After getting a pair of home runs and an RBI double from superstar rookie shortstop Carlos Correa, the Astros took a 6-2 lead into the top of the eighth inning. Protecting a four run lead just six outs to go, Houston had a 96.8% chance of winning, which would have put advanced them to the ALCS to await the winner of the Blue Jays/Rangers series.

Then Will Harris gave up consecutive singles to Alex Rios, Alcides Escobar, Ben Zobrist, and Lorenzo Cain, as the Royals singled their way back into the game. With the go-ahead run suddenly at the plate, the Astros turned to left-hander Tony Sipp to go after Eric Hosmer, but Hosmer continued the single streak, plating another run and keeping the bases loaded. The lead was down to 6-4 and the tying run was in scoring position, with Kendrys Morales, the team’s most productive hitter this year, stepping to the plate. The team’s chances of winning had fallen to 55.6%.

But even with the Royals roaring back and Morales a quality hitter, there was also some upside to the at-bat. Morales is a double play machine, frequently hitting ground balls with men on base, and lacking the speed to prevent the opponents from turning two on just about any ball hit on the infield. Morales hit in 24 double plays this year, fifth most in baseball, and if Sipp could just get him to keep the ball on the infield, the Astros could put the comeback to a halt in a hurry.

Sipp did his job, and Morales did exactly what the Royals did not what him to do; hit a one-hop bouncer back to the mound. But everything that happened after Morales hit the ball is a reminder of just how small the differences can be between winning and losing.

Sipp just missed fielding the ball himself, and if he had gloved it cleanly, that’s a 1-2-3 double play, cutting down both the run at the plate and Morales at first base. That would have been the most perfect outcome the Astros could have hoped for, but the ball ricocheted off Sipp’s glove and out to shortstop.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

Well, it happened again.

I don’t need to remind you what happened last September 30, because it was one of the more memorable playoff games of our era. And then Monday, the same thing and the same team repeated. Many of the specific details weren’t alike, but the feelings were all the same — a game that was effectively over, followed by a sense of witnessing the improbable. A year ago, the Royals rallied two times. Monday, they rallied just once. Yet the odds they faced at the lowest points were similar, and thus similar odds were overcome. It doesn’t take long to develop a reputation for this. Luke Gregerson must find the Royals unkillable.

Read the rest of this entry »

Did you hear the news? Last postseason, the Royals made quite a name for themselves. In the midst of their first playoff run in 30 years, Kansas City carved out their own brand of baseball. For the first time in a long time, “Royals baseball” meant something positive, something exciting, something worth watching. The Royals captured our hearts until the final out of Game 7, with their unique blend of speed, defense and a dominant bullpen — a postseason formula that had long lurked in the shadows of the traditional power pitching and power hitting approaches.

Did you hear the news? What’s written above still holds true, but there’s a new Royals in town. You might not have heard about them, because they haven’t yet made their feel-good World Series run that still only has something like a 1-in-3 chance of actually materializing. Also, the Old Royals are still here and they’re still quite good, and these New Royals don’t quite feel like the Old Royals, but that’s just on the surface. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that the Houston Astros are the New Royals.

Speed

The Astros are the New Royals because of their speed. Did you know the Astros had speed? I’m not even talking about Triples King, Evan Gattis. No, I’m talking about real speed. Did you know the Astros stole 121 bases this year? Most in the American League and 17 more than the Old Royals?

Read the rest of this entry »

In a way, it felt like the Yankees were lifeless. Few fans expressed surprise when the team was ultimately shut out, given the way the offense had gone of late. The season is over, but it’s over by a narrower margin than it might seem. The Astros scored their first two runs with two swings, and the third scored on what could be best described as an accident. Neither team on Tuesday was dominant, and you can only wonder how it might’ve gone had the Yankees gotten another break or two. That’s the sort of thinking that gets people talking about the strike zone.

It was a story during the game, and it remained a story after the fact. Here’s a post by Dave on the matter. Perception was that Astros pitchers worked with a more favorable zone than Yankees pitchers did, and while a few pitches here and there didn’t make all of the difference, they certainly could’ve made some difference. Based on the evidence, it does indeed look like the Astros benefited more. A quick glance at the Brooks Baseball zone charts shows me the Astros benefiting by six or seven strikes, comparatively speaking. That’s a big enough margin to notice, and it deserves an explanation. Those of you in favor of an automated strike zone might well want to just skip the rest of this.

Read the rest of this entry »

It should be pretty well understood that there isn’t one “right” way to pitch. Some pitchers succeed by throwing curveballs, others with changeups. One may get by with grounders, while another flourishes with fly balls. Corey Kluber works out of the zone for whiffs, and Bartolo Colon bombards it for balls in play. Every pitcher is different. It’s important to find what fits one’s unique style, and stick to it.

