Yordan Alvarez is an imposing figure in the batter’s box. The lefty stands 6-foot-5, towering over home plate with his knees bent and bat coiled, simply daring the pitcher to throw him a pitch in the zone while having the patience to spit at pitches not to his liking. With his toothpick-gnawing manager, Dusty Baker, looking on from the dugout, I couldn’t help but be reminded of another hitter from Baker’s past who led him to his only other World Series appearance back in 2002. No other hitter is quite like Barry Bonds, but Alvarez has been a treat to watch with his impressive blend of patience (18.6% walk rate) and power (.353 ISO). He earned ALCS MVP honors after going 12-for-23 with five extra base hits, and he capped off the series with a massive 4-for-4 night in the decisive Game 6 to knock the Red Sox out of the playoffs and advance to the World Series:

Game 6 was a microcosm of his performance all postseason: roasting extra base hits from line to line, whether he’s seeing offspeed pitches at the knees or high-90s fastballs painted on the outside corner. Here’s how his performance has staked up against other hitters this October:

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In Game 6 of the ALCS, en route to clinching the American League pennant for the third time in five years, the Astros received quite the start from Luis Garcia. As a team hampered by rotation issues, issues only accentuated by the injury to Lance McCullers Jr. in the ALDS, Houston needed someone other than Framber Valdez to step up and perform. Non-Valdez starters had recorded just 12 measly outs in Games 2 through 4; in retrospect, the Astros were probably lucky to have come away with even one of those games.

After a brilliant Valdez start to put Houston up three-games-to-two, it was once again Garcia’s turn to get the ball. The team’s No. 3 starter during the regular season, he had been productive all year but exited Game 2 of the ALCS with an injury; Garcia’s fastball velocity in his second inning of work was down almost 4 mph relative to his first inning mark. On Friday, though, the script was completely flipped: Garcia was airing it out. After only throwing one 97 mph pitch the entire regular season, he recorded eight against Boston. His 5 2/3 shutout innings, allowing just one hit and one walk, made him the most valuable Houston player of the evening, with a +.308 WPA. That type of performance is a necessity if the Astros want to triumph over the Braves and win the World Series.

In the midst of his excellent outing, there was a lot of oohing and aahing over Garcia’s velocity. As ESPN’s Jeff Passan tweeted during the game, Garcia’s stuff was “ticking way, way, way up.” For those counting at home, that’s three “way”s, and deservedly so. Garcia threw the five fastest pitches of his career in Game 6; he has thrown the eight fastest pitches of his career all in the postseason (seven in Game 6, one against the Rays last year). The righty averaged just 93.3 mph on his four-seamer during the regular season, but in Game 6, he averaged 96.0. That average fastball velocity was 1.4 mph faster than his highest average in any other outing this season (94.6 mph, April 12). He was amped up. Read the rest of this entry »

The Fall Classic is here, the 117th World Series, which will end with the Commissioner’s Trophy and a stage with room for just one victorious organization. Two supremely talented teams are at the end of an eight-month gauntlet — one that began with the singular, casual, quiet pop of catchers’ mitts in Florida and will end in a pressure cooker, with screaming masses and the attention of the sports world, as the AL champion Astros, in their third World Series of the last five years, will face the NL champion Braves in their first since 1999.

It’s been a mixed, inconsistent decade for Atlanta in the post-Bobby Cox era. The franchise’s 15-year reign over the NL East, which it won every year from 1991 to 2005 except for the strike-shortened ‘94 season, holds a unique place in the baseball culture. Anyone over 30 saw most of it unfold every day on cable if they wanted to — my ex-brother-in-law grew up in Pennsylvania with Andres Galarraga’s number painted in Wite-Out on his fitted cap — thanks to the club’s presence on TBS. The Braves’ 22-year World Series drought hasn’t been entirely hapless, and they have had stretches of contention, making the next six postseasons after their ’99 sweep at the hands of the Yankees, even as some of that core aged and/or moved on. Fittingly enough, the final two seasons of their division champions streak ended with postseason losses to the Astros, in both the 2004 (Carlos Beltran’s Godtober) and ’05 (Clemens, Oswalt, Pettitte) NLDS; so too did their tenure on TBS, which concluded with a 3–0 loss in Houston at the end of the 2007 regular season.

Then came, relatively speaking, a swoon. The Freddie Freeman/Brian McCann/Jason Heyward/Andrelton Simmons core drove the Braves to four consecutive 89-win or better seasons from 2010 to ’14, but that group won just two postseason games during that stretch. It was during this time period that Cox retired and a brief descent to the bottom of the division began. The arrival of the current core (Ozzie Albies, Dansby Swanson, Ronald Acuña Jr., etc.) has put them back on top of the NL East for the last four years, and they’ve slowly crept deeper and deeper into the postseason, culminating in this year’s pennant.

