The best way to avoid a questionable bullpen is for a starter to pitch deep into the game. Aníbal Sánchez made for an unlikely candidate to do so, as he was the worst starting pitcher in baseball this season the third time through the batting order. But unlikely or not, Sánchez took a no-hitter into the eighth inning, was rarely in any trouble, and gave the Nationals exactly what they needed in the first game of the NLCS. Sean Doolittle got the final four outs of the game and Washington jumped out to an early series lead before its big three of Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Patrick Corbin could even take the mound.

Sánchez is known for mixing his pitches, and he played to the Cardinals scouting report, throwing fewer of the four-seam fastballs the Cardinals like and opting for a sinker he doesn’t use with regularity. On the season, Sánchez threw his sinker to right-handed hitters just 13% of the time, but through four innings he tripled that percentage. As the game wore on, he featured his fastball less as its velocity diminished, but the Cardinals couldn’t take advantage. And even when they got close, they were ultimately stymied. Ryan Zimmerman made what might have been a no-hitter saving play in the eighth inning on a hard-hit ball by Tommy Edman.

Sometimes it’s just not your night. Two batters later, Sánchez’s countryman, José Martínez (H/T Enrique Rojas), hit a solid single; with the no-hitter over, Sean Doolittle came in to get the final out of the eighth. Read the rest of this entry »

The last time the Cardinals were in the NLCS five years ago, they were only a minor roadblock for Madison Bumgarner and the San Francisco Giants. On his way to a World Series MVP, Bumgarner pitched 15.2 of 45 innings in the series, which the Giants won in five games. The Cardinals, who will stick with the same 25-man roster that defeated the Braves in five games, could have as difficult a challenge, if not more, with Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg possibly in line for 20-30 innings of work during the upcoming series.

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

Homegrown (12)

• Yadier Molina, C: Drafted Fourth Round 2000
• Matt Carpenter, 3B: Drafted 13th Round 2009
• Carlos Martinez, RP: Amateur Free Agent (Dominican Republic) April 2010
• Kolten Wong, 2B: Drafted First Round (22) 2011
• Jack Flaherty, SP: Drafted First Round (34) 2014
• Daniel Ponce de Leon, RP: Drafted Ninth Round 2014
• Harrison Bader, CF: Drafted Third Round 2015
• Paul DeJong, SS: Drafted Fourth Round 2015
• Ryan Helsley, RP: Drafted Fifth Round 2015
• Dakota Hudson, SP: Drafted First Round (34) 2016
• Tommy Edman, INF/OF: Drafted Sixth Round 2016
• Randy Arozarena, OF: Amateur Free Agent (Cuba) July 2016

Total WAR: 23.0 Read the rest of this entry »

The Nationals rotation is headed by Max Scherzer with fellow aces Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin falling neatly in line. Yet, when the Nationals take on the Cardinals tonight, Aníbal Sánchez will get the start. A hard-fought Division Series against the Dodgers saw Scherzer and Strasburg start the fourth and fifth games of the series with Corbin pitching in relief on Wednesday. With those three unavailable, Washington turns to their fourth starter in Sánchez.

Sánchez, who put up a six-win season with the Tigers in 2013, developed some home run issues from 2015 through 2017 before having a bounceback season in 2018 that continued into this year, as he’s been a solid, slightly above-average starter. He’s lost about three mph off his fastball since his career year, but he throws a mix of pitches to keep hitters off balance. He has three offerings he uses most of the time in a 90-mph four-seam fastball, a slow change, and a cutter. He also mixes in a splitter, and he got two strikeouts using that pitch against the Dodgers (both against Russell Martin). He throws the fastball outside to both lefties and righties. While Sánchez throws the change more often against lefties, he does use it a decent amount to come inside against righties, and that pitch is the 35-year-old’s only real swing-and-miss offering. Against the Dodgers, Sánchez got five strikeouts on the change, including this one against Cody Bellinger.

The four-seam fastball usage bodes well for the Cardinals, in theory, as they have feasted on the pitch all season long. However, the Cardinals have put up terrible numbers against both the cutter and the change. Potentially providing more trouble, the Cardinals won’t be able to try and get ahead in the count and expect the fastball, as Sánchez’s usage of the pitch actually goes down when he’s behind in the count. The righty threw his four-seam fastball in a 0-0 count 42% of the time this season, so if the Cardinals are going to look for that fastball, it needs to happen on the first pitch. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, I wrote about some dicey intentional walk decisions from the two NLDS series. One worked and one didn’t, but both of them were decisions managers made in huge leverage situations, and both managers tried to put their thumb on the scale of fate and influence the direction one way or another. Today, I’m going to talk about a decision that didn’t end up mattering nearly as much.

Brian Snitker tried to seize a small edge in yesterday’s Cardinals/Braves game, starting Adam Duvall in the outfield over Matt Joyce despite the fact that Joyce is left-handed and Jack Flaherty is a righty. It looked like a weird decision, one that might swing the game, but of course it didn’t. Nothing Snitker could have done, short of conducting a seance to channel the life force of a young Warren Spahn into Mike Foltynewicz, could have mattered.

