Max Scherzer hadn’t pitched in 36 days, but when a future Hall of Famer says he can go, it’s hard to say no. That’s the spot that the Rangers found themselves in, and up two games to none in the ALCS, they could afford a clunker if they had to. Unfortunately, that’s what they got. Scherzer surrendered five runs over four innings; Cristian Javier no-hit Texas into the fifth. Though Houston’s hurler didn’t remain unblemished, the Rangers couldn’t overcome their early deficit, and the Astros narrowed Texas’ series lead with an 8–5 win.

The first inning went innocently enough, though Scherzer allowed a pair of well-struck fly balls that hinted at the trouble to come. Ahead 0–2 on Yordan Alvarez to begin the second, the veteran went with a back-foot cutter that, well, hit Alvarez in the back foot. After punching out José Abreu, Scherzer walked Kyle Tucker on five pitches, then yielded a 104.8 mph frozen rope to Mauricio Dubón on a slider that hung up. Jeremy Peña popped out, and for a second, Scherzer seemed to be close to getting out of a bases-loaded jam. Instead, he spiked an 0–1 slider to no. 9 hitter Martín Maldonado, he of the 66 regular-season wRC+, to bring home Alvarez. On the very next pitch, Maldonado ripped a 101.1 mph single past third baseman Josh Jung, driving in two more:

Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever seen one of those horror movies with an unstoppable villain? They might get knocked down. A truck might run them over. They might fall out of a plane, or off a bridge, or into a bottomless pit. But then the camera cuts just so, and there’s that silhouette, lurching back into view, pursuing our protagonist despite the fact that they should have been down for the count.

I’m not making any fandom or value judgments here, but if you’re rooting against the Astros, they can feel like a movie monster. The Rangers did the baseball equivalent of knocking them over the head with a club in ALCS Game 2. They came out swinging against Justin Verlander last night to some success, but they really hit the accelerator against Framber Valdez in the first inning on Monday.

Marcus Semien smacked a first-pitch sinker past Jeremy Peña. Corey Seager blooped a first-pitch sinker into left. A batter later, Adolis García lined a first-pitch sinker into right for an RBI single. Mitch Garver never saw a sinker, but he did muscle the first in-zone pitch he saw to left, a sinking liner that brought home another run. Sprinkle in a bit of bad Houston luck — Valdez fumbled a comebacker for an error, Nathaniel Lowe hit a seeing-eye single on the kind of weak grounder that Valdez usually feasts on — and suddenly it was 4–0 Rangers. Read the rest of this entry »

Ryan Noda was a 22-year-old Toronto Blue Jays prospect coming off his first full professional season when he led Sunday Notes on December 15, 2018. Drafted in the 15th round out of the University of Cincinnati a year earlier, Noda had logged 20 home runs and a .421 OBP with then-Low-A Lansing, prompting me to compare him to former Bearcat Kevin Youkilis. With the caveat “I’m not close to being in his class,” he told me that he modeled his game after Joey Votto.

Five years and two organizations later, Noda is now a big-leaguer himself. Selected by the Oakland Athletics out of the Los Angeles Dodgers system in last winter’s Rule 5 draft, the left-handed-hitting first baseman proceeded to put up solid numbers with MLB’s worst-performing club. In 495 plate appearances, Noda logged a team-best .364 OBP and slugged 16 home runs with a 123 wRC+.

“I don’t mind those two comps at all,” Noda replied when I reminded him of our bygone conversation. “I certainly wouldn’t mind having either of their careers, either.”

It’s probably safe to say that Noda won’t go on to match, or even approximate, what Votto has accomplished over his storied career. Channeling Youkilis, who was 27 years old — Noda’s current age — when he established himself as a big-league regular could be another story. The erstwhile corner infielder averaged 20 home runs with a .385 OBP and a 127 wRC+ in his seven-season prime.

Stylistically speaking — Youkilis being a righty aside — would he comp himself more to one than the other?

