When Russell Martin’s throw back to the pitcher hit Shin-Soo Choo, and Rougned Odor raced home to score the go-ahead run, the pages of baseball’s rule book fluttered open across America and Canada. A stunned silence in the park hid the grinding of gears behind the masks, and in baseball’s offices — was that strange, strange play… legal?

Yes, it turns out. To the consternation of the fans, who began to litter the field with debris. Twitter, the announcers, the fans — it was bedlam.

But investigating the rules that led to this play, and any rules that could clean up a play like this in the future, brings us to the never-ending unintended consequences that come with any alteration of the rule book.

First, the play.

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The Blue Jays paid a lot to get David Price, even though they knew he was about to become a free agent. The Jays rightly figured the starting rotation could use a big upgrade if the team was going to go on to make some playoff noise. Of course, at that point, they didn’t yet know what to expect from Marcus Stroman. They might not have expected anything.

The American League Cy Young is going to go to Price or another guy. Price stands a perfectly fine chance, and you’d assume that when a team trades for that sort of pitcher, the same team will use him in as many important starts as possible. Sure enough, Price started Game 1 of the ALDS, but as you know by now, the ball in Game 5 is being handed to Marcus Stroman. Price just threw a lot of pitches in relief in Game 4, even though the Jays were already heavily favored. It’s surprising, and it’s complicated. It doesn’t seem like throwing Price so much out of the bullpen was a good managerial call. Yet we can at least say this much: it’s not all that clear the Jays are worse off. Stroman might even come with a certain advantage.

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Coming into the postseason, the Blue Jays were regarded widely as the favorites to win it all. A historically great offense, a souped-up roster fueled by the trading deadline acquisitions of Troy Tulowitzki and David Price… what could possibly go wrong? Well, the vagaries of postseason randomness quickly paid them a visit, and within 24 hours from the first pitch of Game 1, they had found themselves Hanser Alberto-ed within one game of extinction.

Until Marco Estrada saved them, at least temporarily. A journeyman who turned 32 this summer and who, until this year, had never even pitched enough innings in a season to qualify for an ERA title. The same guy who this season nosed out the likes of Dallas Keuchel, Collin McHugh and Sonny Gray for AL Contact Manager of the Year honors.

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David Price now has a victory to his name in the American League Division Series, but it’s probably not how anyone imagined he would get it. In yesterday’s game, with the Blue Jays up by a score of 7-1 in the bottom of the fifth inning, manager John Gibbons took out R.A. Dickey in favor of his staff ace, installing Price into a game that was, except in the case of a cataclysm, already well in hand. Price threw 50 pitches, giving up six hits and three runs, thereby eliminating him from starting Wednesday’s deciding Game 5 in Toronto.

Yesterday, Dave wrote about how the Jays shouldn’t use Price out of the bullpen during Game 4. That article was predicated on a simple assumption: that the score of the game would be close, and a high leverage situation would push Gibbons to go to the best pitcher he had available. That method of thinking is an understandable one, and a decision many managers would make with little hesitation.

That wasn’t the case in Game 4, however. To illustrate, take a look at the Win Expectancy chart for yesterday’s game, with a highlight on the point at which Price was summoned from the bullpen:

After Robinson Chirinos singled to center with one out and Delino DeShields then flied out to center — the former being the event that sealed Dickey’s fate — the Rangers’ Win Expectancy was just 3.2%. If the argument is that Price was brought in to stifle any perceived danger, there’s isn’t really a good case for it: Chirinos’ single was a blip, a faintest hint of danger, and Dickey had been pitching well in the game up until then.

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The scientific method begins by asking a question. Ask a question, do some research, and form a hypothesis. Once you’ve got your hypothesis, it’s time to do a little testing. Or, to employ a more lively word, experimenting. Once the test, ahem, experiment is underway, data is collected and analyzed, leading to new questions, new hypotheses and new experiments.

Over in Toronto, a season’s worth of question-asking, researching, hypothesizing, experimenting, analyzing, refining and retesting has been taking place, slowly building up to a grand experiment that will take place on the national stage when the Blue Jays have no room left for error with everything on the line. More likely than not, the experiment will go over just fine and Toronto’s hypothesis will be confirmed. Even if the experiment doesn’t go over fine, the hypothesis could hold water. There still exists the chance, though, that the test tubes suddenly begin to boil over, sending the experiment awry and the laboratory into a frenzy with no time left for reevaluating and retesting.
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The second game of the Texas-Toronto ALDS ended in a memorable fashion, the Rangers surviving a razor-thin review of a potential third out to score two in the 14th and hold off the Blue Jays. This ended up obscuring the memorable way it began, with a top of the first replete with odd incidents. Had it not begun in this memorable way, there’s a good chance it wouldn’t have ended as memorably, so let’s look at all the weird stuff that happened.
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In the latest example of how playoff baseball is less predictable than a deer by a roadway, the Rangers just won two games in Toronto, with Ross Ohlendorf slamming the door, and with Rougned Odor’s baserunning arguably occupying center stage. In a game that sent 109 men to the plate, it wouldn’t be fair to suggest it all came down to one or two events, but there’s one event and one event only that’ll be dominating the conversation until Game 3. If you watched, you know what it is. If you didn’t watch, you probably still know what it is, because umpiring controversies have a way of getting around.

With two down in the top of the 14th, Odor slapped an infield single. That put the go-ahead run on first base, and then Odor advanced to second on a subsequent single. Odor actually rounded second aggressively, thinking about getting to third, but then he decided to return. Yet, cleverly, Jose Bautista threw behind him. There was a tag attempt, and, immediately, the play became everything.

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One of the most notable changes in baseball over the last few years has been the increased emphasis on defensive positioning. The rise of data has helped coaches identify where the ball is likely going to go before it goes there, and teams have put a lot of effort into making sure they have a defender in the right place at the right time.

Which is why the Rangers first run against David Price yesterday was a little jarring. You can watch the play, which resulted in a Delino Deshields RBI single, in the highlight below.

Ryan Goins — one of the best defensive second baseman in baseball, it should be said — is left standing helplessly near the second base bag as the ball hit by Deshields rolls into the outfield, right past the area where a second baseman is normally positioned. Here’s an image of his position as the ball passed by him.

According to John Lott of the National Post, the Blue Jays were running a “back-pick” on this play, in which Goins would sneak over to the second base bag after the pitch was delivered in order to receive a throw down from catcher Russell Martin, hoping to catch the runner — Rougned Odor, in this case — off the bag for an out. And there is some merit to trying to take advantage of Odor’s baserunning, because in his brief Major League career, he’s been pretty terrible at it.

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Let’s just be real here and leave the analysis aside for a moment: it’s difficult to picture the Blue Jays losing. They got smoked yesterday, but only after clinching their division, so their lineup was missing its starters. That can be forgiven. Their overall run differential is better than second place by nearly 100. They have baseball’s best record since the All-Star break. Since beginning the little flurry with the Troy Tulowitzki trade, the Jays have won three-quarters of the time, and not even the Cubs have been able to keep up. Aggressiveness at the deadline took care of seemingly all the team’s problems, and now Marcus Stroman is back and starting and looking terrific, and this has been present the whole year:

The Jays are what’s been classically defined as “stupid-good,” one of the few teams in the American League playing like it ought to. It’s no mystery why they’ve succeeded, and now that a berth in the first round has been clinched, it’s at last time to look ahead. The Blue Jays feel like a super team. Especially given how they’ve played the last few months. So, what’s historically happened with teams like this?

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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.

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