No pitcher has ever been in quite the position that Gerrit Cole is. The 29-year-old righty with the triple-digit heat has yet to win or even reach the World Series, but his Astros are still favored to beat the Yankees in the ALCS, and he’ll have more than a little influence over that outcome, beginning with Tuesday afternoon’s Game 3 start. Meanwhile, though he has yet to win the AL Cy Young award, after a season in which his 326 strikeouts, 2.50 ERA, 2.64 FIP and 7.4 fWAR all led the the American league, Cole is at the very least a co-favorite alongside teammate Justin Verlander. Before we know the answer to whether he’ll claim the latter piece of hardware, he will reach free agency, putting him in position to ink the largest deal ever for a pitcher.

That could make for an impressive trifecta, and one whose only precedent comes with an asterisk. In December 1974, at the end of a season in which he helped the A’s to their third straight championship and claimed the AL Cy Young award on the basis of a 25-12 won-loss record with a 2.49 ERA, Catfish Hunter had his two-year, $200,000 contract with Oakland voided by a three-person arbitration panel after owner Charlie Finley failed to make deferred annuity payments in a timely fashion as stipulated by the deal. Every team except the Giants attempted to woo the sudden free agent, who on December 31, signed a record-setting five-year, $3.2 million deal with the Yankees. A year later, that same panel, comprised of MLB Player Relations Committee chief negotiator John Gaherin, MLBPA Executive Director Marvin Miller, and impartial chairman Peter Seitz, would rule in favor of pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, nullifying the reserve clause and creating free agency as we know it.

Since then, only four hurlers have had their Cy Young awards line up with free agency:

• Rick Sutcliffe, following a 1984 season in which he went 16-1 after a trade from the Indians, helping the Cubs to their first postseason berth since 1945. He re-signed with the Cubs via a five-year, $9.5 million contract that briefly made him the game’s highest-paid pitcher, and went on to make a pair of All-Star teams during the deal, first in 1987, when he placed second in the NL Cy Young race, and again in 1989, when he helped the Cubs win another NL East title.
• Mark Davis, following a 1989 season in which his he posted a 1.85 ERA and an NL-best 44 saves for the Padres. He signed a four-year, $13 million deal with the Royals, but quickly descended into replacement-level territory.
• Greg Maddux, following a 1992 season in which he went 20-11 with a 2.18 ERA for the Cubs. Rejecting an offer from the Yankees that was reportedly worth $6 million more, he instead accepted a five-year, $28 million deal to join Tom Glavine and John Smoltz with the Braves. He won the next three Cy Youngs as well, while helping Atlanta to a 1995 championship plus pennants in ’96 and, after signing a five-year extension in mid-’97, again in ’99.
• Roger Clemens, following a 2004 season in which he’d joined the Astros, having been lured out of retirement by close friend and former Yankees teammate Andy Pettitte’s decision to sign with Houston. Pitching on a one-year, $5 million deal, Clemens proceeded to go 18-4 with a 2.98 ERA and 218 strikeouts at age 41 en route to his record seventh Cy Young award and his 10th All-Star selection. He re-signed with Houston on a one-year, $18 million deal (a single-season record for a pitcher), lowered his ERA to 1.87, made another All-Star team, and helped the Astros to their first World Series.

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The St. Louis Cardinals are having a terrible postseason at the plate. They were no-hit for seven and two-third innings by Aníbal Sánchez for goodness sake, and while their subsequent struggles against Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg made more sense, it’s fair to say the team has a problem. But St. Louis had the worst non-pitcher wRC+ among teams to qualify for the postseason, so it’s hardly a surprise to see its roster scuffle against playoff rotations.

The Cardinals’ recent three game stretch of futility leaves their team postseason slash line at .207/.264/.331, a truly grim line. No one is questioning their credentials as the worst postseason offense. The next team on the list, though, might surprise you: it’s the Houston Astros, who are hitting a collective .218/.281/.367 through seven games. A dramatic Carlos Correa home run evened their series with the Yankees 1-1, but they’ve still only produced three runs over two games of the ALCS.

Houston’s offensive ineptitude hasn’t yet caught up to them, but it’s still concerning. Heck, the team literally cracked the code in their shelling of Tyler Glasnow in the ALDS, and their offense has struggled mightily even after accounting for that. There’s some chance, however remote, that the Astros’ offense is doomed, that everyone turned into a pumpkin at once. There’s a higher chance that we should just completely ignore this result; during the regular season, the offense produced a 126 wRC+, easily the best in baseball. But rather than take either extreme course, let’s take a closer look at what has happened and see if we can find any takeaways.