The Cardinals scored 10 runs in the first inning, an endless deluge of offense, run stacked upon run. They added another in the second, and by the time Duvall stepped to the plate, our game win probability stood at 1.4% for the Braves, though the system doesn’t work well with such extreme margins. The leverage index of that at-bat was a measly 0.11, and it didn’t get better from there; his subsequent at-bats came with leverage of 0.02, 0.01, and 0.00.

So Snitker tried to make a small decision, and the gods of baseball laughed in his face. That doesn’t mean we can’t analyze his decision though, that we can’t evaluate it on its merits regardless of the actual outcome. If this game was played a million times, the vast majority would be closer than yesterday, and in some of those the difference between Duvall and Joyce would decide the game. Read the rest of this entry »

After two elimination games on Wednesday night, the National League Championship Series has its two participants: the St. Louis Cardinals and the Washington Nationals. It’s not quite the matchup most predicted — only four of 32 FanGraphs predictors pegged the NLCS correctly a week ago — it’s hard to say that either team got there cheaply. The Game 5’s were very different; one was a fantastic blowout, the other a fantastic crushing of Clayton Kershaw’s hopes and dreams, and just like that, the National League’s two winningest teams saw their seasons end before mid-October.

The Washington Nationals were a ZiPS favorite going into their series with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Not a literal favorite — the Dodgers were still projected to win 51%-49% — but certainly a team that was hitting above their seasonal win total. Over 162 games, there’s no doubt that the Dodgers were the better club, but over a short series of five games, Washington’s Big Three of Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Patrick Corbin match up against any team in baseball. It didn’t always work (see: Corbin’s first relief appearance), but combine the Wild Card and the NLDS, and Nats were able to use that trio in just under two-thirds of their total innings (66.3%). In the regular season, that number was only 40.1%.

Similarly, while the Washington relief corps still isn’t a good unit, they’ve at least been able to use the shorter timeframe of postseason baseball to lop off some of the dreadful performances at the back of their bullpen. Kyle Barraclough and Matt Grace weren’t around to start any late-inning conflagrations (Trevor Rosenthal was mercifully released in August). The bullpen combined for an abysmal 5.68 ERA in 2019, but the seven pitchers brought in this October have combined for a 3.90 ERA. That’s certainly not going to remind anyone of the Yankees, but it’s at least a serviceable group if you’re forced to use them.

In a seven-game series, the Nationals undoubtedly will have to utilize the bullpen more than they did in the NLDS. The two extra games the NLCS can run do not come equipped with an additional day of rest, so it would be even harder to feature a surprise guest appearances from their top starters. Aníbal Sánchez will certainly get another start unless Game 4 is an elimination game for the Nats, and while I wouldn’t count out a Scherzer appearance in a truly high-leverage relief situation, I think you’ll necessarily see Washington rely on its relief pitching more. St. Louis’ offense is not L.A.’s, something that’s not necessarily captured in Win Expectancy calculators, so the average relief outing is slightly less frightening against the Cardinals than an identical game state against the Dodgers. Read the rest of this entry »

If this afternoon’s contest between the Cardinals and Braves was a game you were interested in watching, hopefully you tuned in early; if you’re a fan of the Braves, or competitive baseball, there wasn’t much worth watching after that. Here was the Cardinals’ top of the first inning:

Things could have gone differently for Mike Foltynewicz. There was an infield single by Paul Goldschmidt; Freddie Freeman committed an error. If Goldschmidt had hit that grounder at an infielder instead of in the hole, or if Freeman had caught Yadier Molina’s gounder, the Braves escape with a 1-0 deficit in the first. That isn’t what happened, though. After a walk and a double, Foltynewicz was done down by four and Max Fried came in to face the pitcher with the bases loaded. Fried walked Jack Flaherty, more damage was done, and by the time the inning finally, mercifully concluded, the Braves’ were in a massive hole, though not until after a wild pitch allowed Marcell Ozuna to reach, and Kolten Wong to score. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Jay Jaffe noted that starting pitching has been carrying a greater load in the playoffs this year than in the regular season and recent postseasons. One really good reason for that is the sheer number of very good starters in the playoffs this October. Take today’s games as an example. Jack Flaherty and Mike Foltynewicz will go head to head this afternoon, followed by Walker Buehler and Stephen Strasburg tonight.

Below, find a table with the NL pitching WAR leaders this season:

Three of this season’s top seven National League pitchers by WAR are set to start, and try to get their teams a series away from the NL pennant. It’s possible we see a few more of those pitchers throw in relief in tonight’s games, as well. Now, look at this table showing the NL pitching WAR leaders since August 6 when Mike Foltynewicz made his first start since returning from the minors:

We could very well see an offensive explosion today, but the scheduled starting pitchers are some of the best in the game this year, with Mike Foltynewicz joining the group over the last two months of the season. Elimination games are almost always exciting, and these ones are likely to feature great pitching to boot.