Those Astros postseason victories in 2004 and ’05 marked the tail end of Houston’s “Killer B’s” era, dominated by Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, Lance Berkman, and others (Billy Wagner, Moises Alou, Octavio Dotel… these teams were absolutely stacked). Houston finished over .500 ten times in eleven years before losing the NLCS to Albert Pujols and the Cardinals in ’04 and the World Series to the White Sox in ’05 and slowly beginning a fall from grace, both on and off the field. Jeff Luhnow was hired away from the Cardinals front office to helm an intense rebuild that included three consecutive 100-loss seasons, and the draft picks from that stretch produced Carlos Correa, Lance McCullers Jr., Kyle Tucker, and Alex Bregman … as well as the Brady Aiken controversy that would pale in comparison to what lay ahead for the franchise.

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Tyler Glasnow deliverers his high-octane fastball with a standard four-seam grip. That hasn’t always been the case. Back in his Little League days, the Tampa Bay Rays right-hander relied on an extra digit when throwing a baseball.

“I used to throw my heater with three fingers on top,” explained Glasnow, who at 6-foot-8 has grown exponentially since those formative years. “One time I was throwing to one of the coaches with my three-finger grip, and he was, ‘Whoa. That’s weird. Try throwing with two fingers.’ I did, and I think the movement got a little better, and I threw it a bit harder, but I couldn’t throw it for strikes. So I stayed with that three-finger approach for a little bit — a four-seam grip with three fingers — and then as my hands got bigger, I went to two fingers.”

His curveball is another story. Glasnow told me that he first began throwing a breaker around his sophomore year of high school… or maybe it was prior to that? He’s not entirely sure. When I suggested that age-12 isn’t uncommon, the So. Cal native said that may well have been the case. Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros are heading to their third World Series in the last five years, besting the Red Sox, 5–0, on Friday night to finish the ALCS in six games. The Red Sox had the pitcher they wanted on the mound in Nathan Eovaldi, but the offense they needed never materialized as Houston’s starter, Luis Garcia, pitched 5 2/3 masterful innings, striking out seven against just a single walk and one lonely hit.

As one of the first front offices to go all-in on modern analytics, Houston has long been an organization that takes glee in upending conventional wisdom. Despite a rotation torn apart long-term by veteran departures and short-term with an injury to Lance McCullers Jr. (and what possibly looked like one to Garcia), the Astros stymied Boston’s lineup. Pitching woes, schmitching woes; despite the very reasonable worries about the rotation, they limited the dangerous Red Sox offense to three runs over the final three games.

Everyone likes tales of comebacks or redemption, and Garcia, one of the AL Rookie of the Year favorites, provided a good one. He got knocked out in the third inning of his first start this postseason, giving up five runs against the White Sox in Houston’s lone ALDS loss. The follow-up performance didn’t go any better: the Red Sox scored five runs off of him before he was removed with a knee strain in the second inning.

Some teams would have been a little uneasy about starting Garcia in Game 6, but one of the reasons the Astros are in position to win another World Series championship is that they put a lot of faith in the young pitching talent that remained after most of their big-name starting pitching was gone. As with the Rays and their never-ending supply of nameless relievers who become all-world or the White Sox going with Carlos Rodón in Game 4 of the ALDS, there’s a lot of appeal in sticking with the people that got you here. There would have been second-guessing and what-ifs about not acquiring a J.A. Happ type a few months ago if Garcia had again struggled. But he didn’t, and while this wasn’t John Smoltz facing off against Jack Morris in the World Series, he dominated Boston’s offense in his 5 2/3 one-hit innings.

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If the Houston Astros win tonight, they’ll go to the World Series. That’s in line with what they expected to be doing before the season — this is the fifth straight year the Astros have played in the ALCS, and they’ve been to the World Series in two of those four years. But if they make it three out of five this year, they’ll do so despite pitching injuries that have left the team rebuilding their rotation on the fly, much as they’ve been doing since the start of the year.

Yesterday, Dusty Baker intimated that Lance McCullers Jr. is out for the remainder of the postseason. Given that he was left off the ALCS roster, that’s hardly a surprise, but it does mean that the Astros need to plan for how their rotation will work without him going forward.

