Monday, I wrote about why, if I had a vote, I’d select Jacob deGrom for National League MVP. I do not have a vote, though, and I doubt that my argument is sufficiently convincing. The NL MVP is almost certainly going to end up being Christian Yelich. There was a somewhat crowded field for a little while, but Yelich pulled away from his fellow position players with an impossible final month. From the start of September, Yelich batted .370, with 16 strikeouts and 18 extra-base hits. Yelich was the best overall player from start to finish on a Brewers team that won the division literally yesterday. For what the MVP has turned into, Yelich is the obvious choice. Tremendous player on a team that wouldn’t have gotten to where it did without him.

Truth be told, it also wasn’t just the last month. Yelich was baseball’s best hitter in the second half, and it wasn’t even close. After the All-Star break, he registered a wRC+ of 220. Baseball Reference doesn’t keep track of wRC+, but it does keep track of OPS+ and its splits do go back further than ours, and according to the numbers at Baseball Reference, Yelich had one of the ten or so best second halves in the last 50 years. The only players with better second-half rate stats over enough of a sample: Barry Bonds, Mike Schmidt, Hank Aaron, and Jim Thome. Bonds actually has the four best second halves, and they all happened in a row between 2001-2004, but this isn’t a Barry Bonds fun-fact article. This is a Christian Yelich fun-fact article. He did his best to carry the Brewers into the NLDS.

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This is the fifth installment of this year’s Team Entropy series, my recurring look not only at the races for the remaining playoff spots but the potential for end-of-season chaos in the form of down-to-the-wire suspense and even tiebreakers. Ideally, we want more ties than the men’s department at Macy’s. If you’re new to this, please read the introduction here.

In the National League playoff picture, we’re down to two teams — the Dodgers (89-71) and Cardinals (87-73) — fighting for one spot, as the Rockies (90-70) clinched a postseason berth on Friday night by beating the Nationals for their eighth straight win. That said, neither the NL Central nor the NL West races have been decided, nor have the actual Wild Card game participants, leaving open the possibility that we could have multiple Game 163 tiebreakers on Monday. The dream scenario of needing a third tiebreaker game, in the event that the two NL West participants (the Dodgers and Rockies) finished tied with St. Louis, is off the table given the Cardinals’ back-to-back losses to the Brewers (93-67) and Cubs (94-66).

On Friday afternoon, I had the privilege of appearing on MLB Network’s MLB Now, where host Brian Kenny put the spotlight on Team Entropy at the top of the show and allowed me to talk through the various scenarios:

Pretty cool! Except that the Cardinals were busy getting pummeled by the Cubs as that happened — the show kept cutting away to the action — simplifying the picture somewhat. So here is what’s left…

The Cubs, who are hosting the Cardinals, and the Brewers, who are hosting the Tigers, can still finish in a tie after 162 games if Milwaukee can pick up a game this weekend. Either the Brew Crew goes 2-0 while the Cubs go 1-1, or 1-1 while the Cubs go 0-2. That would leave the two teams playing on Monday in Chicago (which won the season series 11-8) to determine which one wins the division, and which hosts the Wild Card game. As of Saturday morning, our playoff odds ties page shows a 25.9% chance of such an occurrence.

Likewise, the Rockies, who are hosting the Nationals, and the Dodgers, who are visiting the Giants, can finish tied if Los Angeles can pick up a game. The Dodgers, who won the season series 12-7, would host a tiebreaker game on Monday to determine the division winner, and second Wild Card team. Our ties page gives this game a 34.1% chance of happening.

Alternately, if the Cardinals win both of their remaining games and the Dodgers lose both of theirs, the two teams would be tied for the second Wild Card spot. They would play on Monday in St. Louis, which won the season series 4-3. This scenario can happen in tandem with an NL Central tie if the Brewers also split their remaining pair of games. The odds of a Wild Card tie are down to 2.4%, but that’s better than nothing, particularly with a second tiebreaker game also still an option.

With the Cubs and Cardinals playing at 1:05 pm Eastern, the Dodgers and Giants at 4:05, the Brewers and Tigers at 7:05 pm and the Rockies and Nationals at 8:10 pm, we have the whole day to savor the possibilities for chaos. Enjoy!

On Monday night in St. Louis, left-hander Dan Jennings received the start for the Milwaukee Brewers. It was notable because, of his 381 prior MLB games, he’d entered every one as a reliever. Outside of a few rehab games, Jennings’ previous 193 appearances in the minors had come in a relief capacity, as well. With the exception of 13 starts at Low-A back in 2008, in fact, Jennings had worked in relief for a decade solid.