“Not really,” said Noda. “But I do take both of them into account with how I go about hitting. I’m trying to get a pitch to drive and from there hopefully driving it. In this game, patience is important — and not just at the plate. It’s a long season, and if you can stick to what you do best, even when you’re going bad, you can be successful.”

Noda and I were at Fenway Park when he spoke those words, which brought to mind yet another comp. I asked him how familiar he is with 23-year-old Red Sox rookie Triston Casas.

“Not too much,” Noda responded. “I know he’s a good ballplayer and that he can swing it well. It will be interesting to see him play over the years and watch how similar we maybe are. But again, I don’t know too much about him.”

Casas had a 13.9% walk rate to go with 24 home runs and 129 wRC+ in 502 plate appearances this season. Noda had a 15.6% walk rate to go with his aforementioned 16 home runs and 123 wRC+ over 495 plate appearances. With the caveat that Casas is three years younger and has a first-round pedigree — Boston drafted him 26th-overall in 2018 — there are definitely some similarities. If Casas goes on to meet expectations, Noda wouldn’t mind having his career either.

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RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS

Bryce Harper is 20 for 49 against Julio Teheran.

Brian Harper went 18 for 44 against Dave Stewart.

Tommy Harper went 21 for 56 against Dave McNally.

Terry Harper went 11 for 18 against Bruce Ruffin.

George Harper went 32 for 71 against Grover Cleveland Alexander.

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Left on the cutting-room floor from Thursday’s interview with former Seattle Mariners scouting director Tom McNamara were his reflections on the club’s fourth-round pick in the 2012 draft. With the 131st-overall selection, Seattle took a third baseman whose collegiate career comprised all of 51 games and 229 plate appearances.

“We needed a senior, because we’d spent money,” McNamara told me. “Patrick Kivlehan was a safety on the Rutgers football team. He played both baseball and football. The amazing story about Kivlehan is that he didn’t play college baseball for his first three years. I remember flying in and talking to the coach at Rutgers. I asked him, ‘How did he make the team?’ He said, ‘He asked if he could try out for the team. I told him we had a spot, but he was probably never going to play.’ Well, what happened is that Rutgers’ third baseman tore a hamstring and Kivlehan ended up playing third base and almost winning the Triple Crown in the Big East. We took him in the fourth round and he got to the big leagues. He played with Arizona and Cincinnati, and I think San Diego.”

The Mariners traded Kivlehan to the Texas Rangers in December 2015 as part of a five-player deal, reacquired him six months later in exchange for Justin De Fratus, then released him in early August. The Padres picked him up, and Kivlehan made his MLB debut a few weeks later. He went to log a 84 wRC+ over 250 plate appearances in what was ultimately a modest big-league career.

The player taken one pick after Kivlehan has had a notable career that took awhile to get off the ground. The Baltimore Orioles selected Christian Walker 132nd overall out of the University of South Carolina, only to place him on waivers five years later after 31 nondescript big-league plate appearances. Then came a four-week rollercoaster that eventually landed the slugging first baseman in his current home. The Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds both claimed, but then waived, Walker before the Arizona Diamondbacks inked him to a contract on the eve of the 2017 season. The rest is history. Hitting in the middle of the D-Backs lineup, Walker has 69 home runs and a 122 wRC+ over the past two seasons.

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A quiz:

Which pitcher holds the Pittsburgh Pirates franchise record for strikeouts in a single season? (A hint: he also has the franchise’s second-highest single-season strikeout total.)

The answer can be found below.

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NEWS NOTES

Brad Ciolek, who has been serving as Baltimore’s director of draft operations, is leaving the organization and will be joining the Washington Nationals. Ciolek has overseen the last five Orioles drafts, which include the selections of Gunnar Henderson, Jackson Holliday, Heston Kjerstad, and Adley Rutschman,

Toronto Blue Jays coach Luis Rivera has decided to retire. The 59-year-old former big-league infielder had coached and managed in the Jays system since 2010.