The postseason lends itself to all sorts of narratives. There are team triumphs and individual stories, but this postseason features something special you might not have noticed: a few teammates who have been playing together for nine seasons or more. When Adam Wainwright took the mound for his Game 3 start against the Braves and threw a first pitch sinker to battery mate Yadier Molina (Ronald Acuna Jr. would foul that first pitch off, but ultimately strike out swinging), it was hard to forget that this may well be Wainwright’s final season, marking the end of a career during which so many of the right-handers best moments have come with Molina behind the plate. That first pitch got me thinking: which playoff teammates have been together the longest?

To answer that question, I turned to the game logs here at FanGraphs to find the first day both teammates appeared in a game together at the major league level. I also looked at how many total games each pair has appeared in together, which includes pinch-hit appearances, pitching in relief, and defensive substitutions. This does not include any time spent on the Injured List and only includes games in which both teammates made an appearance. I excluded the postseason for parity; the data is updated through the end of the 2019 season. So, before the Dodgers and the Nationals and the Cardinals and the Braves play their Game 5’s, let’s take a look at the longest-tenured teammates we can watch this October.

No. 5: Freddie Freeman and Julio Teheran

Debut as Teammates: May 7, 2011

Kicking off our list is the pitcher/first baseman duo for the Braves. These two have been staples in Atlanta for several years now; this year Julio Teheran became the only pitcher in Braves’ franchise history to start six consecutive Opening Days. Freddie Freeman has been at first base for all of them.

Teheran was initially left off the Braves’ Division Series roster but when Chris Martin suffered an oblique injury, Teheran took his place. Now both he and Freeman are trying to push Atlanta into the Championship Series for the first time since 2001, though they’re likely both hoping for better individual performances in Game 5; Freeman, perhaps still hampered by an elbow injury, is slashing just .125/.222/.313 with a 38 wRC+ in 18 postseason plate appearances, while Teheran took the loss in Game 4 after giving up a walk-off sacrifice fly to Yadier Molina that scored Kolten Wong.

Total regular season games together: 200 Read the rest of this entry »

In my head, the playoffs have always had a unique relationship with analysis. Things are happening, always new and exciting things, and I feel a strong desire to know what’s skill and what’s luck, to sort out whether Adam Wainwright found the secret formula to pitching or whether he just had a good breakfast Sunday, while the Braves stubbed their collective toes on the hotel bed frame.

But for the most part, there’s not much to say conclusively about one pitching outing, or even a few pitching outings. The samples are vanishingly small in the postseason, and so I watch for the narratives and the drama, rather than trying to find an interesting line to analyze. Sure, I have opinions about the players in the playoffs, formed from a year of crunching numbers on their performances. But for the most part, I don’t use October to tell me new things about them.

If Patrick Corbin comes in and gives up six runs in relief, is he bad? Is he unsuited to relieving? Did he just not have it that day? I don’t know, and short of some velocity or spin rate smoking gun, I’ll probably never know.

Having said all that, there’s one thing I feel very comfortable analyzing. Managers still walk people intentionally in the playoffs, and maybe they shouldn’t. Dave Martinez and Mike Shildt succumbed to the temptation of making a difference over the weekend, and while neither decision ended up impacting the final accounting of the game, I was curious to see what those walks did to the teams’ chances of winning.

Let’s talk about Martinez’s decision first, because it’s much stranger. We’ll set the stage with all the essentials: in Game 2 of their series against the Dodgers, the Nationals took a 4-2 lead into the ninth inning, with Daniel Hudson taking the mound following a dominant inning by Max Scherzer. Justin Turner doubled to start the inning, but Hudson rebounded, striking out A.J. Pollock and getting Cody Bellinger to pop out to third. Read the rest of this entry »

After watching the Cardinals and Braves compete for four games, it seems fitting that the series would be tied up 2-2. In three of the four games, the losing team had a win expectancy of at least 80% while in the fourth game, Cardinals ace Jack Flaherty allowed just a single run in the first inning before a homer in the seventh gave the Braves a 3-0 lead that proved too much for a mostly struggling Cardinals offense. In a series this close, the team that blows the lead will inevitably lament the moments they let the lead get away, but in Game 4, the Braves lost not because of a lead they relinquished, but because of a lead they failed to solidify. The Braves refused to put the Cardinals away, or alternatively, the Cardinals relievers came up big when they needed to, and now the teams head to Game 5 for a shot at the National League Championship Series.

Before we get to those blown chances, we should briefly discuss how the Braves got the lead in the first place. The Cardinals were limited to one run off Dallas Keuchel in the first game of the series as Keuchel went off-brand, throwing just 24 two-seam fastballs in his outing. Though Keuchel walked three and struck out none in four and two-thirds innings, he did enough to keep the Cardinals off balance and induced 10 groundball outs, plus two more outs on a double play, and the other two outs on liners. In the first inning of Game 4, Keuchel went back to relying heavily on the two-seamer, but the Cardinals laid off the pitch, even as a strike. Paul Goldschmidt took two sliders for balls, then a two-seamer for a 3-0 count. After a 3-0 sinker for a strike, he hit a changeup out of the park. Up next, Marcell Ozuna took a first-pitch sinker for a ball and then crushed an inside cutter to put the Cardinals ahead 2-0.

Atlanta got a run back in the third before Ozuna hit another homer in the fourth off a slider to give the Cardinals a 3-1 lead. Read the rest of this entry »