The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

It’s no secret that we’re in the midst of a lean period for starting pitchers getting elected to the Hall of Fame on the BBWAA ballot. Since the elections of 300-game winners Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, and Randy Johnson in 2014 and ’15, just four starters have gained entry via the writers, two of them alongside the Big Unit in the latter year (Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz) and two more in ’19 (Roy Halladay and Mike Mussina). From a demographic standpoint, Halladay is the only starter born after 1971.

It’s quite possible the writers won’t elect another starter born in that shag-carpeted decade unless voters come around on Andy Pettitte (b. 1972) or Mark Buehrle (b. 1979), a pair of southpaws who cleared the 200-win mark during their exceptional careers, producing some big moments and playing significant roles on championship-winning teams. Yet neither of them ever won a Cy Young award, created much black ink, or dominated in the ways that we expect Hall-caliber hurlers to do. Neither makes much of a dent when it comes to JAWS, where they respectively rank 93rd and 91st via the traditional version, about 14 points below the standard, or tied for 80th and 78th in the workload-adjusted version (S-JAWS). Neither has gotten far in their time on the ballot, and both lost ground during the last cycle. Pettitte maxed out at 17% in 2023, his fifth year of eligibility, but slipped to 13.5% in his sixth, while Buehrle, who peaked at 11% in his ’21 debut, fell from 10.8% to 8.3%. Nobody with shares that low at either juncture has been elected by the writers, with Larry Walker (10.2% in year four, 15.5% in year six) accounting for the biggest comeback in both cases but still needing the full 10 years, capped by a 22-point jump in his final one. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a shame that “bunts are bad” has become one of the truisms at the core of the ceaseless, silly battle between old school and new school, stats and scouts, quantitative and qualitative assessment methods. It’s understandable, because “stop bunting so much” was one of the first inroads that sabermetric analysts made in baseball strategy. But that was 25 years ago, and while everyone kept repeating that same mantra, the facts on the ground changed.

Sacrifice bunts by non-pitchers have plummeted over the years, as they should have. In recent years, the bunts that are left, the ones that teams haven’t streamlined out of their game planning, are mostly the good ones. “Bunts are bad” never meant that in totality; it just meant that too many of the times that teams sacrificed outs for bases were poor choices. That’s become much more clear now that pitchers don’t bat anymore. The 2022 season, the first full year of the universal DH, set a record for most runs added by bunting. After a down 2023, this season was right back near those banner highs. So let’s recap the ways teams beat the old conventional wisdom and assembled a year of bunting that the number-crunchingest analyst on the planet could appreciate.

The Death of the Worst Sac Bunts
When is a good time to bunt? It’s complicated! It depends on where the defense is playing, the score of the game, who’s on base, the player at the plate, the subsequent hitters due up, and myriad other minor factors. But there’s one overwhelming factor: There are base/out states where bunts are almost always a bad idea, and the more you avoid those, the better.

Sacrifice bunting with only a runner on first almost never makes sense. You’re getting just a single advancement, and it’s the least valuable advancement there is. Getting a runner to third with only one out is an admirable goal. Moving two runners up is even better. Squeeze plays have huge potential rewards. Moving a guy from first to second just doesn’t measure up.

Likewise, bunting gets worse when there’s already one out in the inning. Plate appearances with runners on base are worth their weight in gold in the modern, homer-happy game. Crooked numbers are tough to come by, and the easiest way to get them is by stacking up opportunities to hit multi-run homers. When you already have a runner on base, bunts are always suspect. Bunts that cut out half of your remaining outs in the inning are even worse.

There are occasional circumstances where these types of bunts make sense. If the batter thinks they’ll beat out a hit fairly often, bunting gets better. The weaker the hitter and the better the subsequent lineup, the more attractive bunts get. Close games and speedy runners can tip the balance. It’s not a universally bad decision to bunt with only a runner on first, or to bunt with one or more outs, but the higher the proportion of bunts that move a runner to third with less than two outs, the better.