Casey Cox, who pitched for the Washington Senators/Texas Rangers from 1966-1972, and then briefly for the New York Yankees, died earlier this month at age 82 (per Baseball Player Passings). The right-hander’s best season came in 1969 when he went 12-7 with a 2.78 ERA.

SABR’s Larry Dierker chapter will hold a dual in-person/Zoom meeting tomorrow (Monday October 16) beginning at 7pm with former Astros announcer Bill Brown the guest speaker. More information can be found here.

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The answer to the quiz is Bob Veale, with 276 strikeouts in 1965. A year earlier, the hard-throwing southpaw logged an NL-best 250 strikeouts, the second-highest total in Pirates franchise history.

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The Houston Astros advancing to their seventh consecutive LCS ranks right up there with the 1990s Atlanta Braves and multiple decades of New York Yankees American League supremacy. The grownup sons of the expansion Colt .45s are eight wins away from a third World Series title since 2017.

The Brooklyn Dodgers deserve some love here. Shortly before being relocated to Los Angeles in 1958, “Dem Bums” reached the World Series five times from 1949-1956. and their win totals in the three years they fell just short were 89, 97, and 92 (in what was then a 154-game-schedule). The winningest of those not-quite seasons was famously painful — Bobby Thomson’s Shot Heard ‘Round the World capping a four-run bottom of the ninth inning for the New York Giants. Four years after that soul-crushing 1951 defeat, Brooklyn won its only World Series by beating the Yankees in seven games. Johnny Podres was on the mound for the 2-0 clincher, while Gil Hodges drove in both runs.

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FOREIGN AFFAIRS

NPB’s postseason got underway on Saturday with the Chiba Lotte Marines beating the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks 8-2. Twenty-one-year-old wunderkind Roki Sasaki threw three scoreless innings for the winning side, while 2018 Atlanta Braves first-round pick Carter Stewart was tagged with the loss.

NPB’s other first-stage contest saw the Hiroshima Carp edge past the Yokohama DeNA BayStars 3-2 in 11 innings with a pair of former MLB pitchers getting the decisions. Nik Turley was credited with the win, while J.B. Wendelken was tagged with the loss. Game 2 of each best-of-five, first-stage matchups are today.

Update: Hiroshima defeated DeNA 4-2 and will go on to play the Central League champion Hanshin Tigers in the next round. SoftBank beat Chiba Lotte 3-1, setting up a deciding Game 3 to determine who goes up against the Pacific League champion Orix Buffaloes.

Yuki Matsui, who will reportedly be exercising his international free agent rights this offseason, made his 500th NPB appearance in his final game of the regular season The 27-year-old Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles southpaw had 39 saves and a 1.60 ERA this year.

Seunghwan Oh recorded his 400th KBO save, and his 522nd professionally, on Saturday. The 36-year-old Samsung Lions right-hander’s resume includes 80 saves in NPB and 42 more in MLB.

Erick Fedde went 20-6 with a 2.06 ERA for the KBO’s NC Dinos. The 30-year-old former Washington National right-hander had 204 strikeouts and 134 hits allowed in 174-and-two-thirds innings.

Dong Ju Moon went 8-8 with a 3.72 ERA over 118-and-two-thirds innings for the KBO’s Hanwha Eagles. The 19-year-old right-hander went six scoreless in his last start of the season.

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Dixie Howell holds three obscure big-league records. Per his B-Ref bio page, the Harold, Kentucky native is the last relief pitcher to hit two home runs in the same game, having done so with the Chicago White Sox on June 16, 1957. Moreover, all five hits he had that season — a double, a triple, and three home runs — went for extra bases (Rick Wrona subsequently tied Howell’s most-hits-sans-a-single record in 1994 while playing with the Milwaukee Brewers). Howell also holds the record for the longest time between when he first pitched in the majors and when he got his first victory. He made his MLB debut in 1940 and wasn’t credited with a win until 1955.