One thing you’ll hear ad nauseam at FanGraphs is that context is important when it comes to looking at a team’s season-long stats. Postseason rosters can be constructed quite differently than a team’s regular-season squad, and looking at 162 games of fill-ins and getaway day lineups can obscure a team’s true talent level. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s amazing how quickly a baseball game that has gone on for four hours and forty-nine minutes can end. On the first pitch of the bottom of the 11th inning — before the broadcast had even gotten a chance to fully cut away from its commercial break housekeeping — Carlos Correa ended Sunday night’s epic affair with a single swing.

It was a no-doubter right off the bat, and as Correa watched it fly, he pulled off one of the best postseason home-run celebrations we’ve yet seen. He walked down the line, bat parallel to the ground in his hand, before casting it aside; he cocked a hand to his ear, waiting for the cheers, daring any disapproval. Then, taking off down the bases, he pointed a finger upward, to all the fans leaping from their seats, before shooting his batting helmet into the waiting arms of his teammates, gathered around home plate to greet him.

One has to go on quite a journey to reach a point of such inspired triumph, and Game 2 certainly provided such a journey. Far from the one-sidedness of Game 1, Game 2 saw the Yankees and the Astros exchanging narrow leads before spending five innings knotted in a 2-2 tie. While the Yankees’ bats and the individual performance of Masahiro Tanaka shared the spotlight in Game 1, it was pitching on both sides that took center stage for most of Game 2 — though the two teams constructed their dominant performances in rather different ways.

In the early going, the game looked like it could easily get out of hand for the Yankees. Starter James Paxton walked George Springer to lead off the bottom of the first, which, unfortunately for him, turned out to be a harbinger of command issues to come. Paxton never seemed comfortable; there was some speculation that he was tipping pitches, or that the Astros were stealing signs. Whatever the cause, it didn’t take long for the Astros to jump on him. A single from Alex Bregman, a walk from Yordan Alvarez, and a double from Correa in the bottom of the second gave the Astros an early 1-0 lead. After Michael Brantley and José Altuve reached on back-to-back singles with one out in the bottom of the third, Aaron Boone went to his bullpen. Any hope of length out of Paxton was dashed early. Read the rest of this entry »

In a matchup between the two best lineups in baseball, you don’t expect to see a pitching duel. In a matchup between the team with the best starting rotation in baseball and the team with the best bullpen in baseball, you don’t expect to see many runs scored. This series was hard to characterize before it started, but last night’s Game 1 of the ALCS between the Astros and the Yankees felt neither like a pitching duel nor a shootout; it felt like a regular season game between two mismatched opponents, the last thing we expected from this much-anticipated series.

Soon enough, the games will be dominated by high velocity and overpowering four-seam fastballs. Justin Verlander and James Paxton face off today, followed by Gerrit Cole and Luis Severino. The flames the broadcast shows on the score bug for the fastest fastballs will get a workout. But yesterday, we got the kitchen sink; Zack Greinke, who sometimes throws his fastball more slowly than his changeup, took on Masahiro Tanaka, who pitches off of his slider and threw the fifth-lowest rate of fastballs among all starters.

Tanaka stuck with the blueprint that has served him well throughout his time in the majors; an even split of sliders, splitters, and fastballs. The slider was on point all night, and it’s a good thing; all eight of the swinging strikes he generated came on sliders, and it also got more called strikes than any other pitch.

Now, eight swinging strikes isn’t an overpowering amount; Tanaka struck out only four batters. Even with the deadened postseason baseball, allowing that much contact is no way to live for a pitcher. How did Tanaka make it work? He controlled the count to great effect. He allowed 13 balls in play, and exactly one of them came with the batter ahead in the count (a pop up off the bat of Kyle Tucker). Read the rest of this entry »

In a rematch of the 2017 ALCS, which they won in seven games, the Astros will face off against a Yankees team that now has much more firepower in the lineup –Edwin Encarnacion, DJ LeMahieu, Giancarlo Stanton, Gleyber Torres and Gio Urshela weren’t on the 2017 team— and another frontline starting pitcher in James Paxton. Of course, the Astros have added some big names of their own. Yordan Alvarez, Michael Brantley, Gerrit Cole and Zack Greinke are the team’s most notable players without a 2017 World Series ring.