Jennings’ appearance as a starter on Monday isn’t notable for what it says about Jennings, though. It’s notable for what it might reveal about the Milwaukee Brewers. Jennings didn’t pitch deep into the game. He didn’t exhibit an expanded repertoire. Instead, as he has on multiple occasions this year, he faced a single batter, recorded a lone out, and then departed the game in favor of a right-hander. Even with the use of an Opener spreading rapidly throughout the game, though, this was rare.

Chase Anderson had originally been on turn to start that night. After a solid 2017 campaign, Anderson has prevented runs well this year, too, recording a 3.93 ERA in 158.0 innings. He’s striking out fewer batters, though, walking more of them, and allowing more home runs. He’s been particularly vulnerable at Miller Park, which is friendly to hitters. As of Monday, he hadn’t pitched more than five innings in his last six starts and compiled only 7.2 innings over his previous two starts combined, putting up a 5.81 FIP and 4.57 ERA since the beginning of August. With one week to go and playoff ramifications attached to every game, Craig Counsell and the Brewers faced the choice of going with Anderson or doing something else. They chose something else.

The team could have opted to pitch Gio Gonzalez on regular rest, but that would have meant using Jhoulys Chacin on short rest the next day or relying on the bullpen to take care of that game. The team opted to get the bullpen game out of the way. The Cardinals’ lineup presented the team with an interesting opportunity. Over the 10 previous games, with 80 starting lineup spots to give out, the club had used left-handed batters in only 15 of them — including eight for leadoff hitter Matt Carpenter, one for Matt Adams, and seven for Kolten Wong, who had been out of the lineup the previous two days with an injury. That meant that, no matter how the Cardinals’ lineup looked on Monday, it was likely to include just one left-hander and that lefty would likely bat leadoff in the form of Matt Carpenter.

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In all likelihood, Tyler Clippard’s numbers are better than you realize. In 696 career appearances encompassing 752 innings, the 33-year-old Toronto Blue Jays right-hander has a 3.17 ERA. Moreover, he’s allowed just 6.5 hits per nine innings, and his strikeout rate is a healthy 10.0. Add in durability — 72 outings annually since 2010 — and Clippard has quietly been one of baseball’s better relievers.

He also has 68 saves on his resume, and the fact that nearly half of them came in 2012 helps add to his under-the-radar status. It also helps explain the size of his bank account.

“My biggest jump in salary was the year I had 32 saves, and that was essentially the only reason,” explained Clippard, who was with the Washington Nationals at the time. “My overall body of work was pretty good, but numbers-wise it wasn’t one of my better seasons. I had a bad stretch where I had something like a 10.00 ERA, so I ended the year with a (3.72 ERA). But because I got all those saves, I received the big salary jump in salary arbitration.”

Circumstances proceeded to derail the righty’s earning power. The Nationals signed free-agent closer Rafael Soriano to a two-year, $22M contract, relegating Clippard to a set-up role. While Soriano was saving games, Clippard was being paid less than half that amount while logging a 2.29 ERA and allowing 84 hits in 141 innings. Read the rest of this entry »

During their Friday night game in Milwaukee, the Pirates wouldn’t have expected Orlando Arcia to be such a nuisance. Out of every batter this season with at least 250 plate appearances, Arcia ranks third from the bottom in wRC+. Taking a deeper look at expected wOBA, based on Statcast-tracked batted balls, Arcia ranks dead last. Furthermore, and more importantly, Arcia wasn’t even in the starting lineup. The Brewers had Jonathan Schoop at shortstop. Arcia only entered during a top-of-the-fifth double-switch.

But by the time the evening was over, Arcia had finished 3-for-3 at the plate. The first time he came up, facing Chris Archer, he tried his damnedest to injure Archer and knock him out of the game.

And then, the second time he came up, facing Steven Brault, he drove in a couple of runners. It’s not uncommon for two runs to score on a double. It is uncommon for said double to come on a bunt.

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The National League Wild Card race is nuts. Here’s the currently field of clubs competing for it, through Thursday’s games, with our playoff odds.

That’s just nuts! In the American League, the next closest Wild Card team, the Seattle Mariners, is 4.5 games out of a playoff spot. The next closest team behind them is the eight-games-out Rays. The next closest NL team, as you might notice, is significantly closer than that. The NL has eight teams whose odds of making the playoffs are over 25%; the AL, meanwhile, has just five such teams.

And so, with the NL’s relative nuttiness in mind, the Brewers traded this afternoon for left-handed pitcher Gio Gonzalez to bolster a rotation that is still in search of reinforcements after losing Jimmy Nelson to a shoulder injury before the season started and Brent Suter to Tommy John surgery in July. In return, the Nationals will reportedly receive two minor leaguers, though at the time of publication, those players’ identities are still unknown. As such, we’ll evaluate this trade in terms of Gonazalez’s merits for the Brewers and what the trade signals for the Nationals’ late-season tear-down. We should also note that the trade, famously a disruptive event, was remarkably convenient for Gonzalez, who — as a result of the two teams playing one another today — simply had to walk across the field to the Brewers’ dugout.

