When AJ Pollock went down with a Grade 2 right hamstring strain in early September, it wasn’t entirely clear that he would be available to the Dodgers for the postseason, let alone remain as productive as he’d been. Fortunately for Los Angeles, the 33-year-old left fielder made a quick return, hit reassuringly well over the season’s final days — .300/.389/.867 (214 wRC+) in 36 plate appearances post-injury — and is well-positioned to help pick up the slack for the injured Max Muncy, who dislocated his left elbow on the final day of the regular season. In Game 2 of the Division Series against the Giants on Saturday night, the Dodgers’ left fielder played a key role in all three of their rallies.

Pollock, who had taken a pair of 0-for-3s in the NL Wild Card game and the Division Series opener, first made an impact upon Game 2 as part of a move that backfired on the Giants. With two outs and Chris Taylor on second base in the second inning, he got ahead of Kevin Gausman 2-0 by laying off a 95-mph fastball just below the strike zone and then an 85-mph splitter low and away. Rather than challenge him in the zone and risk a big hit, the Giants elected to intentionally walk Pollock, who was batting eighth, to bring up pitcher Julio Urías, a decent hitter who made the Giants pay by driving in the Dodgers’ first run of the series with an RBI single. Pollock took third and then scored on Mookie Betts‘ single.

In the sixth, Cody Bellinger’s bases-loaded, two-run double off reliever Dominic Leone — who taken over for Gausman and made an inauspicious entry by walking Taylor — extended the Dodgers’ lead to 4-1. On Leone’s very next pitch, a slider right on the outside corner, Pollock reached out and lashed it to left field for another two-run double:

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Baseball lends itself to stories, October baseball perhaps most of all. During the regular season, a team’s narrative can unfurl slowly. The postseason, by contrast, is marked by the frantic crowning of heroes and chokers. Subplots abound, and the identity of the game’s central character isn’t always clear until the late innings.

After losing to the San Francisco Giants, 4–0, in Game 1 of the NLDS, the Los Angeles Dodgers hoped to even the series on Saturday. The Giants, for their part, were looking to push the Dodgers to the edge of elimination. In the process, the two teams told three different tales.

The Hero’s Journey, Deferred
If you had told the Giants in June that Kevin Gausman would be starting Game 2 of the NLDS, they would have been thrilled. Heading into the All-Star break, he had posted a 1.73 ERA and a 2.57 FIP, led by a four-seam fastball that finishes batters high and a devilish splitter that wipes them out low and is among the best in the game.

But after a scintillating first half, Gausman faltered. He posted a 4.42 ERA and a 3.65 FIP. His splitter had less sink. He tinkered with his pitch mix, toying with throwing more sliders and what Pitch Info classifies as changeups, though not to particularly great effect. The final month of the season suggested a course correction, though not quite a return to form, an assessment seemingly shared by Gabe Kapler when he tapped Logan Webb to start Game 1 of the series.

And for the first few innings of Saturday’s game, you could see why. Gausman threw first-pitch balls to three of the first four batters he faced. In the second, Chris Taylor doubled. After a Cody Bellinger strikeout, Gausman fell behind AJ Pollock, 2–0, and Kapler opted to put him on intentionally to get to Julio Urías. But the pitcher and his .203 season average slapped a hanging splitter for a single, scoring Taylor; Mookie Betts followed with an RBI single of his own (his third hit this series and fifth this postseason).

It looked like Gausman’s night might end half an inning later, as Kapler almost pinch hit Tommy La Stella for his starter when San Francisco threatened after a Wilmer Flores walk and a Brandon Crawford single. Ultimately, though, he thought better of it when a Donovan Solano sacrifice fly plated a run and pushed the Giants to two outs, and Gausman rewarded that faith by settling down and retiring the next nine batters he faced. It seemed like it might be the sort of start that, provided the Giants rallied, would be described as gritty — not dominant, but necessary in the march to the World Series.

Then the sixth inning hit.

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It took more than a quarter century of Wild Card-era postseason baseball to give us a series between two of the National League’s most iconic franchises, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants. The chromatic contrast of both teams’ classic-looking threads, and the tone and intensity of Oracle Park, provided a rich backdrop for a Game 1 Giants victory, a 4-0 contest played with the breakneck pace of a minor league game on getaway day.

Jerry Rice and Steve Young are basically the warm up act here #ResilientSF #NLDS#Postseason pic.twitter.com/V71WpFOUn5

— Kate Rooney (@TheKateRooney) October 9, 2021

The driving force for that pace? Logan Webb, the Giants 24-year-old starter who quickly ushered Dodgers hitters back to the bench in the best start of his young career, hurling 7.2 shutout innings while surrendering just five hits, walking none, and striking out 10. Webb and the Giants have tinkered with his delivery and repertoire a few times over the last three seasons, and they’ve settled on a release point that’s added more sink to his changeup, which has become his best pitch. He threw more changeups in Game 1 than any other offering, inducing 12 of his whopping 21 whiffs on the pitch.