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FARM NOTES

Alexander Albertus slashed .310/.471/.468 with five home runs and a 152 wRC+ in 170 plate appearances between the Dominican Summer League and the Arizona Complex League. A native of Oranjestad, Aruba, the 18-year-old infielder in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization drew 38 walks and fanned just 19 times.

Cesar Quintas had a .516 BABIP in 168 plate appearances with Giants Orange, one of two San Francisco entries in the Arizona Complex League. The 20-year-old outfielder fromValencia, Venezuela slashed .372/.506/.473 with one home run and a 159 wRC+.

Jakob Marsee has 19 hits, including nine for extra bases, in 38 at-bats for the Arizona Fall League’s Peoria Javelinas. The 22-year-old outfielder in the San Diego Padres system slashed .274/.413/.428 with 16 home runs this year between High-A Fort Wayne and Double-A San Antonio. Marsee is a former Central Michigan University Chippewa.

Carter Howell has seven hits, including a triple and a pair of home runs, in 21 at-bats with the Arizona Fall League’s Scottsdale Scorpions. The 24-year-old Fargo, North Dakota-born outfielder in the San Francisco Giants system swatted 10 taters and had a .295/.369/.442 slash line between Low-A San Jose and High-A Eugene.

Liam Hicks is 16-for-28, including four doubles, for the Arizona Fall League’s Surprise Saguaros. The 24-year-old, Toronto, Ontario-born catcher in the Texas Rangers organization slashed .275/.414/.373 with four home runs between High-A Hickory and Double-A Frisco.

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The following paragraph is included in Jonathan Mayo’s Smart, Wrong, and Lucky: The Origin Stories of Baseball’s Unexpected Stars:

“It begs the question, of course. If the Padres area scout and regional crosschecker had him in as a second rounder, if a national crosschecker saw him, if the the scouting director came in to see a private workout, all of which occurred according to Campbell, how on earth did Mookie Betts become a San Diego Padre?”

Betts, as has been well chronicled, lasted until the fifth round of the 2011 draft when he was taken by the Boston Red Sox with the 172nd-overall pick. The Padres, who had the 173rd pick that year, had taken eight players earlier in the draft, including four supplemental first-round selections. None of them have come close to matching Betts’s accomplishments.

Mayo addresses that part of the backstory, as well as how Betts ultimately landed in Boston, in his must-read book.

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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE

MLB.com’s Michael Clair wrote about how power-hitting Japanese high school phenom Rintaro Sasaki will reportedly bypass the NPB draft and, with MLB in mind, instead attend college in the United States.

Dan Connolly offered some observations from the Orioles’ postseason press conference, and opined on the Mike Elias-Brandon Hyde partnership, at Baltimore’s WHAR.

True Blue LA’s Eric Stephen wonders if Clayton Kershaw has thrown his last pitch for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Covering the Corner’s Matt Dallas looked back at the 1949 Cleveland Indians, who failed to defend a World Series championship. More than seven decades later, the fanbase awaits its first title since 1948.

Over at Bless You Boys, Patrick O’Kennedy gave us an offseason calendar covering not only the Detroit Tigers, but also MLB as a whole. From the GM Meetings to the non-tender deadline to the Rule 5 draft, it’s all here.

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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS

Including the postseason, NLCS managers Torey Lovullo and Rob Thomson have a combined 672 managerial wins. ALCS managers Dusty Baker and Bruce Bochy have a combined 4,379 managerial wins.

Lance Lynn allowed 48 home runs in 186-and-a-third innings (including the postseason). Sonny Gray allowed 10 home runs in 193 innings (also including the postseason).

Mookie Betts is 6-for-48 with two extra-base hits over his last three postseason series. Trea Turner is 18-for-42 with 10 extra-base hits over his last three postseason series.

Ronald Acuña Jr’s combined runs scored-RBI total during the regular season was 255. Matt Olson’s combined runs scored-RBI total was 266.