To get an idea of how much this has changed while removing pitchers from the equation, I looked at the 2015-2019 seasons and excluded all plate appearances from the ninth spot in the batting order. That’s not a perfect way of removing pitchers, but it gets pretty close. I used this to get an idea for what percentage of bunts came in favorable situations – with at least a runner on second and no one out.

In those years, 23.2% of bunts occurred in the best situations for a sacrifice. After removing bases-empty bunts, which are clearly a different animal, we’re left with bunts in situations where a sacrifice isn’t particularly valuable. Those ill-conceived bunts cost teams roughly 0.1 runs per bunt, a shockingly high number. All other bunts – attempts for a hit or attempts to move a runner to third with only one out – carried positive run expectancy. It’s just that there were so many bunts in bad spots.

In 2024, 31.7% of bunts came in “good sacrifice” situations, with a runner on second and no one out. Increasingly, the “bad sacrifice” situations are now about going for a single with some ancillary benefits of runner advancement. On-base percentage on bunts with runners on base is up. In 2024, 25% of the bunts with runners on base ended with the batter reaching base safely, via hit, failed fielder’s choice, or error. That’s up from 22% (non-pitcher) in the 2015-2019 era, and from 17.7% from 2008 to 2012. If anything, that understates it too: Plenty of the worst hitters in baseball used to bat in front of pitchers, which limited their bunting opportunities.

Impressive Individual Efforts
Jose Altuve bunted 14 times this year. Nine of those turned into singles. That was the best performance by anyone with double-digit bunts, but it was hardly the only exceptional effort. Jake McCarthy bunted 21 times and racked up 10 singles. Luke Raley went 7-for-12. This one from Altuve was just perfect:

That’s not to say there have never been good bunters before. Dee Strange-Gordon consistently turned bunts into singles at a high clip. Altuve has been in the majors for a while. But the high-volume bunters in today’s game are more effective than they were 10 years ago in the aggregate. There are also fewer truly objectionable bunters. Francisco Lindor bunted 20 times in 2015 and reached base safely only three times. Fellow 2024 Met Jose Iglesias bunted 12 times and reached base once. There were still some bad bunters – Kevin Kiermaier and Kyle Isbel had awful results, for example – but it’s become far less common.

Bunting for a single is hardly the only positive outcome, of course. That’s why you bunt in the first place – because bunts lead to more productive outs, on average, than swinging away. Advancement is more likely and double plays are less likely. Individual efforts of the top few bunters have always been net positive. These days, those top bunters are accounting for a bigger share of overall bunts, and the results have improved proportionally.

Bunters Were Already Good
Here’s a secret: The wars were already over. In 2002, bunters batting in the 1-8 spots in the lineup cost their teams 36 runs relative to a naive expectation based on the base/out state when they batted. In 2004, that number swelled to -63 runs. It was negative in 11 of the 12 seasons from 2000-2011, with roughly 2,000 bunts a year from this cohort, which largely excludes pitchers.

The number of non-pitcher bunt attempts declined as the 21st century progressed into its second decade. By 2015, we were down to 1,500 a year or so and steadily declining. The bunts excised from the game were all the lowest-value bunts, the ones most likely to hurt the batting team. From 2012 onward, non-pitchers have produced positive value on their bunt attempts every single year. Meanwhile, bunt attempts have declined and then stabilized, around 1,100-1,200 per year. Teams aren’t dummies – they’ve cut out 800 bunts a year, or more than 25 per team, and those bunts are pretty much all the no-hope-for-a-single sacrifice attempts that drew statistically minded folks’ ire in the first place.

In that sense, you’re not really seeing anything completely new in 2024. The very best bunters in the game are a little bit better than they used to be, but not overwhelmingly so. They’re choosing better spots, but not overwhelmingly so. They’re succeeding more frequently when they aim for a hit, but good bunters have always been good at that. The real change is in the bunts that aren’t happening.