Kyle Tucker is in the Game 1 starting lineup, with Josh Reddick on the bench. Brad Peacock and Bryan Abreu have been added to the roster with Wade Miley and Myles Straw left off for this round.

Here’s how every member of the Astros’ 2019 ALCS roster was originally acquired. The team’s full RosterResource Depth Chart and Payroll pages are also available as a resource.

Homegrown (8)

• José Altuve, 2B: Amateur Free Agent (Venezuela) March 2007
• George Springer, OF: Drafted First Round (11) 2011
• Carlos Correa, SS: Drafted First Round (1) 2012
• Bryan Abreu, RP: Amateur Free Agent (Dominican Republic) November 2013
• Josh James, RP: Drafted 34th Round 2014
• Jose Urquidy, RP/SP: Amateur Free Agent (Mexico) March 2015
• Alex Bregman, 3B: Drafted First Round (2) 2015
• Kyle Tucker, OF: Drafted First Round (5) 2015

Total WAR: 23.8 Read the rest of this entry »

Gerrit Cole simply dominated the Rays across his two starts in the ALDS. Across almost 16 innings, he allowed just one run and nine baserunners while striking out nearly half of the batters he faced. That lone run he allowed was a solo home run off the bat of Eric Sogard. Of all the players on the Rays’ playoff roster, no one would have guessed it would be Sogard to hit a dinger off one of the best pitchers in all of baseball. But was it really that unlikely?

For his part, Sogard put together a career year this season. He posted career highs in ISO, wRC+, and WAR while launching 13 home runs, two more than his career total across eight previous seasons. Long viewed as a light-hitting utility infielder, Sogard showed he was capable of hitting for power in a way that he had never been able to before. And yet, he only averaged an 84.7 mph exit velocity this year, and his hard hit rate sat in the third percentile in the majors. But by adding an extra 2.5 degrees to his average launch angle — and with some help from the dragless ball — 13 of those hard-ish hit fly balls snuck over the fence.

Cole did struggle a bit with the long ball this season, allowing 29 home runs and a career-high 16.9% home run per fly ball rate. That’s 10 more home runs than he allowed last year and just two fewer than the career high he allowed in his final season in Pittsburgh in 2017. But Cole’s home run troubles and Sogard’s newfound power only tell part of the story in broad generalizations. So let’s dig into the specific event to see if we can find anything more interesting. For starts, here’s the video of Sogard’s home run in case you missed it last night.

Sogard gets around on a 95-mph fastball on the inside corner and hits it solidly enough to reach four rows back in right field. The pitch itself was rather peculiar. Cole’s average fastball velocity this season was 97.1 mph. In the game last night, he averaged 97.3 mph. This fastball was the second slowest fastball he threw all night. When Cole’s fastball velocity has dipped that low, opposing batters have had a much easier time handling his heater. Here’s a table showing how batters have fared against his fastball at different velocities: Read the rest of this entry »

After two very different Division Series, the two strongest teams in the AL by win totals and run differentials will meet in the ALCS. The Yankees (103-59) won just two games more than the Twins during the regular season, and were outhomered by one, yet they continued their post-millennial postseason dominance of Minnesota, beating them in a Division Series for the fifth time in the past 17 seasons, outscoring them by a combined total of 23-7 and producing the round’s only sweep. The Astros (107-55) looked as though they might sweep of the Rays as well after Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole produced two of the postseason’s most stifling performances to date, yet they needed the full five games to advance thanks to some strong pitching by the Rays, who kept most of the Astros’ big bats at bay.

This series is a real heavyweight bout. It’s the fifth time that two 100-win teams have matched up in a postseason series during the Wild Card era, all of which have taken place within the past three years: the 2017 World Series between the Astros (101-61) and Dodgers (104-58), the 2018 Division Series between the Red Sox (108-54) and Yankees (100-62), the subsequent ALCS matchup between those Red Sox and the Astros (103-59), and the aforementioned Yankees-Twins ALDS this year. In terms of combined wins by the two teams, this pairing is second only to last year’s Red Sox-Astros ALCS. Additionally, of course, this is a rematch of the 2017 ALCS, which was won by the Astros in a seven-game series during which home teams went undefeated. Houston has home-field advantage this time around as well, though they’re the one team from this pair who has yet to win a postseason game on the road. The series opens in Houston on Saturday, October 12, at 8 pm. Read the rest of this entry »

Minute Maid Park roared when Roberto Osuna‘s slider eluded Ji-Man Choi’s bat for the final out of Thursday’s Game 5, but then again, it had already been roaring for some time. The crowd of people within its walls hollered and yelped as their fire-breathing dragon of an ace took the mound to start the game, and they shouted some more as he struck out the first two hitters of the night. When the home team came to bat and scratched across four runs in the first inning, they could barely contain themselves. They bellowed and barked and caterwauled, more quietly in the middle but even louder at the end, watching the best pitcher on the planet today render yet another opposing lineup into silence.