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Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Note from Eric: Hey you, this is the last one of these for the year, as the minor-league regular season comes to a close. Thanks for reading. I’ll be taking some time off next week, charging the batteries for the offseason duties that lie ahead for Kiley and me.

D.J. Peters, CF, Los Angeles Dodgers
Level: Double-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 7   FV: 45+
Line: 4-for-7, 2 HR, 2B (double header)

Notes
A comparison of DJ Peters‘ 2017 season in the Cal League and his 2018 season at Double-A gives us a good idea of what happens to on-paper production when a hitter is facing better pitching and defenses in a more stable offensive environment.

Reports of Peters’ physical abilities haven’t changed, nor is his batted-ball profile different in such a way that one would expect a downtick in production. The 2018 line is, I think, a more accurate distillation of Peters’ abilities. He belongs in a talent bucket with swing-and-miss outfielders like Franchy Cordero, Randal Grichuk, Michael A. Taylor, Bradley Zimmer, etc. These are slugging center fielders whose contact skills aren’t particularly great. Players like this are historically volatile from one season to the next but dominant if/when things click. They’re often ~1.5 WAR players who have some years in the three-win range. Sometimes they also turn into George Springer.

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You couldn’t blame Eric Hosmer or Christian Yelich if they got sick of hearing about Statcast. Anyone who’s ever played with the basic tools has been able to discover two things: (1) historically, Hosmer and Yelich have hit the ball hard, and (2) historically, Hosmer and Yelich have hit the ball on the ground. It became easy to wonder what might happen if Hosmer and Yelich set their sights on the skies. It just so happened that, last offseason, both of those players changed teams. Might they have also been willing to change their swings? It’s not that it wasn’t interesting. It just started to grow a little tired.

Hosmer hasn’t changed. That much I can tell you. Through five months of baseball, he’s got a below-average batting line and a below-replacement WAR. He has the highest ground-ball rate he’s ever posted. But then, Yelich is currently sitting on a career-high wRC+. He’s sitting on a career-high slugging percentage. He’s also technically sitting on a career-low ground-ball rate.

Don’t get the wrong idea, though. Yelich’s average launch angle hasn’t budged from last season to this one. He remains a ground-ball and line-drive hitter. In part, he’s just benefiting from playing in Milwaukee instead of playing in Miami. And in part, he’s benefiting from another change. It’s not one that has to do with his swing. Rather, it’s one that has to do with his approach.

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As far as the ordinary rules are concerned, the strikeout on a foul bunt is unusual. Unlike a swing and miss, a foul bunt involves contact, and unlike a foul tip into the glove, a foul bunt isn’t caught. Plus, as players are constantly reminding us these days, bunting is hard, far harder than people think. But baseball is unquestionably better for having this rule in place. Without it, in theory, an at-bat could stretch on forever. In theory, any at-bat could already stretch on forever, but there would be nothing stopping a player from perfecting the skill of the two-strike foul bunt. Plate appearances might go 15, 20, 25, 70 pitches. Or strikeouts would be put off until everyone walked. Without the two-strike foul-bunt rule, baseball could very well collapse. At the very least, it would totally suck to watch.

I know about the two-strike foul-bunt rule. You know about the two-strike foul-bunt rule. It’s one of those rules baseball fans know before they turn 12. The question is, what does a two-strike foul bunt look like? That seems like a weird thing to ask, but after Wednesday’s game between the Brewers and Reds, this is suddenly in the news, and I want to know what all of you think.

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Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Performances from 8/26

Evan White, 1B, Seattle Mariners
Level: High-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 2   FV: 45
Line: 3-for-4, 2B, 3Bho

Notes
We now have a full season of data to help us figure out whether Evan White’s weird profile is going to play. A plus-running backwards guy (bats right, throws left, a generally unfavorable combination due to the defensive limitations and platoon issues caused by both) who plays plus defense at first base, White was slugging .391 at the start of August, which is rather uninspiring for a college hitter in the Cal League. In August, however, White has 30 hits in 90 plate appearances and is slugging .763. He has made subtle changes to his lower half, drawing his front knee back toward his rear hip more than he did at Kentucky, and taking a longer stride back toward the pitcher. White is more often finishing with a flexed front leg, which has helped him go down and lift balls in the bottom part of the strike zone by adjusting his lower half instead of his hands. It’s a more athletic swing that was implemented before White’s explosive August, though he may just be getting comfortable with it now. Read the rest of this entry »