The Mariners
I’ll be honest: I didn’t expect the Mariners to top the list of best bunting teams. They seem too station-to-station, too offensively challenged, too reliant on the home run. What can I say? Appearances can be deceiving. Led by Raley, an unlikely but enthusiastic bunter, the Mariners had a league-best performance. This one was just perfect:

It was a great situation for a bunt. The Astros were shifted over toward Raley’s pull side, which left third baseman Alex Bregman on an island covering third and prevented him from crashing early. Raley disguised the bunt long enough to get everything moving, and then used his sneaky-blazing footspeed to beat it out. It’s a masterpiece of bunting.

Victor Robles is less about masterpieces and more about maximum effort. He bunts too often for his own good. That leads to a lot of iffy bunts, but also some gems:

That’s another one where reading the defense made all the difference. The Rays shifted their middle infielders away from first, which meant a bunt past the pitcher would leave Yandy Díaz helpless. This one also benefited from a bit of defensive confusion, as many good bunts do. Who was covering second when Díaz fielded the ball? More or less no one:

Hey, every little bit helps when you’re bunting. And while plenty of other Mariners contributed to their success as well – Leo Rivas and Jorge Polanco know how to handle a bat – I had to close this out with another gem from Raley. Sure, it’s against the White Sox, but those runs count too. Raley is just vicious when it comes to attacking good spots to bunt:

It’s not every day that you see a squeeze bunt go for a no-throw single. But again, Raley read the defense and placed the ball perfectly. Not much you can do about this:

Altuve might have the advantage in raw numbers, but no one made me sit up in my seat hoping for a bunt like Raley did this year. Hat tip to Davy Andrews for highlighting his hijinks early in the year, and Raley just never stopped going for it.

The Angels
By all rights, this article should be over. The Mariners were the best bunters this year, Raley was their ringleader, and they exemplified the way bunts are making offenses better in today’s game. But the Angels are altogether more confusing and more giffable, so I’m giving them a shout too.

You’d think that Ron Washington’s team would be at the very top of the bunt rate leaderboards, but the Halos attempted only 25 bunts this year, half the Mariners’ tally and seventh-lowest in baseball. The reason why is obvious: They weren’t that good at it. They weren’t the worst team in terms of runs added – that’d be the Nats, who were both prolific and bad at bunting this year – but they were impressively inefficient. No one with so few bunt attempts was nearly so bad in the aggregate.

They bunted in bad spots. They rarely reached base even when the defense was poorly positioned. This might be the worst bunt attempt you’ve seen this year:

Unless it’s this:

The lesson: Stop with all these squeeze bunts. Unless it’s against the White Sox, that is:

See, our story has a happy ending for the bunters after all. I love bunts, and I’m not afraid to use this platform to show it.

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Carlos Beltrán was the quintessential five-tool player, a switch-hitting center fielder who harnessed his physical talents and became a superstar. Aided by a high baseball IQ that was essentially his sixth tool, he spent 20 seasons in the majors, making nine All-Star teams, winning three Gold Gloves, helping five different franchises reach the playoffs, and putting together some of the most dominant stretches in postseason history once he got there. At the end of his career, he helped the Astros win a championship.

Drafted out of Puerto Rico by the Royals, Beltrán didn’t truly thrive until he was traded away. He spent the heart of his career in New York, first with the Mets — on what was at the time the largest free-agent contract in team history — and later the Yankees. He endured his ups and downs in the Big Apple and elsewhere, including his share of injuries. Had he not missed substantial portions of three seasons, he might well have reached 3,000 hits, but even as it is, he put up impressive, Cooperstown-caliber career numbers. Not only is he one of just eight players with 300 home runs and 300 stolen bases, but he also owns the highest stolen base success rate (86.4%) of any player with at least 200 attempts.

Alas, two years after Beltrán’s career ended, he was identified as the player at the center of the biggest baseball scandal in a generation: the Astros’ illegal use of video replay to steal opponents’ signs in 2017 and ’18. He was “the godfather of the whole program” in the words of Tom Koch-Weser, the team’s director of advance information, and the only player identified in commissioner Rob Manfred’s January 2020 report. But between that report and additional reporting by the Wall Street Journal, it seems apparent that the whole team, including manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow, was well aware of the system and didn’t stop him or his co-conspirators. In that light, it’s worth wondering about the easy narrative that has left Beltrán holding the bag; Hinch hardly had to break stride in getting another managerial job once his suspension ended. While Beltrán was not disciplined by the league, the fallout cost him his job as manager of the Mets before he could even oversee a game, and he has yet to get another opportunity.

