The 2023 regular season was a tumultuous one for the Arizona Diamondbacks. They were one of baseball’s best teams in the first half, with the fourth-best record in the league on July 1. Then in the month of July, they went just 8-16, tied for the second-worst record in baseball. They started August off on a nine-game losing streak before going 11-2 in their next 13 games. The rest of the season would be much of the same – losing five of six, then winning five of six, and so on and so forth. The club secured a playoff spot with an 8-2 stretch from September 15–27, before losing its final four regular-season games. From a playoff-odds perspective, the roller coaster looked like this:

If one of the defining characteristics of the Diamondbacks’ 2023 regular season was volatility, the bullpen was no exception. After a slow start, the group had a strong May, collapsed to be one of the league’s worst in July, and battled back to have a quite effective final month. By the time they’d played 162, 30 pitchers had appeared in relief for Arizona – just two NL teams used more. Entering a short-series playoff format (have you heard about the short-series playoff format?), the pressure was on for the rostered subset to find their best, holding leads when they had them and keeping games close when they didn’t. Through two rounds, they’ve more than answered the call:

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If you need a reminder that anything can happen in a short postseason series, this is it, because the Phillies and Diamondbacks just pulled off two of the biggest upsets in postseason history as defined by regular season winning percentage differentials. The Phillies (90-72, .556) upended the Braves (104-58, .642) in a four-game thriller that left presumptive NL MVP Ronald Acuña Jr. speechless while the Diamondbacks (84-78, .519) swept the Dodgers (100-62, .617) into oblivion, holding MVP candidate Mookie Betts hitless and knocking Clayton Kershaw out in the first inning.

Perhaps the results shouldn’t have been quite as shocking as they were, given that we’ve all seen our share of October upsets. The Phillies should remind us of that, as a cast very similar to this year’s knocked off a powerhouse Braves team on the way to their first pennant in 13 years just last season. It’s worth remembering as we evaluate any postseason team that they’ve all undergone substantial changes — some for the better, some for the worse — on their way through the 162-game season and the first two rounds of the postseason.

By the regular season numbers, this would appear to be a mismatch, with the Phillies having an edge in every category except strikeout and walk rates, stolen bases, and baserunning. Thus far in the postseason, however, the two teams have been very similar, each thumping 13 homers and producing similar slash lines. The Phillies have hit .274/.354/.538 (137 wRC+), scoring 52% of their runs via homers, and stealing nine bases, while the Diamondbacks have hit .262/.347/.530 (133 wRC+), scoring 47% of their runs via homers, and stealing seven bases. That said, it’s a stretch to suggest the two lineups are of equal strength, particularly given that Arizona doesn’t have a left-handed option to start, though some of Philadelphia’s righties are vulnerable to same-side pitching. Read the rest of this entry »

It doesn’t take deep analysis to realize that if your starting pitchers combine to allow 13 runs and record 14 outs, your chances of winning a short series aren’t very good. Likewise if the two superstar MVP candidates atop your lineup go 1-for-21, your four 100-RBI guys combine to drive in one (1) run, and your entire team slugs .250. With numbers like that, it’s not too hard to explain the fate of the 2023 Dodgers, who were swept by the Diamondbacks in the Division Series that concluded on Wednesday night at Chase Field. Despite a slow start to their season and considerable upheaval in their rotation, the Dodgers won 100 games and cruised to their 10th division title in 11 years, but for the third year in a row, they were ousted by a team that finished the regular season miles behind them.

