastball, just slightly lower than the previous pitch.

If he swung at the last one, might as well try again until he proves he won’t swing, right? This one wasn’t quite as high — only 4.3 feet off the ground this time — but was just as definitely not a strike, and just as definitely not a pitch Escobar should have swung at. He hadn’t swung at a pitch this high in three months, and then he did it on back-to-back pitches in an 0-2 count when a strikeout was the absolute worst outcome he could muster.

Here’s the plot of pitches in the entire at-bat.

Yuck.

We can’t lay all the blame on Escobar here, because Nori Aoki also struck out, and then after a walk to Lorenzo Cain, Eric Hosmer bounced weakly to second base. Escobar wasn’t the only one who failed that inning, and even if he had driven in two runs, there’s still a strong chance they lose anyway. Plenty of things went wrong for the Royals besides Alcides Escobar’s atrocious third inning strikeout.

But that was one really awful at-bat. This postseason has had plenty of bad process/good result plays, but Escobar’s approach in that match-up was so bad that the possibility of a good outcome was almost non-existent. Bumgarner deserves a ton of credit for pitching out of that inning, but the Royals certainly didn’t have to help him as much as they did.

When Nori Aoki came to the plate with runners on second and third with one out in the third inning against Madison Bumgarner, fans on Twitter called out for the slap-hitting outfielder to bunt. Instead he struck out and the rally fizzled. With the game over and the Royals offense stymied but for one Salvy Perez home run, the question remains: should Aoki have laid one down, a safety squeeze or something similar from the Royals vast small ball playbook?

Aoki has 70 “official” bunt attempts over his three-year career, reaching safely more than 30% of the time. Just 20% of those attempts came against left-handed pitchers, as Bumgarner is. Among those attempts, six could be classified as squeezes and four successfully plated runners, according to the Baseball Reference Play Index.

It’s a low-percentage play, all things considered. But Nori Aoki versus Madison Bumgarner is a low percentage play in relative terms. Playing for one run so early in the game is a bit much, even for the Royals, especially in a situation offering a run expectancy of 1.2 runs. It’s a high floor/low ceiling play when jumping on a struggling Bumgarner was probably the right choice.

No Royals scored, so looking back with hindsight makes the decision look bad automatically. Kansas City blazed their trail to the World Series by making questionable decisions and “putting pressure on the defense.” With a strong bunter and an ace still looking for his groove on the mound, the decision is never an easy one. Consider some of the possible outcomes should Aoki have squared to bunt in the fateful third inning.

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Earlier today, in my chat, I noticed in the queue a bizarre question about the Royals and playing video games. It got my attention and I ran a quick Google search, but I couldn’t find anything so I moved on without issuing an answer. Then, when I was all finished, I happened upon this article from Andy McCullough, and he explained what the commenter had been referring to. A quick excerpt:

When Kuntz walked inside the room, he saw a scene that had become all too familiar in recent weeks: a collection of Royals with their heads down, eyes locked on their iPads. The game was called “Clash of Clans,” and for a period of time this summer, its excessive usage by members of this club exasperated the coaching staff.

After some talks and some meetings, the Royals found themselves re-focused. They sought fewer diversions and more productive off-field activity, and as you understand, the Royals’ season turned around near the middle. Using the convenient All-Star break split, the first-half Royals were 48-46, and the second-half Royals were 41-27. The first-half Royals were 12th in baseball in WAR, and the second-half Royals were fourth. This says nothing about the eight straight playoff wins; this just touches on how the Royals reached the tournament in the first place. There’s something that seems like it clicked.

And this is one of the reasons I’m not so concerned about a wild-card team like the Royals potentially winning the World Series. So you only want good teams to be eligible for the championship. The Royals, early on, weren’t so good. But they’ve been real good for months. Arguably — very arguably — they’ve been the best team in the American League for months. Doesn’t that make them deserving potential champs? It’s been a remarkable year for Kansas City, given the midseason turnaround, and I thought it could be useful to see what drove the change in fortunes.