Will Beltrán’s involvement in sign stealing cost him a berth in Cooperstown, the way allegations concerning performance-enhancing drugs have for a handful of players with otherwise Hall-worthy numbers? At the very least it kept him from first-ballot election, as he received 46.5% on the 2023 ballot — a share that has typically portended eventual election for less complicated candidates. His 10.6-percentage point gain last year (to 57.1%) was the largest of any returning candidate, suggesting that he’s got a real shot at election someday, though I don’t expect him to jump to 75% this year. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2025 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2016 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Billy Wagner was the ultimate underdog. Undersized and from both a broken home and an impoverished rural background, he channeled his frustrations into throwing incredibly hard — with his left hand, despite being a natural righty, for he broke his right arm twice as a child. Scouts overlooked him because he wasn’t anywhere close to six feet tall, but they couldn’t disregard his dominance over collegiate hitters using a mid-90s fastball. The Astros made him a first-round pick, and once he was converted to a relief role, his velocity went even higher.

Thanks to outstanding lower-body strength, coordination, and extraordinary range of motion, the 5-foot-10 Wagner was able to reach 100 mph with consistency — 159 times in 2003, according to The Bill James Handbook. Using a hard slider learned from teammate Brad Lidge, he kept blowing the ball by hitters into his late 30s to such an extent that he owns the record for the highest strikeout rate of any pitcher with at least 900 innings. He was still dominant when he walked away from the game following the 2010 season, fresh off posting a career-best ERA. Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday afternoon, Josh Hader took the mound at the start of the ninth inning. His Houston Astros were losing 3-0 to the Detroit Tigers in the first game of their three-game Wild Card series. Riley Greene smashed a one-hopper over the right field fence for a double, but Hader retired the other three batters he faced and departed with the three-run deficit still intact.

This was strange! That’s not how teams use their closers. It felt weird right away – to the broadcasters calling the game, to the chatters who flooded us with questions about it, and also to me. And it felt consequential the next day, too, when Hader was summoned for his usual job. This time, the Astros were tied, and there were runners on first and second with two away in the bottom of the eighth. It was the biggest spot in the playoffs for the Astros. Hader walked Spencer Torkelson on four pitches, then threw a fastball right down the middle that Andy Ibáñez tattooed for a bases-clearing double. That made it 5-2 Tigers, and just like that, Houston’s season was over.

If you want to, there’s an easy through-line to trace here. Hader made a low-leverage appearance, and then he had to pitch again on no rest. He didn’t have his best stuff in that second game, so he paid the price. Cause and effect, simple as that. Read the rest of this entry »

Just before the top of the ninth, with the Astros trailing the Tigers, 5-2, in the second game of the AL Wild Card series, something caught my eye. Several somethings, actually. Will Vest, who despite his more than 200 career appearances has just five saves, was taking a moment on the back of the mound to rub the baseball and breathe. The low third base camera found him, and it was hard to differentiate between the routine, meditative acts that Vest always uses to calm himself before an appearance, and the twitches and tics that might only be surfacing now, during the biggest moment of his career.

When Vest determined that the ball had been sufficiently rubbed, he put his glove back on and tossed the ball into it. He adjusted the left shoulder of his jersey, then his hat, then the right shoulder. He rubbed his fingertips against his thumb and his palm to disperse the sweat, and then rubbed his whole hand against his pants leg. He took shallow breaths as he gently worked his foot into the dirt in front of the rubber. He dumped the ball from his glove back into his pitching hand, then pressed it against his right hip in order to wedge it securely into a changeup grip. He brought his glove to his belly and briefly touched the back of his hand to his butt before nesting it in his glove. He came set, then lifted his left leg ever so slightly and came set again.

