Jose Altuve takes off, running as fast as he can down the line. The throw is coming in faster, sailing toward the bag. You can tell it’s going to be a close call, and indeed it is. The umpire extends his arms, signaling safe, and the crowd erupts into either emphatic cheers or cacophonous boos, depending on whether this hypothetical call takes place in Houston or Philadelphia. The whole play lasts only a few short seconds, but it’s one of the most thrilling moments of the entire game.

What I am describing is an infield hit — one of the most overlooked plays in baseball. It’s not surprising that home runs, extra-base hits and the like get a little more attention, especially since infield hits are just as often the result of poor defense or a lucky bounce as they are the result of true offensive skill. Yet as individual plays, infield singles are exactly what make baseball so exciting. There are few batted ball events as highly suspenseful as those in which an infield hit is possible. Those four to five seconds between the contact and the call can get your heart racing nearly as fast as the runner himself. Infield hits represent a true battle between batter, fielder, and even the field itself. On top of that, the ever-present possibility of an infield single is exactly what makes every routine ground ball worth watching.

This year, we have the privilege of watching two of the very best infield hitters in the game face off in the World Series. Altuve and Jean Segura are the active leaders in infield hits, the former with 247 and the latter right behind him with 244. They both passed Elvis Andrus on the active leaderboard this season, who himself reached the top of the leaderboard when Hunter Pence retired in 2020. FanGraphs began tracking infield hits in 2002, and in that time Segura and Altuve each rank among the top ten. Both just 32 years old, they have plenty of time to climb the ranks, too. Within a few years, they should find themselves second and third behind only infield hit god Ichiro Suzuki. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to a moment to appreciate how they both got here. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello there! Here’s a graph.

Were you not geared up for such a quick graph? Did I blow it right by you? That was kind of the point. The graph shows the run value of fastballs, bucketed in 1-mph increments. Over the past four seasons, for every 100 fastballs thrown, one tick of velocity has been worth roughly an eighth of a run. The lesson? Throw your fastballs fast.

I’ll stick to fastballs in this article, but I should mention that harder soft stuff is also associated with better outcomes, though the correlation is weaker and the effect is less dramatic. My number crunching indicates that over 100 breaking and offspeed pitches, an extra mile per hour is worth roughly 1/16 of a run. Read the rest of this entry »

Though the short and ugly starts of Bailey Falter and Mike Clevinger in Game 4 of the NLCS put a small dent in the numbers, thus far in the postseason we’ve seen a welcome rebound when it comes to starters preventing runs and pitching deeper into games relative to recent years. After two postseasons in which relievers threw more than half of all innings, starters have reclaimed their rightful spot atop the marquee. Even so, when it comes to October, the relievers we’ve seen have been stingier and more dominant than at any time in recent years. Thankfully, we’re seeing fewer of them — meaning fewer pitching changes and less dead time — but that’s of cold comfort to both the Mariners and Yankees.

As you can probably guess, that’s because Houston’s relief corps has been so overwhelming thus far. The Astros are 7-0 in this postseason, and while their starting pitching has been a major part of the story, their relievers have held opponents to just three runs in 33 innings (a 0.82 ERA) and a .127/.207/.227 line, with a 34.7% strikeout rate. As old friend Mike Petriello wrote recently, the staff — not just the bullpen — doesn’t have a weak link, even without having a late-inning lefty. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Astros face the Phillies in the World Series on Friday, they’ll have their hands full with a team that’s in the middle of a miracle run to the final round of the playoffs. And while Philadelphia’s lineup has plenty of potent hitters in it, if the Astros want to win their second championship in franchise history, they’ll need to have a solid plan to deal with the hottest hitter of the postseason: Bryce Harper.

Just to review: Harper has reached base in all 11 games he’s played in this postseason and collected seven multi-hit games, 11 extra-base hits, five home runs, and a 1.351 OPS that would stand as the eighth best in a single postseason in MLB history. The game-winning home run he hit in Game 5 of the NLCS is already the stuff of legends, earning him NLCS MVP honors.

That we’re seeing Harper at the height of his powers comes as somewhat of a surprise; this season hasn’t been easy for him. An elbow injury suffered in early April relegated him to designated hitting duty for nearly the entire season. An errant fastball from Blake Snell fractured his thumb in late June, costing him two months on the injured list. He wasn’t his normal self after returning from that stint on the sidelines: In 151 plate appearances from August 26 through the end of the season, he posted a meager .227/.325/.352 slash line, good for an 83 wRC+. Read the rest of this entry »

You can almost hear the hum emanating from the Astros’ player acquisition and development machine. It’s proven and precise, a system honed over 10 years that finds talent all over the place and then helps those players succeed while signing them to win-win extensions. It’s hard to say who the Astros’ core players are because they have too many, and from too many generations. They might be the best team in baseball when it comes to working with pitchers; they also have Yordan Alvarez, Kyle Tucker, and Jeremy Peña bolstering old hands like Alex Bregman and Jose Altuve.