With their presumptive ace gone, the top of the rotation now starts with Framber Valdez. I’d argue that it might have started with him in any case, but with McCullers out, he’s clearly the best option. That lines him up to start a World Series opener if they make it that far, but does make him mostly unavailable before then. Easy enough, here’s the rotation through one spot:

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BOSTON — For the second straight game, a close contest turned into a blowout. Fueled by a five-run fifth inning, the Astros rolled to a 9–1 win over the Red Sox in ALCS Game 5. Played under a full moon in front of 37,599 fans at Fenway Park, the victory gave Dusty Baker’s squad a 3–2 lead in a series that now moves to Texas for Game 6 on Friday.

Chris Sale and Framber Valdez were on the mound to start, and both did what has become all too rare in the modern-day postseason: provide quality innings beyond the third, fourth, and fifth. But it was Houston’s pitcher that ultimately shone brightest.

The game began with Jose Altuve flying out on a first-pitch changeup, an offering that Sale has struggled to execute in recent outings. The southpaw then recorded a strikeout and a groundout, both on fastballs, and finished the frame having thrown just nine pitches. Unlike in his earlier October starts, he looked sharp. Valdez was nearly as efficient in the bottom half, setting down the Red Sox in order on just a dozen pitches. Like his adversary, he recorded one of the three outs on a strikeout. Read the rest of this entry »

BOSTON — A pitchers’ duel through eight innings, Tuesday’s ALCS Game 4 culminated in an Astros offensive explosion. Turning the tables on a Boston team that had bashed its way to wins in Games 2 and 3, Houston scored seven times in the ninth inning to turn a 2-2 tie into a series-evening 9-2 rout.

What happened late was everything that didn’t happen early.

The Astros got the early edge they so desperately wanted. Two innocent outs into the top of the first, Alex Bregman turned on a Nick Pivetta fastball and lofted a 354-foot Fenway fly that settled in the Monster seats. The Astros had now homered in all seven of their postseason games, and Zack Greinke had a 1-0 lead as he took the mound for what could conceivably be his final big-league appearance.

The bottom of the first also began with a pair of outs, but then it was Boston’s turn to get homer-happy. Rafael Devers drew a walk, and with “Greinke” chants emanating from the stands, Xander Bogaerts drove a slider deep into the night. Statcast measured the two-run blast at 413 feet. Read the rest of this entry »

BOSTON — The Red Sox came into Monday’s ALCS Game 3 having recorded double-digit hits in each of their last five games, a postseason streak matched only by the 1989 Cubs, the 2002 Angels, and the ’04 Astros. More importantly, they’d scored 39 runs and won four times, with the lone loss inconsequential in the club’s quest for a World Series championship. Returning to Fenway Park looking to gain an edge in a series knotted at a game apiece, Boston boasted the hottest bats of the four teams still standing.

The onslaught continued on a chilly night that started with a game-time temperature of 54 degrees. Buoyed by four home runs, Boston bashed Houston by a score of 12-3, swatting 11 hits along the way.

Game 3 was similar to Saturday’s Game 2 — a 9-5 Red Sox win — in several respects. Early offense set the tone, and it came after Eduardo Rodriguez began by firing bullets. The Red Sox southpaw retired the first six Astros batters, four by way of the strikeout, and the 95.8 mph heater that Michael Brantley swung through wasn’t just a whiff, it the hardest pitch he’s thrown in 2021.

By evening’s end, Rodriguez had received the most run support he had all year, too. Read the rest of this entry »

Brent Strom may or may not be calling it a career. The 73-year-old Houston Astros pitching coach said earlier this week that he’s been considering retirement, adding that a decision will be made “when the season ends.” With his team battling Boston in the ALCS, that determination could come as soon as next week, or it could extend into November. Regardless of when he ultimately steps away, Strom will have made a meaningful mark on the game of baseball.

A southpaw whose playing career saw him take the mound for three big-league teams, Strom had his best seasons in 1975 and 1976 when he cumulatively logged a 3.02 ERA over 331 innings with his hometown San Diego Padres. In 1978, he became the second pitcher to undergo Tommy John surgery.

The guidance that he’s subsequently provided is what’s garnered him the most respect. For the past three decades, Strom has tutored hurlers at the minor- and major-league levels, serving as both a coordinator and as a pitching coach. Prior to being hired by Houston in October 2013, he spent six years with St. Louis.

I asked Adam Ottavino about Strom prior to ALCS Game 1.

“We had ‘Strommy’ with the Cardinals toward the end of my time in the minors,” said the Red Sox right-hander, who spent five seasons in the St. Louis system after being drafted out of Northeastern University in 2006. “He worked with me when I was struggling in Double-A, and I really liked the way he talked about there being many different ways to go about pitching. You didn’t have to fit into some small little box. At the time, a lot of people were preaching one way of pitching — kind of pitching to contact and throwing fastballs low in the zone — and he wasn’t afraid to challenge that idea.” Read the rest of this entry »