I didn’t catch all that the first time; my attention was focused on the background. Those several somethings were flickering in gold, setting off tiny lens flares all around the screen, but because Vest was the hero of the shot, they were out of focus and blurred. I puzzled over what they might be, wondering at first whether the Houston fans were shining their cell phone flashlights, holding some sort of vigil for the team’s flatlining season. It took me a moment to remember the King Tuck crowns. Read the rest of this entry »

The Detroit Tigers continue to ride their wave of jubilation into October.

The most surprising playoff team beat the Houston Astros 5–2 in Game 2 of the best-of-three Wild Card round on Wednesday to advance to the American League Division Series. Manager A.J. Hinch successfully navigated a bullpen game that included only two turbulent innings. Tyler Holton, who threw just two pitches in Detroit’s Game 1 victory, acted as a left-handed opener to ensure the hard-hitting heart of Houston’s order (Kyle Tucker and Yordan Alvarez) would be forced to take an at-bat against a lefty.

After a clean first from Holton, sinkerballer Brenan Hanifee entered the game and narrowly escaped a scoreless second inning that featured two heart-stopping foul balls off the bat of Jason Heyward, either of which would’ve been a one- or two-run double with two outs. Hanifee gave the Tigers five outs, wrapping up his day against Jose Altuve before another lefty, this time Brant Hurter, entered to face Tucker and Alvarez. Hinch’s shrewd matchups and the Tigers’ pitching staff held Tucker hitless in the series.

Every bullpen game comes with a sort of Russian Roulette-ish risk that any one of the pitchers might have a bad day and cough up the game on their own. Hurter, who had a microscopic 3% walk rate in his 45 big league innings this year, looked for a minute like he might be that guy. He surrendered four baserunners and four hard-hit balls across 1 2/3 innings, exiting when Houston’s lineup turned over to Altuve with one out and two runners on in the bottom of the fifth.

At that moment, Hinch called on high-leverage reliever Beau Brieske, who closed Tuesday’s Game 1, to face Altuve and the heavy-hitting part of the Astros order. After getting both Altuve and Tucker out to escape extreme danger in the fifth, Brieske became the pitcher of record in the next half inning when Parker Meadows broke the scoreless tie with a solo home run off of Hunter Brown, who had been dealing to that point. Brown’s pitch to Meadows wasn’t bad; it was so far inside that most hitters would’ve at best been jammed by it, but somehow Meadows tucked his hands in, steered it fair, and doinked it off the right field foul pole.

Parker Meadows doinks one off the foul pole!@Tigers lead! #Postseason pic.twitter.com/JQh3XumoZa

— MLB (@MLB) October 2, 2024

This was the lone blemish in an otherwise stellar day for Brown, who allowed just four baserunners and struck out nine across 5 2/3 innings. Brieske, who as a former soft-tossing starter turned fire-breathing reliever looks like he might be a Liam Hendriks sequel of sorts, navigated the rest of the top half of Houston’s order in the bottom of the sixth.

Then for a couple innings all hell broke loose. Hinch called upon 22-year-old Jackson Jobe, one of baseball’s best pitching prospects, to work the bottom of the seventh. Jobe, who entered the game with four innings of Major League experience, nearly had a nuclear meltdown as he plunked Victor Caratini, narrowly avoided a pitch clock violation, couldn’t hear the PitchCom through the Houstonian crowd noise, and allowed consecutive singles to Jeremy Peña and Mauricio Dubón to load the bases. Astros manager Joe Espada then pulled his bench’s power-hitting lever by pinch hitting Jon Singleton for Chas McCormick with the bags full and nobody out. After Singleton took a very healthy rip at an early-count pitch, which he fouled back, he hit a well-struck grounder to a diving Spencer Torkelson whose on-target, one-hop throw to the plate was bobbled by the usually sure-handed catcher Jake Rogers.