Indeed, the Dodgers’ exit from the past three postseasons accounts for three of the largest differentials in winning percentage between winner and loser in major league history:

Note the increasing frequency with which such upsets have happened, owing to the continued expansion of the postseason. When the two pennant winners went straight to the World Series, it was less likely their records would differ so greatly unless one won at least 70% of its games. And where we once had one postseason series per year, now we have 11, creating so many more opportunities for what look to be mismatches — except that in a short series, anything can happen, a fact we’ve known for well over a century. Just ask Tinker, Evers, and Chance about the 1906 White Sox, the Hitless Wonders who pantsed their crosstown rivals despite the Cubs having the highest single-season winning percentage in AL/NL history. Read the rest of this entry »

PHOENIX — There are a lot of things I think about more in October than I do in July — Halloween! Hay rides! — but none more so than inevitability. Ideas can have a season, and destiny is the stuff of fall. We look at a series, analyze the players and teams, and look for the sure thing. We know that we’re supposed to acknowledge the randomness of playoff baseball; anything can happen in a short series, after all. But c’mon. C’mon! You thought the Dodgers were going to advance to the NLCS. You weren’t sure — you’re a good nerd — but it felt like they would. It seemed like they should. They won 100 games this season to the Diamondbacks’ 84. They have Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman powering a potent offense. Sure their starters were hurt, but their bullpen was good. They got a bye and a rest and their first two games at home.

And then a funny thing happened: they got beat. They didn’t just lose the NLDS; the Diamondbacks won it, and rather emphatically. When something like that happens, when results run counter to our expectations, we start to look to the underdogs for their own signs of providence. It can all be very flattening, which is a shame, because the plays and players that make up a game deserve to be understood for what they are: not a script, but bits of dynamism unleashed on 48,175 screaming fans. So before we look ahead to the NLCS or back at the Dodgers’ season that was, below are a few such moments and people from Game 3.

The Third Inning
I don’t envy managers their jobs in the postseason. The stakes are unbelievably high, never more so than when you’re staring down potential elimination. You have to manage for today, tomorrow be damned – heck, there might not be a tomorrow. Your task, if you’re Dave Roberts, is to forget about the existence of Clayton Kershaw, Game 4 starter, and spend whatever bullpen bullets you need to in order to survive. Only how could you do that when Clayton Kershaw, Game 1 starter, left such an impression? You might need those bullets. So you watch Lance Lynn give up a leadoff home run to Geraldo Perdomo, who hit six all season. And then after a Corbin Carroll groundout, you watch as Ketel Marte adds another — this one more emphatic at 107.9 mph off the bat. Still you wait. But then Tommy Pham grounds out; Lynn is only at 38 pitches, and the D-backs have a raft of righties stretching all the way to Alek Thomas coming up. You’re almost out of it!

Yeah, about that.

And then, well.

This was the first time in postseason history that a team hit four home runs in an inning, and depending on how generous you’re feeling, Gabriel Moreno did his part twice. (When Moreno’s real-deal home run left the yard, the Chase Field crowd, which had already sung several choruses of “BEAT L.A.,” lost its collective mind. Discrete words couldn’t be mustered; all I could hear from the press box was a roar.) Caleb Ferguson came in to relieve Lynn, but the damage had been done.

The timing of Lynn’s exit deserves some scrutiny. Before Christian Walker’s laser to left field, as the count went to 1-1, the Dodgers bullpen began to stir, but in a wave-your-arms-around-to-loosen-them-up sort of way.

Two pitches into Moreno’s at-bat, the broadcast noted that Ferguson was up and actually throwing. After the game, Roberts said, “You’ve got two outs and a low-pitch count, and you figure that this run of right-handed hitters, you’ve got to be able to navigate it somewhat with two outs, nobody on base. Then two homers later you’re down 4-0. I had some guys ready. Obviously I can’t predict the future. I try not to be reactionary and get ahead of things. I just can’t predict the future. The way he was throwing the baseball, I didn’t expect that.”

But perhaps he should have. Lynn led baseball in home runs allowed this year with 44, a total that represents the sixth-most allowed in a single season in major league history. All those past long balls don’t guarantee future ones, but if you were going to pick a way for Lynn to join the Dodgers’ parade of ineffective Division Series starters — including his performance, LA’s starting trio mustered a disastrous 25.07 ERA across a mere 4.2 innings of work — a home run or two seemed a likely culprit.