The Phillies, meanwhile, should come with a sign for opposing GMs looking to emulate them: “Don’t try this at home.” The team is a high-wire act. After the previous regime mostly whiffed on developing an Astros-style new core, Dave Dombrowski arrived and worked out which pieces to keep, which to discard, and where to augment. He’s been wildly effective at it, but his options were limited by timeline. Need a new outfielder? Well, there are none in the system, so you’ll need to sign free agents and make trades. Bullpen? Hah! Better start working the phones.

The bones of a nice house were there all along – Bryce Harper, J.T. Realmuto, Rhys Hoskins, Zack Wheeler, and Aaron Nola make for a heck of a foundation – but Dombrowski found the rug that really pulls the living room together. You’d never try to build your team this way, but if you absolutely have to, Dombrowski is the man for the job. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to Part 2 of my new series, How Did Jose Altuve Hit in the Last 36 Innings? For those of you who missed Part 1, the answer last time was, well, badly enough to write a whole article about it!

Here in Part 2, I’m happy to report that Altuve’s performance over the most recent 36 innings has been upgraded to “still bad, but with reasons for optimism.”

Before we dig in, I should probably mention that Altuve is excellent. His playoff struggles are notable because he’s normally so fantastic at the plate. He posted a 164 wRC+ this year, fourth among qualified batters. He’s a great hitter. Now let’s talk about why he’s not hitting so great right now. Read the rest of this entry »

Take a look at the Astros’ bullpen in the ALCS against the Yankees. Do you see anything odd about it? And no, this isn’t an article complaining about the fact that they rostered nine relievers in a seven-game series with multiple off days. Rather, it’s the fact that all nine relievers are right-handed that sets them apart from every other playoff team this season, and nearly every playoff team in recent memory:

This trend was largely true during the regular season as well. Despite leading the majors in bullpen ERA and FIP, just 48.1 of their 495.1 relief innings came from southpaws. Back in April, their Opening Day roster included 10 relievers, only one of whom, Blake Taylor, is a lefty. Taylor pitched just 19 innings with an average ERA, but walked more batters than he struck out. In June, he was placed on the IL with an elbow injury and pitched the rest of the season in Triple-A after he recovered. Aside from a cup of coffee from rookie Parker Mushinski, the remaining lefty innings came from deadline acquisition Will Smith, who posted a solid 3.27 ERA and 2.66 FIP in 22 innings down the stretch. But all three have been absent from their playoff rosters so far, with the Astros opting for right-handed pitchers instead.

This dearth of lefties clearly hasn’t inhibited the Astros’ success – through seven games, their bullpen has allowed just three runs in 33 innings, including a dozen scoreless frames to clinch their final victory of the ALDS. So how have the Astros dealt with their opponents’ left-handed hitters? For starters, it helps that no one they’ve had to face so far has been particularly vulnerable to lefties. Hitters in the opposing Division Series like Josh Naylor are great against righties and unplayable against lefties, but that hasn’t been the case with the Astros’ opponents so far:

While hitters like Rizzo and Carpenter don’t have career reverse splits like they did in 2022, they’ve only been marginally worse against left-handed pitching in their time in the big leagues. In other words, neither team had hitters that might inspire a manager to call on a lefty specialist. But the Astros’ effectiveness against lefties doesn’t just come from the tendencies of the hitters they’ve faced. Houston’s relievers are also well equipped to neutralize both left- and right-handed hitters. Consider the 2022 platoon splits of each reliever on the roster:

Seven of the nine righties in Houston’s bullpen actually fared better against lefties than righties in 2022, and the only one with a pronounced weakness against lefties – Martinez – has yet to appear in a postseason game. Lefties slashed just .207/.269/.341 against this group during the regular season, posting a .270 wOBA compared to the .284 wOBA right-handed hitters produced against them. Both of these numbers are significantly better than the league as a whole – across the majors, right-handed relievers allowed a .310 wOBA to lefties and a .307 wOBA to righties in 2022. But the fact that the Astros’ top five relievers by innings pitched all ran reverse splits during the regular season is particularly important, and shows the value in relievers who can deal with any type of hitter, especially in the era of the three-batter minimum.

Now, we know that reverse splits can sometimes be unreliable in a small, single-season sample. But in addition to the fact that four of these pitchers – Pressly, Montero, Urquidy, and Abreu – have career reverse splits over a multi-season stretch, it’s still valuable to consider the methods the Astros use to make their relievers so effective against potent lefties.