SINGLETON TIES IT UP WITH A RBI SINGLE! 0 OUTS, BASES LOADED FOR THE ASTROS IN THE BOTTOM OF THE 7TH!

pic.twitter.com/2cxQAzuFGO

— TheSportsChronicle (@ATSportssss) October 2, 2024

Not only had the Astros scored, but the Tigers had failed to notch an out, and suddenly the top of Houston’s order was due to hit with the bases still juiced. Altuve hit a fairly shallow fly ball into foul territory along the right field line, where Matt Vierling caught it. The right fielder seemed surprised that Peña made an aggressive attempt to score, and his rather lackadaisical throw home was barely too late to snare Peña. Houston took a 2–1 lead.

The @Astros take the lead in the 7th! #Postseason pic.twitter.com/NpQepFzbKO

— MLB (@MLB) October 2, 2024

With the Tigers seemingly flailing and Tucker and Alvarez due up, Hinch removed Jobe (who seemed miffed at Vierling’s effort on the prior play as he left the field) in favor of sinker/slider lefty Sean Guenther, who got Tucker to ground into an inning-ending double play to keep the Tigers within single-swing striking distance.

To say the Tigers responded to the lead change in the eighth would be an understatement. Houston bullpen fixture Ryan Pressly came in to relieve Bryan Abreu, who bussed Brown’s table in the sixth and worked an easy seventh. Pressly quickly surrendered two singles, threw a wild pitch that allowed the tying run to score, and then walked Colt Keith. Espada then pulled the ripcord on Pressly and inserted closer Josh Hader. Hader walked Torkelson to load the bases and then Andy Ibáñez — pinch-hitting for Zach McKinstry — cleared them with a three-run double hooked into the left field corner.

Andy Ibanez CLEARS THE BASES

Astros 6 outs away from elimination ?

(via @MLB) pic.twitter.com/c3fZ95Jx5R

— Yahoo Sports (@YahooSports) October 2, 2024

The Tigers were back on top, 5–2, and they didn’t look back. Guenther worked the eighth and Will Vest, who ripped the sleeves off the bottom of Houston’s lineup across 1 2/3 dominant innings in Game 1, shut the door in the ninth to send the Tigers to the ALDS.

This postseason series win is the Tigers’ first since 2013, when the team was managed by Hall of Famer Jim Leyland and a carton of cigarettes. They have two off days before Saturday’s Game 1 tilt with the division rival Guardians in Cleveland. Right-hander Tanner Bibee, who has a 4.50 ERA and a 1.04 WHIP across 22 innings in his four starts against the Tigers this year, will start for the Guardians. Reese Olson, who was rostered for the Wild Card series but did not pitch, is the presumptive Game 1 starter for Detroit.

Houston’s season ends earlier than it has in any year since 2016, the last time the team failed to make the playoffs. The Astros had advanced to the ALCS in each of the past seven seasons, a borderline dynastic stretch for the franchise. Through that perspective, getting knocked out by the Tigers in the Wild Card Series is a major disappointment. However, at a certain point earlier this year, it would have been considered a miracle for this team to make the postseason at all. The Astros got here despite a glacial start to their season and several key injuries to their pitching staff. Those injuries may impact next year, too, as the timing of Cristian Javier’s and Luis Garcia’s Tommy John surgeries have them on pace for a mid- to late-season return rather than in early 2025.

Additionally, third baseman Alex Bregman, who was Houston’s best player in these two playoff games, hits free agency this offseason. With several highly paid Astros coming off the books (most notably Justin Verlander who didn’t pitch enough for his $40 million option to vest), the team has room to sign Bregman. That said, Tucker and Framber Valdez are both entering their third year of arbitration, and their futures with the club might be impacted by what happens with Bregman. Whatever happens, the Astros may not look the same for too much longer.

A day after Jared Goff was perfect on Monday Night Football — the Detroit Lions quarterback went 18-for-18 with a pair of touchdown passes — Tarik Skubal was simply very good, though that was enough for the Tigers to win the opener of their best-of-three Wild Card series against the Houston Astros. In a game the team probably needed to win — losing with their ace on the mound would have put the Cinderella club squarely behind the eight ball — Skubal threw six scoreless innings to help lead Detroit to a 3-1 win.