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We — and I suppose by “we,” I do mean “the people I enjoy on Twitter” — have gotten a lot of joke mileage this postseason thanks just to a few never-ending items that have been pounded into the ground by baseball media and observers. I’m talking about things like Ernie Johnson’s complete lack of emotion, the eternal Viagra ad, TBS insisting on trying to make “shutdown innings” a thing, and so on.

Included among that has been that every single time James Shields‘ name is mentioned, he’s referred to as “Big Game James,” as though it’s his legal name. Shields is a very good pitcher, but he’s picked up a certain reputation for doing well in big spots entirely because of a rhyming sound his name makes. If only he’d gone with “Jim Shields,” right?

The gag there is obvious. “Big Game James” hasn’t actually come up that big at all in the postseason. For his career, he’s got a 5.19 ERA in nine starts. Five times, he’s allowed four runs or fewer, which is great, but four of those times came way back during Tampa Bay’s 2008 run to the World Series, which is not. Between 2008 and 2014, his postseason experience consisted of being hit hard by Texas twice, allowing a combined 11 earned runs across an ALDS start in 2010 and another in 2011.

This year, he’s made three starts, and while the Royals have of course won all three, it hasn’t necessarily been thanks to him. In the wild card game, he allowed four runs and nine baserunners in five innings, including leaving a meatball of a changeup for Brandon Moss to drive out of the park. (Though Ned Yost was later crushed for his decisions in that game, the mistake was bringing in Yordano Ventura, not deciding that Shields was done.) Against the Angels in the ALDS, he was better, allowing two earned runs in six innings, though he again allowed nine baserunners, along with solo homers to Mike Trout & Albert Pujols. And in Game 1 of the ALCS against Baltimore, he allowed 11 baserunners and four runs, helping to turn what had been a 4-0 lead into a game the Royals had to win on 10th inning Alex Gordon & Mike Moustakas homers.

The Royals have been winning in ways we might not have expected, but “having your best starter underperform” isn’t exactly a welcome part of that menu. So, as Shields prepares to throw the first pitch of the World Series against Gregor Blanco and the Giants tonight, is there anything we can draw from his postseason struggles? Anything the Giants might want to keep in mind? Read the rest of this entry »

Hello there, Royals pitchers! Congratulations on reaching this point — you’ve done many proud. No matter what happens, your 2014 season has been a screaming success. The Royals are back on the baseball map nationally and, more importantly, locally. But of course you’re not done yet, as there’s one remaining step in the staircase: Looming in front of you are the San Francisco Giants. You’ll face many different Giants hitters; among them will be Pablo Sandoval. In case you’ve never seen him before, you’re in for an experience. I’d like to show you something. Actually, I’d like to show you two somethings. Here’s one of them:

• Pablo Sandoval: 45% out-of-zone swing rate
• Matt Carpenter: 46.8% in-zone swing rate

You’re going to face Sandoval; it could’ve been you would’ve faced Carpenter. Sandoval swings at about as many balls as Carpenter does strikes. For the sake of some perspective:

• Pablo Sandoval: 45% out-of-zone swing rate
• Salvador Perez: 44.1% out-of-zone swing rate

So that’s how aggressive this Sandoval character is. Now, you might be wondering, “Does that mean he’s as easy to get out sometimes as Salvy?” No, this Sandoval guy is a unique sort of challenge. To prepare you for the challenge to come, I’m going to provide you with some strategy tips. How should you pitch to Pablo Sandoval, if you want to get him out? Pay careful attention to my advice.

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This October, there’s been a lot of talk about the Royals’ offense, which is a very unexpected sentence. By now everyone should be pretty familiar with the Royals’ approach: they try to hit the ball and make things happen, as opposed to sitting back and waiting for dingers. At a few points, you might’ve read remarks along these lines from Royals officials: if the team played in a different ballpark, they’d hit a lot more homers. This year the Royals were actually last in the American League in road home runs, so it’s not like dimensions have conspired to suffocate a juggernaut, but the bigger message is that the Royals have a big stadium. And Kauffman Stadium, indeed, is statistically tough on the longball.