The league-average team totals for stolen bases and caught-stealings this year were 117 and 29 respectively. The most-league-average team was the Seattle Mariners, with 118 stolen bases and 30 caught-stealings. The New York Mets swiped 118 bases and were caught just 15 times.

Arizona Diamondbacks batters combined for 36 sacrifice hits this season, the most of any team. Atlanta Braves batters combined for two sacrifice hits this season, the fewest of any team

Minnesota Twins pitchers combined to allow 443 walks with a franchise record 1,560 strikeouts. Pitchers for the 1991 World Series champion Twins combined to allow 488 walks with 876 strikeouts.

Bob Gibson got the win as the St. Louis Cardinals beat the New York Yankees 7-5 in World Series Game 7 on today’s date in 1964. The Boyer brothers both homered — Clete for the losing side and Ken for he victors — as did Lou Brock, Mickey Mantle, and Phil Linz.

On today’s date in 1975, Luis Tiant went the distance as the Boston Red Sox edged the Cincinnati Reds 5-4 in Game 4 of the World Series. El Tiant threw 163 pitches while scattering nine hits and four walks. The Reds stranded eight runners, including two in the bottom of the ninth.

Players born on today’s date include Tommy Toms, a right-handed pitcher who appeared in 18 games for the San Francisco Giants from 1975-1977. The Charlottesville, Virginia native went 0-1 in each of the three seasons, and was credited with one save.

Also born on today’s date was Jim Command, a third baseman who went 4-for-25 while getting cups of coffee with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1954 and 1955. The Grand Rapids, Michigan native’s lone home run was a grand slam off of Brooklyn Dodgers right-hander Carl Erskine.

José Abreu did not have a good season. Signed to a three-year deal by the Astros last November, the 36-year-old first baseman turned in the worst campaign of his 10-year major league career, and even after digging out of a deep early-season slump, he ended up as the least valuable regular at his position. Even so, Abreu has been able to turn the page since the start of the playoffs, and his three home runs against the Twins were a major reason the Astros won the Division Series.

Abreu went just 1-for-7 in the first two games against Minnesota, though his lone hit, a fifth-inning single off Kenta Maeda in Game 1, drove in Houston’s fourth run in what ended up as a 6–4 victory. His three-run first-inning homer to left field off Sonny Gray — a monster shot estimated at 442 feet — broke Game 3 open, turning a 1–0 lead into a 4–0 lead before Astros starter Cristian Javier even threw a pitch; it was probably the turning point of the series. For good measure, Abreu capped the scoring in the 9–1 rout with a two-run homer into the upper deck in left center off Bailey Ober in the ninth inning, this one estimated at 440 feet. On Wednesday night, he struck again, clubbing a 424-foot opposite-field two-run homer off Caleb Thielbar in the fourth inning of a 1–1 game. The Astros didn’t score again but hung on for a series-clinching 3–2 victory. Read the rest of this entry »

Phil Maton can spin a baseball. His four-seamer averaged 2,563 rpm this season, and his signature curveball was an even-more-rotational 3,154. These weren’t new developments. The 30-year-old Houston Astros reliever has long been known for that attribute, with a July 2017 interview with the then-San Diego Padres rookie having served as its first detailed mention here at FanGraphs.

He’s also had a career-best year. In 68 regular-season appearances out of the Houston bullpen, Maton augmented his 4–3 record and one save with a 3.00 ERA, a 3.74 FIP, 74 strikeouts, and just 49 hits allowed in 66 innings. Moreover, October has once again been his friend. Thanks to a pair of scoreless outings in the ALDS, the righty boasts a 1.04 ERA over 16 career playoff appearances.

Maton revisited the importance of spin and discussed a meaningful change to the movement profile of his fastball when the Astros visited Fenway Park at the end of August.

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David Laurila: Your spin rate was the primary topic when we first spoke six years ago. Now pure spin isn’t considered nearly as important. Do you agree?