The Houston Astros defeated the Tampa Bay Rays by a score of 6-1 on Thursday in an ALDS Game 5 that never really felt that close. Houston’s offense took a commanding lead early, and Gerrit Cole was in command throughout, tossing eight innings of one-run, two-hit, two-walk baseball while striking out 10. With the performance, he managed a combined 15.2 innings pitched in two victories over the Rays in this series, allowing just one run on six hits and three walks while striking out 25 — the second-most over a pitcher’s first two postseason games in any season ever.

The victory advances the Astros into the ALCS for a third straight year, where they will face the New York Yankees with Game 1 scheduled for Saturday at 8:08 p.m. The Yankees haven’t played since Monday, when they clinched a three-game sweep over the Minnesota Twins. The two teams virtually matched each other step for step during the seven games they faced each other during the regular season, with the Astros going 4-3 and outscoring New York just 39-37. Read the rest of this entry »

In the fourth inning of Tuesday night’s Game 4, with José Altuve on first base, one out, and the Rays already up by three, Yordan Álvarez hit a deep fly ball to right-center field. You’d have been forgiven, in this home run-happy era, for thinking at first that the ball had left the park. You’d similarly have lost not one whit of credibility had you assumed that Kevin Kiermaier, one of the best center fielders of his era, might catch the ball on the run. But neither of those two things happened; the ball instead bounced beautifully off the right-center field wall and hung, for just a moment, in the air above Kiermaier’s head. That was the moment — when the ball hung briefly in stark contrast against dark blue — in which Gary Pettis, the Astros’ third-base coach since 2014, had to decide whether to send Altuve home.

As Ben Clemens pointed out in the game chat, our WPA Inquirer suggests that at the time Pettis made his decision, the Astros would have had about a 28.1% chance of winning the game had Altuve stopped at third, a 17.7% chance of winning the game if he went and was thrown out (which is what happened), and a 29.8% chance of winning the game had he run and scored. That distribution suggests, all other things being equal, that Pettis had to believe Altuve was likely to score at least 86% of the time in order to justify sending him (29.8 – 17.7 = 12.1; 12.1 * 0.86 + 17.7 = 28.1). Given that math, I find it hard to fault Pettis for his choice to run Altuve. It took two essentially perfect throws, from Keirmaier and Willy Adames in turn, plus a terrific tag from Travis d’Arnaud, to get Altuve at the plate by a hair. I know it won’t make the Astros feel better given the result, but it was fun to watch. Read the rest of this entry »

Justin Verlander has never started a game on short rest in the way we conventionally think about short rest starts. Back in 2011, Verlander started Game 1 of the ALDS against the Yankees, but the game was suspended after one inning; he then started Game 3 of that series on two days’ rest. In 2017, Verlander started Game 1 of the ALDS against Boston, pitching six innings and throwing 99 pitches. He followed that start up with 2.2 innings of relief pitching after three days’ rest. Neither appearance really fits what we might expect to see from Verlander today when he starts on three days’ rest after pitching seven shutout innings on Friday.

Even if we add a history of Verlander making starts on short rest, given the very small number of starts and the huge time gap between them, it wouldn’t be especially relevant. Similarly, that Dallas Keuchel just fared poorly on short rest against the Cardinals probably also doesn’t have much bearing on what Verlander manages. The same is true for other pitchers over the last dozen years. There just isn’t a great body of evidence to tell us what we might see over the course of one game. What we do know is that Verlander is pitching a day earlier than he normally would, and that probably has some effect on his body and arm.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that pitching on short rest makes Verlander slightly weaker as a pitcher. We don’t know this to be the case, but it is certainly possible. And we can make another assumption that Verlander being slightly weaker means that his fastball won’t be as hard as it would be typically. Verlander’s fastball averaged 94.6 mph this season and in his start on Friday, it averaged 94.5 mph. If we wanted to know how Verlander might pitch on short rest, we could look at starts where his average fastball velocity was something less than his season-long average. Read the rest of this entry »