He obviously didn’t do it alone. A.J. Hinch’s mix-and-match bullpen threw the most innings in the majors this season, and they sealed the deal against a normally potent Houston lineup. The unheralded yet talented quartet of Will Vest, Tyler Holton, Jason Foley, and Beau Brieske combined to hold the lead — albeit not without a white-knuckle scare in the ninth. As for Detroit’s hitters, they didn’t exactly knock down the fences, but they scored enough to support the hurlers. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that Detroit’s magical run through the end of the regular season is complete, snapping a decade-long postseason drought, the Tigers have been rewarded with a first-round matchup against the formidable Astros. Not only will this be the first postseason meeting between these two franchises, it’ll be an October reunion of sorts between Detroit manager A.J. Hinch and the ballclub he led to two World Series appearances and one championship, before he was fired in the aftermath of the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal. Houston has been an October staple since 2015 and will be attempting to reach its eighth straight ALCS.

This isn’t a classic David and Goliath story, however. These two teams have been the best in the American League since the beginning of July, though the Tigers aren’t exactly structured like a traditional juggernaut, and the Astros aren’t as strong as they have been in recent seasons. Houston has plenty of postseason experience up and down its roster, but Detroit is young and essentially playing with house money after its surprising playoff berth.

The Tigers’ surge to the playoffs was almost entirely driven by their pitching staff. Since July 1, they’ve had the second-best run prevention unit in the majors, allowing just 3.58 runs per game. This is despite the fact that they traded away Jack Flaherty, their second-best starter over the first four months of the season, at the deadline, when they were 6.5 games out of the final Wild Card spot with 2.8% playoff odds. Over the two months since then, Detroit essentially has turned to a two-man rotation, with the other three slots being covered by a rotating cast of openers and bulk relievers. It’s been unorthodox to say the least, but you can’t argue with the results.

Of course, it helps that the Tigers have the odds-on favorite to win the AL Cy Young award leading their pitching staff. Tarik Skubal has ascended into the stratosphere this year, winning the pitching Triple Crown and leading all American League pitchers in WAR. The Tigers will hand the ball to Skubal in Game 1, which might be the only traditional start the Astros see in this series.

The pitching plan for Games 2 and 3 is a complete mystery, one that Hinch seems to be relishing. “I’m going to try to keep everybody guessing just as much as I have with you guys for the last two months,” Hinch told reporters over the weekend. Keider Montero was the other traditional starter the Tigers leaned on during the past two months, but he doesn’t fit the profile of a big-game starter. It’s possible they’ll turn to Reese Olson in one of these games, but he hasn’t pitched past the fourth inning in any of his three starts since returning from a shoulder injury a few weeks ago. That means it could come down to the same opener-bulk strategy that’s been so successful over the last few months, with unsung heroes Brant Hurter or Ty Madden getting an opportunity to make an impact on the biggest stage.

There’s also the question of how the Tigers are going to deploy Jackson Jobe, their top pitching prospect. They called him up during the final week of the regular season, and he made two appearances out of the bullpen, including a three-inning outing on Saturday. It’s unclear if they trust him enough to hand him an actual start during this series, but he should see some action at some point, even if it’s as a bulk reliever.

And then there’s the rest of the Detroit bullpen. Beyond the team’s gaggle of long relievers, there’s a ton of depth to cover the later innings. That’s a huge reason why the Tigers were so successful down the stretch. And it’s not like their bullpen is stacked with big names; instead, it’s guys like Jason Foley (3.15 ERA), Tyler Holton (2.19), Beau Brieske (3.59), and Will Vest (2.82) getting deployed interchangeably in high-leverage situations.

Offensively, the Tigers rely heavily on just a handful of key contributors and have had a couple of guys get hot over the last two months to help fuel their postseason run.