Phil Maton: “I think that’s right. Over the years, organizations have figured out that it doesn’t tell the whole picture. There are guys with big breaking balls and hoppy heaters who don’t spin the ball particularly well. That’s where things like spin efficiencies come into play. We’ve identified guys where it’s the entry angle. There are so many different factors in what creates ‘a good pitch.’ Back in 2017, when the spin-rate phase was going on, everyone thought that was the answer. It’s much more complex than that.” Read the rest of this entry »

I’m always a fan of a playoff series that we haven’t seen before, and oddly, the Astros and Rangers have never faced off in the postseason before. But we’ll finally get that battle for Texas supremacy this year in the ALCS, after the Astros shut down the Twins to win in four and the Rangers swept the Orioles and sent them back home for the peak of the steamed crab season. For this championship series, we also get a team without an obvious claim to superiority over the 2023 season, as both tied for the division at 90–72, leading to an unsatisfying Game 163-less conclusion based on head-to-head records.

Houston and Texas having never faced off in the postseason is one of those little accidents of history. The Senators/Rangers took until 1996 to make the playoffs for the very first time, and the Astros only moved to the AL before the 2013 season. Despite playing in the same league, the two franchises haven’t really had their periods of success overlap; 2023 is just the second season in baseball history in which the Astros and Rangers won 90 games in the same season, the only other time being in 1999 (when both teams lost in their respective divisional series). Read the rest of this entry »

You all know how playoff relief pitchers work these days. A starter comes out, perhaps earlier than he would in the regular season, and then the parade starts. A 23-year-old who throws 99 with a mind-bending slider. A former starter who pops 100 with ease. A crafty lefty is next, an embarrassment to his peers thanks to a mere 97-mph radar gun reading. Then it’s time for the big cheese, the bullpen anchor; he throws 100 as well, only with a secondary pitch that would get him convicted of witchcraft in an earlier era.

That’s just the way baseball has gone in recent years. Pitcher training is better than ever and velocity misses bats, so the trend is inexorable. In 2014, the average fastball thrown by a reliever in the playoffs checked in at 94.1 mph. In 2022, it hit 95.9 mph. In the not-so-distant future, it will surely top 96. If you can build the entire bullpen out of fireballers, why not do it?

It feels strange to call Ryan Pressly a junkballer. He sits 94-95 mph with a backspinning four-seamer. He threw a pitch 98 mph this season. He’s lived up near 100 at various points in his 11-year major league career. But in modern baseball, he’s downright quaint, a four-pitch reliever who doesn’t rely on gamebreaking velocity. Read the rest of this entry »

After leading the AL Central for 157 days, sweeping the Blue Jays to win their first playoff series since 2002, and coming into the ALDS with a pair of starters who could go head-to-head just about anyone in the league, Minnesota’s season came to an end on Wednesday night. On paper, the Twins matched up reasonably well with the Astros. They couldn’t match Houston’s overall thunder, but their lefty-packed lineup was a good match for an Astros squad that featured just one left-handed pitcher and whose bullpen fared much worse against lefties in 2023 than it had in ’22. That didn’t turn out to matter much. Over two games at Target Field, the Twins mustered just six hits and three runs, going 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position, and falling short in Game 4, 3–2.

Meanwhile, the Astros are headed to their seventh consecutive League Championship Series, one shy of the record held by the 1990s Atlanta Braves. Despite their dominance on the mound, the scariest thing about the Astros might just be the fact that on Wednesday they showed that they’re capable of winning even on nights when Yordan Alvarez looks mostly human.

For Houston, the question was what to expect from José Urquidy, who was limited by injury to 16 appearances and 10 starts and didn’t look like himself for much of the season. He answered it emphatically, striking out six and allowing just three hits and two earned runs, both of them on solo homers; he earned 19 whiffs, the third-highest total of his career. Urquidy got the Twins to chase four-seamers up, breaking balls down, and changeups that looked tempting before diving down and in off the plate to righties.