In the bottom of the sixth, after Michael Grove had thrown an inning and Alex Vesia was busy dispatching Arizona’s 7-8-9 hitters, the broadcast noted the perhaps curious absence of Ryan Pepiot. Lauren Shehadi offered that Roberts had told her, “Listen, I have to manage this like there are two more games after it. Pepiot, he’s a bulk guy, we’ve seen it all season long, and if I’m going to get through this series, I need to think past Game 3.”

Roberts’ line of thinking about two outs and right-handed hitters and the bases being empty is logical enough when it comes to Lynn. He’s right, too, that a bulk guy might be useful as a backstop to Kershaw, who even when he’s not having a start like he did in Game 1 isn’t exactly going eight strong these days. But both answers suggest a lack of urgency, too great an emphasis on the cares of later and not enough on the here and oh-crap-we’re-about-to-go-home now. Get a guy up! Bring him in! Consider throwing your bulk dude! Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. In the third inning, a stoppable force met an extremely moveable object, and unfortunately for the Dodgers, Lynn budged. Roberts probably should have done the same.

The Dodgers Offense
We’ve all had bad days at work. The coffee machine breaks, your presentation goes badly, someone’s on a stinky food kick. Sometimes, though, those bad stretches linger. During the regular season, the Dodgers had the third-best wRC+ in the majors. They hit the second-most home runs and had the second-highest wOBA. They scored just 41 fewer runs than the Braves, and the Braves had an historically good offense. Betts and Freeman were simply marvelous.

Then the calendar flipped to October, and suddenly there was printer toner everywhere. By now you’ve probably heard that Betts and Freeman combined to go just 1-for-21 this postseason. All that pair of MVP candidates could muster was an infield single off the bat of Freeman in Game 2. And they weren’t alone. As a unit, the Dodgers hit .177/.248/.250, “good” for a 40 wRC+; they managed four extra-base hits the entire series. They were outscored 19–6 and never led in the series. J.D. Martinez went 0-for-4 in Game 3. A reshuffled Game 3 lineup resulted in Austin Barnes pinch-hitting against Andrew Saalfrank with the bases loaded and two outs in the seventh rather than David Peralta standing in against a lefty. Barnes swung at a first-pitch sinker and grounded out; it was the last time Los Angeles had a runner in scoring position. After Max Muncy struck out in the ninth, Will Smith managed a single, but a pair of flyouts ended the Dodgers’ season, as the Diamondbacks’ bobcat mascot danced around in a red speedo with “BEAT LA” emblazoned on the butt and the players whooped.

It was a bad night at work, and one of the cruel things about baseball is that where the rest of us muddle through lousy meetings and frustrating expense reports in the hopes of getting a break, the best cure for a down game is simply more time at the office. Even when the copy machine is jammed.

The Young Snakes in the NLDS
Perhaps nothing is better for defying expectations than the emergence of young stars. The likes of Carroll and Moreno (who had to leave the game early but is fine) have bolstered the Diamondbacks all season, and the playoffs are no exception:

As MLB.com’s Sarah Langs pointed out, the Diamondbacks are the third team in postseason history with four players age 23 or younger with a home run in a single postseason, joining the 2020 Braves quartet of Ronald Acuña Jr., Ozzie Albies, Austin Riley and Cristian Pache and the 2015 Cubs core of Kris Bryant, Kyle Schwarber, Jorge Soler, and Javier Báez.

Brandon Pfaadt
It would be easy to forget Brandon Pfaadt in all of this. A Wild Card sweep and the quirks of when the National League’s off-days fell meant the Diamondbacks were set up to throw Merrill Kelly and Zac Gallen twice each in the NLDS. They still needed a Game 3 starter, however, and that job fell to Pfaadt. His initial foray into postseason pitching didn’t go great: seven hits and three earned runs (including a two-run home run) in just 2.2 innings of work in his Wild Card start versus the Brewers. The first three hitters he faced that night reached; he leaned too heavily on his fastball.