Since returning from the injured list in early August, Parker Meadows has been one of the best outfielders in baseball. He’s slashed .291/.333/.500 over the last two months and played great defense in center, helping him accumulate 2.1 WAR during that timeframe, the 18th best mark in all of baseball. Both Kerry Carpenter and Riley Greene have been solid contributors throughout the season when they’ve been healthy, and both were activated off the IL in August to help Detroit’s playoff push. And Spencer Torkelson has finished the season strong after getting sent down to the minors in June. Since he was recalled in mid-August, Torkelson is batting .248/.338/.444 with six home runs and a 125 wRC+.

For the Astros, the biggest lingering question is the availability of Yordan Alvarez. He injured his knee sliding into second base on September 22 and has been sidelined since then. He’s expected to take some batting practice on Monday, which could be a good sign for his recovery, but his knees have given him trouble for much of his career, and I’d expect the Astros to be cautious with him.

Even without the big man anchoring their lineup, Houston has plenty of firepower to deploy, all coming from the usual suspects. Kyle Tucker missed a couple of months of the season due to a fractured shin, but he was in the middle of a career year before that injury and picked up right where he left off when he returned at the beginning of September. Jose Altuve is on the downswing of his career, but he’s still a potent table-setter atop the lineup, and Alex Bregman has rebounded nicely from a slow start to the season. Yainer Diaz has been fantastic in his first full season as Houston’s starting catcher, so much so that even on some of the days that he didn’t catch, the Astros used him at first base to keep his bat in the lineup regularly.

Unlike the Tigers, the Astros boast a traditional, playoff-tested rotation that they’ll need to lean into during this short series. Don’t mind their full-season stats listed in the table up top; since June 1, Houston starters have had the second-best ERA in the majors (3.31) and the fifth-best FIP (3.73). Framber Valdez will take the ball in Game 1; he had a 1.96 ERA across his 12 starts (78 innings) during the second half of the season. Next up will be Yusei Kikuchi Houston’s big trade deadline acquisition. He’s been absolutely phenomenal since switching teams thanks to some pitch mix adjustments and a honed attack plan for his slider. He’s struck out nearly a third of the batters he’s faced since joining the Astros while keeping his walk rate under control.

If the series goes to Game 3, Hunter Brown should get the call, something no one could have expected after he started off the year with a 9.78 ERA through his first six starts of the season. After adding a sinker to his repertoire in May, he lowered his ERA to 3.49 by the end of the year. Perhaps surprisingly, Justin Verlander isn’t an option to make a start during this series, though he could be called on in the Division Series should the Astros advance.

Houston’s bullpen has nearly as many high-quality options as Detroit’s does, but the top Astros relievers are far more battle tested. Josh Hader was the big offseason signing, and he’s been solid, if a little shaky, as the primary closer; a bout of homeritis drove his FIP higher than it’s ever been in a full season (excluding 2020). The former closer Ryan Pressly and flame-throwing Bryan Abreu make a formidable setup duo, and Héctor Neris, claimed off the garbage heap in August, gives Houston four high-leverage arms with plenty of playoff experience.

Having gone around the horn and then some to identify the strongest players at each position among the remaining contenders in the National and American Leagues, I’ve turned to the weakest ones, with the NL slate running yesterday. This is something of an offshoot of my annual Replacement Level Killers series, and in fact, even some confirmed October participants have spots that still fit the bill as true lineup sinkholes, only this time with no trade deadline to help fill them. For this, I’m considering full-season performance but with an eye to who’s best or worst now, with injuries and adjustments in mind. Unlike the Killers series, I’m also considering pitching, with the shortening of rotations and bullpens factoring into my deliberations.

Until now, the pool of teams I’ve considered has consisted of eight clubs in the American League and seven in the National League. On Thursday, we officially lost the Mariners, who were mathematically eliminated with wins by the Royals and Tigers. What’s more, the Twins stand on the brink of elimination — they own the head-to-head tiebreakers with both the Tigers and Royals, but are three games back with three to play — so I’ve opted to exclude them here.

For this installment, I’ll highlight the biggest trouble spots from among an AL field that still includes the Yankees (who clinched the AL East on Thursday), Guardians, Astros, Orioles, Royals, and Tigers. Read the rest of this entry »