For Minnesota, the concern coming into the game was Joe Ryan and his four-seam fastball, a pitch he threw 56.9% of the time this season. That presented a problem; the Astros ran a .372 wOBA against four-seamers this season, with a second-in-baseball 46.8 run value against the pitch (the Braves finished in first with an absurd 73.2). Would Ryan rely more on his splitter and sweeper, or would he be scared away from doing so after watching the Astros sit on and obliterate Sonny Gray’s secondaries one day earlier? The issue turned out to be moot; Rocco Baldelli decided to go with a bullpen game, pulling Ryan after two innings. In a do-or-die affair, the Twins manager told Fox Sports’ Tom Verducci that he was looking to “virtually every guy in our bullpen.”

Those who were able to tune out the sound of old-school baseball men gnashing their teeth and rending their garments witnessed a game in which Baldelli’s plan worked well. Ryan and a cavalcade of Minnesota relievers held the Astros to six hits and kept them under four runs for just the 66th time all season, including the playoffs. The issue was that for just the 54th time all season, the Twins couldn’t push across more than two runs of their own. As was the case all series long, Minnesota’s rookies led the way. Edouard Julien went 2-for-3 with a double, a homer, and a walk, and Royce Lewis walked once and knocked his third home run of the series.

But that one sentence constitutes the entirety of the Minnesota offense. The Twins, who set an all-time record with 1,654 strikeouts during the regular season, struck out 14 times for the second game in a row. Julien’s first-inning double, the only non-homer hit of the night, was promptly erased on a hard luck liner that gave him no real chance to return to the bag in time, making Lewis’ blast off the left field façade a solo shot.

The lead evaporated quickly. Michael Brantley, the second batter in the top of the second inning, got his arms extended on a middle-away Ryan fastball and sent it into the right field stands at 101.8 mph, tying the game at one. Ryan finished his night having thrown just 26 pitches and with a single baserunner allowed in two innings, but he’d been given a lead and let it slip. Between innings, Baldelli came over to Ryan on the bench and shook his hand. From that point, the game belonged to the bullpen.

Urquidy buckled down after the bumpy first inning, facing 16 batters after Lewis’ homer and retiring every single one of them who wasn’t named Edouard Julien. The Twins’ bullpen, though, faltered. After Brock Stewart retired the Astros in order in the third, lefty Caleb Thielbar was given the unenviable task of facing Alvarez, who had homered off him in Game 1, to lead off the fourth inning. After falling behind 1–2, Alvarez reached out and lined a fastball off the plate outside into center for a single. As Sports Illustrated’s Emma Baccellieri tweeted, “Limiting Yordan Alvarez to a single at this point feels like recording a strikeout.” Thielbar followed by striking out Kyle Tucker, but he couldn’t handle José Abreu, who went the other way with a monster 424-foot home run off the upper deck in right field.

It was the third homer of the series for Abreu, who ran an 86 wRC+ during the regular season and didn’t hit his first home run until May 28. It was also 3–1 Astros.

Chris Paddack replaced Thielbar, allowing a single to Chas McCormick, then retiring seven straight batters, four by way of strikeout. And in the bottom of the sixth, Minnesota chipped a run back. Urquidy retired Michael A. Taylor on a chopper to third to start the frame, bringing Julien to the plate. He stayed back on a changeup, sending it into the left field bleachers at 100.2 mph and drawing the Twins to within one.

After donning Minnesota’s fishing vest and high-fiving his teammates, he spiked his helmet off the dugout floor. “I was just trying to see a fastball up,” he told Verducci. “He’s got a great fastball and he commands it well. He left the changeup up and I was able to recognize it early and put a good swing on it.”