Much of the Astros’ success in opposite-handed matchups comes from their relievers changing their pitch mix depending on the handedness of the batter. One way that pitchers attempt to limit their platoon splits is by throwing multiple fastballs. Cutters and four-seam fastballs tend to be close to platoon-neutral, but the horizontal run of a sinker often directs the ball into the barrel of opposite-handed hitters, giving it one of the largest splits of any pitch type. Three members of the Astros’ bullpen – Montero, Neris, and Martinez – threw both a four-seamer and a sinker during the regular season. The trio combined to throw 582 sinkers, just 13 of which were thrown to a left-handed hitter. While many pitchers with multiple fastball types throw more sinkers to same-handed opponents, few take it to the extreme levels these Astros do.

Sinkers aren’t the only pitch types that can generate platoon splits, though. Sliders can generate splits just as large – we know that sweepers are ridiculously effective against same-handed hitters, but can be risky against opposite-handed hitters for the same reason sinkers are – with their horizontal movement moving towards the opponent’s barrel. Sharper sliders with more gyroscopic spin also run platoon splits, albeit less extreme ones. The Astros’ bullpen throws a variety of different slider shapes – Garcia and Martinez dominate the horizontal movement charts, while Stanek’s moves like a bullet, and others like Pressly and Abreu have a more hybrid shape, with high marks in both sweep and velocity.

All nine Astros relievers throw a slider, ranging in frequency from Neris’ 6.6% usage rate to Abreu’s 44% clip. Combined with a few of them also throwing sinkers, everyone in this bullpen has a clear plan to get righties out. But how can they succeed with a lefty in the box? Offspeed pitches tend to run the most neutral, or even reverse platoon splits, and it’s no surprise that the Astros selectively throw their offspeed selections to lefties. These offspeed pitches consist of splitters from Neris and Stanek — it’s each pitcher’s most-used secondary — and changeups from nearly everyone else. When looking at their offspeed and slider usage in tandem, we can see very stark differences based on the batter’s handedness:

In 2022, right-handed pitchers threw sliders to right-handed opponents about 28% of the time, as compared to just 13.6% for lefty hitters. In other words, righties roughly doubled their slider usage in situations with the platoon advantage. For changeups and splitters, there’s an even larger difference. Righty hurlers used their offspeed stuff 18.4% of the time against lefties, but largely shelved those offerings against righties, dropping their usage to just 6.9%. The Astros have taken this to the extreme, almost completely ignoring their unfavorable pitches in certain matchups. Montero, Neris, Stanek, Garcia, and Urquidy use their sliders as real weapons against righties, but throw them under 3% of the time against lefties. On the other hand, Montero, Martinez, and Garcia throw tons of slowballs to lefties but almost completely ignore them when their sinkers and sliders get the job done. Replacing sliders with changeups and vice versa is far from a novel concept, but the Astros’ optimization of their relievers’ pitch usage is on another level. Of course, it helps that they don’t have to face the order multiple times (unless they’re Luis Garcia), but they’ve still managed to collectively run reverse splits as a unit all season.

While Houston has good reason to put their trust in their righties, Smith is still waiting in the wings and should be available if the Astros want to add him to their World Series roster as a specialist. It’s pretty clear he shouldn’t face a string of righties – his .362 wOBA allowed to them matches the full season performance of Carlos Correa – but is there a use for him in a situation with two outs, a lefty up, and no great pinch-hitting options, possibly in the early innings? Smith had a very solid .278 wOBA allowed to lefties in the regular season, though that actually makes him worse than all of the Astros’ high-leverage arms, only besting lower-leverage relievers like Martinez, Garcia, and Urquidy.

Let’s consider Philadelphia’s roster for a second. Houston didn’t sweat the lack of left-handed relievers on the roster the past two series because the Yankees and Mariners didn’t have any lefties who were dangerous with the platoon advantage and pedestrian without it. What about the lefty hitters on the Phillies? In addition to measuring the magnitude of their platoon splits, we should also look at their ability to handle the pitches being thrown at them. Smith is a slider-heavy lefty, especially against fellow southpaws — he throws them about two-thirds of the time. If they decide to leave Smith off the roster and continue to lean on their righties, the Phillies will likely see a lot of changeups and splitters. Using Statcast’s run values, we can measure exactly how well each hitter performed against a given pitch type to see whether the Astros would rather go with Smith or a righty against any of these hitters:

Schwarber and Marsh had sizable splits during the regular season, and both find far more success against right-handed changeups than left-handed sliders. However, in late-game situations, the Phillies have right-handed outfielder Matt Vierling, who could hit should the Astros use a lefty. Vierling has started over Marsh against lefties, and has come in for Schwarber as a defensive substitute. The red-hot Harper has a platoon split of his own, but handles breaking pitches from lefties quite well, while Stott actually ran reverse splits during the regular season. With Vierling available off the bench and the three-batter minimum to contend with, it’s hard to see a case where Smith would clearly be better than someone on the current roster. However, three relievers – Garcia, Martinez, and Urquidy – didn’t appear in a single ALCS game. While Garcia and Urquidy are likely there to provide length and potentially an emergency start, Smith could replace Martinez as the ninth reliever in the unlikely event that his services are needed. I don’t think there has ever been a bullpen with six relievers that allowed wOBAs of .240 or lower against the batter handedness they should be weaker against, and the fact that we can’t find a clear and likely use case for a lefty specialist on such a large roster is a testament to this staff’s complete control over left-handed hitters. The Astros are four wins away from a World Series championship, and the fact that they’re dominant even in areas where teams aren’t meant to be is a huge reason why.

Runs have been hard to come by this postseason. Through Sunday’s games, pitchers have done an extremely effective job of limiting opposing offenses, holding hitters to a collective .213/.279/.361 batting line and a .283 wOBA. They’ve struck out 26.7% of batters faced, which would rank as the highest postseason rate of this strikeout-friendly era despite regular-season rates dropping nearly a full percentage point this year. The expected stats back up the offensive struggles – or, perhaps more appropriately, the pitching achievements — of playoff teams so far. Batters’ .220 xBA, .287 xOBP, .372 xSLG, and .292 xwOBA would all be the lowest of the Statcast era. Pitching staffs have managed to limit home runs to 3.1% of plate appearances – the lowest rate since 2018 – and held run production to 3.72 runs per team-game, over half a run lower than in the regular season. It remains incredibly difficult to hit a baseball.

And yet despite that harsh run environment, the Houston Astros have thrived, sweeping the Mariners and the Yankees en route to their fourth World Series appearance in six years. All but one of their wins have been by a margin of one or two runs, but as close as they might have come, Houston’s opponents have yet to figure out how to beat a team that seems to be doing just about everything right. Since Justin Verlander allowed six runs over four innings in an uncharacteristically bad ALDS Game 1 start, the Astros pitching staff has allowed just nine earned runs in 68.0 innings (a 1.19 ERA), while their offense has outscored their opponents 31-18 through seven games. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball isn’t scripted or preordained. There’s no knowing who will win any given game; Jacob deGrom lost to the A’s this year and the Pirates swept the Dodgers. It’s a game of thin margins, and with huge volatility; some games a smashed line drive leaves the park, while others it finds a fielder’s glove. It’s a game defined by its uncertainty – but be honest, you knew the Astros were going to win on Sunday, right?

It sure didn’t feel that way at first. The Yankees shuffled their lineup yet again, and the new configuration paid early dividends. Leadoff hitter Harrison Bader looped a soft liner for a single. Two batters later, Anthony Rizzo flatly refused to get out of the way of a baseball headed in his general direction, as is his custom. He was rewarded with first base, and shortly with a run when Giancarlo Stanton and Gleyber Torres followed with singles. Rizzo added to the tally more conventionally in the second, doubling home a run to put the Yankees up 3-0.

Unfortunately for New York, the game moved inexorably forward, and so too did the Astros. Houston’s lineup is beatable, but it’ll take your best. Nestor Cortes didn’t have his in Game 4. He came out with his customary guile, changing speeds and mixing pitches through two scoreless innings. When he took the mound for the third, something changed.

His fastball, never blazing, lost another three ticks on average. He lost command over the pitch, too, throwing five straight outside the rulebook strike zone to Martín Maldonado to start the inning (one was called a strike). By the time he finished walking Jose Altuve, he’d given up on it altogether, looking to land sliders and cutters instead. Jeremy Peña made him pay; he didn’t respect the fastball at all, sitting on the cutter, and when Cortes hung one in an attempt to battle back into the count, Peña unloaded on it for a three-run homer. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — Cristian Javier finally got his turn. After making 12 postseason appearances out of the bullpen from 2020 through this year’s American League Division Series, the 25-year-old righty followed in the footsteps of teammates Justin Verlander and Framber Valdez, stifling the Yankees in Game 3 of the ALCS — and in Yankee Stadium, no less. Javier held the Yankees hitless until the fourth inning and allowed just one hit through 5.1 frames before yielding to a bullpen that the banged up Bronx Bombers remained unable to solve. New York didn’t collect another hit until down to its final out and finished with just three.

Meanwhile, the Astros capitalized on a costly two-out error by Harrison Bader in the second inning and chased Gerrit Cole in the sixth. Houston’s 5–0 victory gave the team a commanding 3–0 lead in the ALCS and put it within a win of its second straight trip to the World Series under manager Dusty Baker and the franchise’s fourth pennant in the last six years. Read the rest of this entry »