Dallas Keuchel has found what works for him. And he’d never looked less like himself in Tuesday’s superb Wild Card start than on his final pitch of the evening:
Read the rest of this entry »

The 2015 season has been chock-full of high-profile rookie debuts. From Kris Bryant to Corey Seager to Noah Syndergaard, I’ve certainly had no shortage of players to write about. But the most impressive rookie campaign — at least on a per-game basis — might very well belong to Carlos Correa, who’s developing into a superstar right before our eyes. Although he’s completed just his age-20 season, Correa’s been one of the best better hitters in the game since the Astros called him up on June 8th. His 133 wRC+ was the 28th best among hitters with at least 400 plate appearances this year, and second best among rookies, trailing only Kris Bryant. By the barometer of WAR per 150 games, Correa ranked 21st in baseball with mark of 5.2.

You probably didn’t need me to tell you that Carlos Correa’s been really good. This isn’t exactly news. So rather than dwelling on how good Correa is now, I want to consider what his impressive rookie campaign means for his short- and long-term future.

Read the rest of this entry »

Talking about matchups in a one-game playoff is an almost futile enterprise. Batter versus pitcher numbers have proven to be mostly useless, and other than a perusal of the platoon situations, a discussion of roster decisions around the edges, and some tinkering with the order in which you throw your pitchers, previewing Tuesday’s American League Wild Card game seems like heavy-breathing about the pre-game coin toss in football.

There is one way you can classify pitchers and hitters that may be meaningful to this game in particular, however. Because of the way swings work, there are matchup problems for certain hitters against certain pitchers. Most of the research says that extreme ground ball pitchers have problems with fly ball hitters — one study found fly ball hitters had better outcomes against ground-ball pitchers than any other matchup of batted ball mixes, and another found that this type of matchup produces the most line drives in baseball. And it makes sense, because fly ball hitters usually have ‘uppercut’ type swings that can reach down and produce power on the low pitch.

Dallas Keuchel has the second-best ground-ball rate in baseball. The Yankees should have Chris Young bat leadoff.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last night, the Astros lost, and for the first time since May 15, they find their playoff odds below 50%. They have but four remaining games to re-claim playoff position, and, I’m sure you’ve had a good sense of their struggles. A 10-16 September has dropped their playoff odds from 97% to 44%. It’s dropped their division-winning odds from 88% to 3%. It took so long to get used to the idea of the Astros advancing to the postseason, and then it felt like a given for weeks. Now people are starting to think about big-picture perspectives, like how it’s still been a great season regardless of whether it ends in a few days. That’s true, but it’s also not what Astros fans thought they’d be having to consider at the end of September.

In a certain sense, these struggles have been almost team-wide. While the position players rank third in baseball in September WAR and third in September wRC+, they’re also 22nd in Win Probability Added, owing to some lousy timing. Astros starters rank 18th in WPA, neither good nor bad. The bullpen, meanwhile, ranks 27th in WPA. The Astros have had several issues, but a once-reliable bullpen has been a big one. And within that bullpen, one arm in particular has come apart at the worst possible time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I addressed the Cy Young battle in the senior circuit and titled it “The NL Cy Young Showdown.” This time, it’s the AL’s turn — and “discussion” (as opposed to “showdown”) seems to be the proper way to characterize it. It’s been a low-key pitching season, comparatively, in the AL, with no one posting an ERA near Zack Greinke‘s, or pitching no-hitters or engaging in zany second-half shenanigans like Jake Arrieta. In fact, a general consensus seems to be building that the award is David Price’s to lose. Today, let’s have a full discussion, including utilization of batted-ball data, about the AL Cy Young and its three likely frontrunners, Price, Chris Sale and Dallas Keuchel.

Price, who turned 30 in late August, is the only one of the three with a Cy (2012) on his mantle, though he hasn’t finished above sixth in the annual voting since then. Sale has come progressively closer in the voting, checking in at sixth, fifth and third in the last three seasons, while this will be the first time on a ballot for Keuchel, 2015’s foremost pitching breakthrough.

Read the rest of this entry »

Astros shortstop Carlos Correa turned 21 years old just three days ago. That would have been a much more dramatic opening line if we weren’t living through the Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, and Manny Machado Era, but it’s a relatively dramatic opening nonetheless. Correa has looked like one of MLB’s premier players over his first 90 games and 390 plate appearances all while being younger than Bryce Harper. And Bryce Harper is very young.

It’s not much of a surprise that Carlos Correa is a great baseball player. In fact, Correa was supposed to be a great player. He was taken first overall by the Astros in 2012, and while some people saw it as a way to free up money for later picks, no one disputed him as a top-level draft target. Correa’s been an elite prospect his entire career, occupying the fifth spot on Kiley’s Top 200 entering the season, and the third spot on the Baseball Prospectus and ESPN (Insider) lists.

The particularly remarkable aspect of Correa’s 2015 season is not that he’s hitting 32% better than league average or that he’s gathered 3.1 WAR in under 400 plate appearances; the remarkable part is that he’s doing so in 2015. While Correa’s potential was widely acknowledged, no one really seemed to expect it to arrive so soon. Kiley filed a report on him in October of 2014, giving him present Hit and Game Power grades of 20 to go along with a “2017 ETA.”

Read the rest of this entry »