With a reason to cheer at long last, the Minnesota crowd got back into the game. Jorge Polanco nearly tied things up immediately after Julien’s shot, getting under a high changeup and sending it 339 feet into center field at 100.7 mph for an out. And that was the end of Urquidy’s night; he finished with 5.2 innings, walking one and allowing two runs on three hits.

Urquidy was followed by Hector Neris, Bryan Abreu, and Ryan Pressly, who allowed just one baserunner between them. Minnesota did find some small hope in the eighth, when Baldelli pinch-hit Byron Buxton — only on the roster because a shoulder injury forced Alex Kirilloff off — for Taylor. The crowd understandably went crazy, but Abreu, who hasn’t allowed a run since July 15, induced a harmless popup from Buxton, who hadn’t played at all since August 1. The Twins sent Polanco, Lewis, and Max Kepler to the plate in the ninth; if any of them reached, Carlos Correa would bat representing the winning run. Again the crowd grew frenzied, but for the last time it was disappointed. Correa never got a chance; Pressly stuck Polanco out on a foul tip, struck out Lewis swinging, and struck out Kepler looking.

Baldelli did everything you’d expect a manager running a bullpen game to do. He rode the hot hand when a pitcher looked sharp. He gave relievers clean innings when possible. He saved his most trustworthy arms for the fearsome top of the Houston lineup. He didn’t wait for his offense to tie the game before calling on closer Jhoan Duran in the eighth inning. Aside from a single off the end of Alvarez’s bat and an ill-timed mistake to Abreu, the relief corps delivered; at one point, they retired 13 straight Astros. But Minnesota’s offense just wasn’t enough.

Had anyone other than Julien or Lewis been able to get anything going, had Urquidy betrayed any hint of his previous struggles, had Alvarez not been strong enough to muscle an outside fastball into center, had Polanco’s first-inning liner not led Jeremy Peña directly toward second base to double off the helpless Julien, the two teams might be preparing for Game 4 right now. Instead, thanks to another big night from Abreu, the state of Texas is guaranteed a spot in the World Series. “Now me and Bruce Bochy need to battle,” Dusty Baker said after the game. The ALCS will feature four World Series championships, seven pennants, and 4,276 regular season wins between its two managers. The Twins will have a long offseason with a lot of bright spots and even more what-ifs to to think back on.

After splitting the first two games in Houston, the Astros and Twins faced off in Minneapolis. But after Pablo López shut down the Astros’ bats in Game 2, it was Cristian Javier mowing down a lineup this time around, leading his team to a 2–1 series lead with a 9–1 victory over Sonny Gray and Minnesota.

Javier dominated the Twins for five innings, surrendering just one hit and striking out nine. He was wild at times, walking five and hitting a batter and throwing quite a few waste pitches, especially fastballs. He also wasn’t able to get his slider down as much as he would’ve liked, though that didn’t seem to matter for Twins hitters, who came up empty on 13 of their 16 swings against it. Javier’s gameplan when he was on can best be seen in his three matchups against standout rookie Royce Lewis, whose streak of incredible hits with runners on base came to a screeching halt. Read the rest of this entry »

If the Twins were supposed to be a speed bump on the Astros’ familiar path to the World Series, nobody sent them the message, as they got revenge for Game 1’s 6-4 loss with a convincing 6-2 victory that wasn’t even as close as the score. By winning Sunday, the Twins ensure that we’ll finally have at least one series this postseason that isn’t a sweep as the teams head to Target Field for Game 3.

While nearly everyone on the Twins contributed in Game 2, I don’t think many people will disagree with me when I say that this was Pablo López’s game. While he held the Blue Jays to one run in his Wild Card start, I wouldn’t call that outing a dominating performance. This one was. Against the Astros, a better offense than the Jays, López went seven strong innings, striking out seven and allowing six hits. Bill James’ Game Scores might not be a whiz-bang Statcast measure, but I think they do a great job of giving a general feel of starts from a historical, fan perspective, and López’s Game Score ranks very high among Twins’ postseason outings since the Senators moved to Minnesota:

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