His outing Wednesday night went much more smoothly. The rookie needed 17 pitches to retire his first Brewers hitter; in the first inning on Wednesday, a Betts’ groundout required five, fly outs from Freeman and Martinez needed only one apiece, and boom, one inning down. Though still fastball-heavy, he mixed in more changeups along with a few breaking balls, presenting the more varied arsenal that he and the Diamondbacks staff had identified earlier in the week as so important.

It wasn’t all good. Of the 12 balls the Dodgers put in play, six were classified as hard-hit by Statcast, and the double in the fifth that ended his night would have been a home run in 28 other ballparks. He was bolstered by more good bullpen work; though they allowed two runs, the Snakes ‘pen, which had caused so much consternation this season and inspired the deadline trade for Paul Sewald, posted a 3.27 ERA and 2.44 FIP during the DS. But it was a marked improvement, and one the Diamondbacks have to find encouraging. After all, as Lovullo put it to the media on Tuesday, you need more than two pitchers to get through the postseason, and Arizona isn’t done yet.

In Game 1 of the NLDS, the 84-win Arizona Diamondbacks raced to a commanding 11-2 victory over the 100-win Los Angeles Dodgers, their longtime tormenters in the NL West. While Game 2’s 4-2 win wasn’t quite as dominant, it nevertheless lifted the D-backs to a 2-0 series lead and the brink of a sweep. With a combination of patience (forcing Bobby Miller to throw 52 pitches in under two innings) and guile (becoming the second team to notch four stolen bases in a game this postseason), the upstart Arizonans firmly established themselves as legitimate title contenders.

Though the Los Angeles crowd roared at Miller’s first 100-mph heater, déjà vu set in within a few hitters. With the bases loaded and no one out in the top of the first, Christian Walker rocketed a four-seam fastball 105.6 mph off the bat to deep center. But while James Outman missed his first chance on Saturday, he didn’t blink this time, leaping and snagging the slicing drive and limiting the damage to a sac fly:

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In their Wild Card Series, the Diamondbacks were the comeback kids, the sixth seed that had limped their way into the postseason with a .451 second-half winning percentage and erased deficits of multiple runs on back-to-back days to beat the Brewers in Milwaukee. But on Saturday in Los Angeles, there was no mistaking it: this team can be a serious threat. Arizona came out punching in the first inning, with hard-hit ball after hard-hit ball off Dodgers starter Clayton Kershaw, chasing the left-hander after just a third of an inning – the shortest start of his Hall of Fame career. Before the Dodgers knew it, the Diamondbacks led 9-0, a hole too deep for Los Angeles to climb out of:

The second pitch of the game, a 73 mph curveball, was smoked by Ketel Marte at 115.7 mph and ate up James Outman in center field, leaving Marte on second with a double. It was good for the second-hardest batted ball of the over 21,000 hit off Kershaw in the Statcast portion of his career. In all of Statcast history, just two hitters – Shohei Ohtani and Giancarlo Stanton – have tagged a pitch thrown at 73 mph or slower with an exit velocity that high. It was a harbinger of things to come, the first of eight hard-hit balls in the opening inning, which amounts to one of the most impressive first-inning onslaughts in recent memory – no team has unleashed more hard-hit balls in the first inning of any game in over five years. Arizona plated six runs in the first and three in the second, and the focus – even Dave Roberts’ focus, as he shared in a third-inning interview – shifted to what a blowout here means for the rest of the series. Read the rest of this entry »

You know how these articles go. There are two teams facing off in the playoffs. I name the players on each team, and maybe offer some lukewarm and heavily caveated opinions as to who is better. If I’m feeling punchy, I might slip in some jokes. Maybe there are some tables, perhaps named “Tale of the Tape” or something similar. It’s a tried and true formula.