Let’s play an assumption game for some reason. Say you’re given only one piece of information about a stadium, and from there you have to guess how the stadium plays overall. By our numbers, Kauffman Stadium has baseball’s seventh-lowest home-run factor. That means it’s probably pitcher-friendly, right? AT&T Park is pitcher-friendly. PNC Park is pitcher-friendly. Safeco, historically, has been pitcher-friendly. But this is the interesting twist, at least as far as park factors go: Kansas City’s ballpark is overall hitter-friendly. It’s just not so in the ordinary way.

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Only three teams threw the ball faster, on average, than the Royals this year. Not surprising when you’ve got youth like Yordano Ventura, Greg Holland and Kelvin Herrera throwing fire on the regular.

Only one team threw the ball slower, on average, than the Giants this year. Not surprising when you have distinguished gentlemen like Tim Hudson, Ryan Vogelsong, and Jake Peavy stepping on the rubber three out of every five games.

This difference in velocities has ramifications for pitch mix, of course. The Royals threw fastballs more often than the Giants. The Giants threw breaking pitches more often than the Royals. In fact, the Giants threw more breaking pitches than anyone in baseball.

Is one team better equipped to handle the strength of the opposing team?

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I had slightly higher hopes for this post. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased with the final result. But when I first cooked this idea up, my plan was to utilize the Baseball Prospectus PITCHf/x leaderboards to pull velocity, horizontal movement, vertical movement, whiff rate and groundball rate to determine the nastiest pitches we’ll see in the World Series. But, there were a few problems.

While more velocity generally makes a pitch nastier, that’s not always true, especially in the case of offspeed pitches. More movement definitely makes a pitch nastier, but movement is hard to compare across a PITCHf/x leaderboard because a lot of it is dependent on arm slot and you get some funky values from guys who throw with funky motions.

So then, I was left with just whiff rate and groundball rate, but I actually kind of like that. Those are two of the best outcomes, and they’re the direct result of some of the things we weren’t able to capture, such as velocity, horizontal movement and vertical movement. The most dominant outcome of a pitch, for a pitcher, is a swing and miss. But not all guys dominate by getting whiffs, and so they don’t all pitch that way. Some guys dominate by getting weak contact, and ground balls yield the weakest contact of the three main batted ball types (grounders, flies and line drives). But the guys who really dominate are the ones who get the best of both worlds: whiffs and grounders.
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So we’re all set, then, for a weekend without any baseball. The Royals did away with the Orioles in the minimum number of games, and the Giants almost did that same thing to the Cardinals. So out of a possible 14 LCS contests, we got nine of them, and now we’re set up for a showdown that isn’t exactly improbable, but that wasn’t predicted by (m)any. The Royals are in the World Series, after winning 89 games and after having once been 48-50. The Giants are in the World Series, after winning 88 games and after having once been 63-57. It’s going to be a World Series between two wild-card teams, and that’s absolutely terrific.

Major League Baseball is getting what it wanted from this postseason. And I don’t just mean in terms of the drama, although I think we’ve all been aware of that. The series haven’t been long, but the games have just about all been close. As one example, during the regular season, 19 percent of all plate appearances occurred with a score deficit of at least four runs. In the playoffs, that’s dropped all the way to 9 percent, and there were only three such plate appearances in the whole ALCS. It’s absurd how suspenseful and electrifying this has all been, but then that’s something more particular to this postseason. The wild-card thing is a bigger-picture issue.

It’s … I don’t know, what’s a good word? Controversial? The argument against being, wild-card berths dilute the level of talent in the playoffs. So perhaps the wild-card teams are undeserving, and then what does that tell you if you get a pair of them in the championship? What does a World Series title tell you about a team, if it’s a series between two teams who failed to win their divisions?

It tells you that a team beat another team in a baseball tournament. It tells you nothing more, and it’s not designed to tell you anything more. Tournaments thrive on drama and unpredictability. What baseball’s got set up is a hell of a tournament, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a couple of wild-card teams surviving to the end. In another sport, we’d call them Cinderellas.

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