For this series, I’m not going to do that, because you know who the Dodgers are and you probably just spent two days seeing the Diamondbacks announce themselves. We get it: the Dodgers have Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, and the Diamondbacks have a bunch of fast guys headlined by Corbin Carroll. No one needs to see 2,000 words worth of that. Instead, let’s try to predict the matchups that will determine this series. Read the rest of this entry »

By overcoming Brandon Pfaadt’s rough start and connecting for three homers and four runs in four innings against Corbin Burnes, the Diamondbacks put themselves in a position to close out their best-of-three series against the Brewers on Wednesday night. In the early going, it looked like Milwaukee would flip the script by knocking around Arizona ace Zac Gallen and forcing a third game. The 28-year-old righty pulled himself together after allowing a pair of first-inning runs, however, and his teammates finally solved Freddy Peralta after he dominated them for five innings, breaking the game open in the sixth and hanging on for a 5-2 win at American Family Field. The Diamondbacks will advance to face the Dodgers in the Division Series.

For much of the night, it appeared these two teams were headed for a rubber match. Gallen was one of the majors’ top pitchers this year, and spent much of the season as the frontrunner for the NL Cy Young Award, but a flurry of home runs from June to August, and a whole lot of hard contact in general, probably took him out of serious consideration. Still, he finished second in the league in innings (210), third in WAR (5.2), fifth in FIP (3.27) and seventh in ERA (3.47).

The Diamondbacks looked to be in good hands, but from the outset on Wednesday, Gallen hardly pitched like an an ace. While he ranked sixth among qualified starters in first-pitch strike percentage during the regular season (66.4%), he fell behind each of the first three Brewers, preventing him from going to his secondary stuff more quickly, and the hitters made him pay. Christian Yelich laced a 2-0 fastball to right field for a leadoff single. William Contreras got ahead 2-0 as well, but ultimately whiffed on a curveball on the seventh pitch of the plate appearance while Yelich — who had already drawn two pickoff throws from Gallen — stole second. Carlos Santana got ahead 3-0, and twisted the knife by working a nine-pitch walk. Read the rest of this entry »

Extremes in defense were on display as the Wild Card round kicked off on Tuesday afternoon. In the Rangers-Rays opener, Texas left fielder Evan Carter laid out for a great catch of an Isaac Paredes line drive in the first inning, starter Jordan Montgomery dove to make an impressive snag of Jose Siri’s popped-up bunt in the second, and Josh Jung made a nice grab on Manuel Margot’s soft liner in the seventh. On the other side, Siri’s day from hell continued as he missed catching Corey Seager’s wall-banging double in the fifth, then deflected and briefly lost control of a Seager bloop before airmailing it over third base in the sixth, costing the Rays a run. And misery loves company — his Rays teammates made three additional errors in their 4-0 loss.

Meanwhile in Minnesota, center fielder Michael A. Taylor made a pair of exceptional catches, and Carlos Correa saved a run in the fourth by fielding a dribbler that had gone under third baseman Jorge Polanco’s glove, making a sidearm throw home while on the run to keep Bo Bichette from scoring. Read the rest of this entry »

It looked like the mismatch of all mismatches. Brandon Pfaadt is not a playoff ace, to put it mildly. The Diamondbacks rookie struggled mightily in his first taste of the majors; though he’s undoubtedly a top prospect, he scuffled his way to a 5.72 ERA and 5.18 FIP. He was better after a midseason demotion, but not that much better, running up a 4.22 ERA and 4.35 FIP in his second major league go-round.

On the flip side, Corbin Burnes is a Cy Young winner who righted the ship after an iffy start to the season. The Brewers gave him a light workload in September to set him up for the playoffs, and he rewarded them with a 2.51 ERA (3.15 FIP) in the month. A matchup against Zac Gallen might have been a fair fight. Instead, the Brewers spent time setting up their ace for the Game 1 start, and the Diamondbacks had to improvise after a furious push to the playoffs. Read the rest of this entry »