Webb did much of the out-getting work on his own. In addition to striking out 10, a career high, he also collected four Dodgers grounders himself, making him solely responsible for 14 of the 23 outs he induced. Beyond the tallied whiffs, the Dodgers juggernaut lineup had many uncomfortable-looking takes and partial swings against Webb.

All four Giants runs came via the home run, apt considering San Francisco led the big leagues in dingers this season. Buster Posey drew first blood, shooting a 3-0 pitch the opposite way in the first inning. It one-hopped into McCovey Cove and per the broadcast, it was the first home run Walker Buehler has surrendered on a 3-0 pitch during his major-league career (it was only the fourth time Posey has hit a home run in that count).

Both Webb and Buehler coasted through the middle innings. After surrendering a leadoff oppo single to Mookie Betts in the first (Betts went 2-for-4, hitting the single and spanking a hanging Webb slider in the eighth), Webb didn’t allow another hit until the fifth. A couple of harmless singles flecked Buehler’s middle-frames, and neither team did any damage again until the seventh. The few who reached base were quickly erased by great defense. A Webb error that allowed Corey Seager to reach in the fourth was expunged by a gorgeous 4-6-3 double play that saw La Stella and Crawford crisscross around the bag.

It was the fourth inning when Buehler first started to show real cracks. He surrendered a well-struck single to Kris Bryant, who had three hits, including a homer, and took several very comfortable swings against Buehler throughout the night, and then narrowly escaped a would-be double by Mike Yastrzemski, who hooked a cutter just foul down the right field line. With two outs in that situation, Bryant may have scored from first on a double. It took Buehler surprising Yaz with a gutsy full-count changeup, his first cambio of the night, to escape. (An aside: take a look at Buehler’s changeup usage by game this year.) The Giants couldn’t score despite two well-struck balls in play in the fifth: an Evan Longoria fly out and a Tommy La Stella single sandwiched around the pitcher’s spot. Buehler stabilized and moved quickly through the sixth and was left in to face Bryant to start the seventh.

Three-hundred-and-eighty-nine feet later, the Giants had padded their lead to three. Buehler finished having worked 6.1 innings of three-run ball, allowing seven base runners while striking out five. He managed to induce just 12 swinging strikes in 99 total pitches, and his fastball’s spin rate was down a full 200 rpm compared to his 2020 rate.

Webb’s “challenges” came later. He surrendered a two-out double to Seager in the sixth (the hardest-hit ball of the night at 111 mph), and then hung a slider to Will Smith, who also doubled, in the seventh. After each double, Webb struck out hitters until each inning ended. After seven, he had struck out 10 Dodgers on just 77 pitches.

A Brandon Crawford solo shot in eighth — Dodgers reliever Alex Vesia had blown fastballs past the previous two hitters, then left a breaking ball in Crawford’s happy zone — capped the scoring for the Giants.

Dodgers hitters were flummoxed by Webb all night, and four of them tallied multiple strikeouts in Game 1. The bottom of the Dodgers order (Matt Beaty, AJ Pollock, and Cody Bellinger, plus the pitcher’s spot) went 0-for-12, a cakewalk for Giants pitching. Pollock had been super hot, homering five times in the 10 late-September games he played after returning from a hamstring injury, while Beaty is replacing the injured Max Muncy; Bellinger has been mired in a long, concerning funk.

With the benefit of uncharitable hindsight, it might be correct to question Dave Roberts‘ decision to leave Buehler in to face Bryant for a third time. The desire to extend Buehler’s start as long as possible did preserve the Dodgers bullpen for Game 2, though, as none of Los Angeles’ relievers — Brusdar Graterol, Vesia, and Phil Bickford — threw more than 10 pitches in this one, and all should be available tomorrow.

Gabe Kapler was afforded the opportunity to get 24-year-old sidewinder Camilo Doval into his first postseason game with a sizable lead. Doval, who assumed closer duties late in the year, has seemingly “found it” after dealing with stretches of extreme wildness during his minor league career. He’s already one of baseball’s more electric relievers, eliciting ugly swings on his big-bending slider and slinging 100 mph with natural cut right past big league hitters.

Saturday’s Game 2 (9:07 ET) pits Giants righty Kevin Gausman against Dodgers lefty Julio Urías. Both teams, which feature a lot of moving parts, will likely shuffle their lineups. After the game, Roberts told reports that Bellinger will return to first base while Taylor starts in center field. On the Giants side, look for some or all of the right-handed hitting Darin Ruf, Donovan Solano, and Austin Slater to start against Urías. We’ll all watch to see if the Dodgers’ adjustments take, while wishing these two teams could play a seven-game series instead of five.

The Dodgers managed to survive their do-or-die Wild Card matchup against the Cardinals on Wednesday night thanks to the ninth inning heroics of Chris Taylor, setting the stage for the seemingly inevitable clash between the two best teams in baseball in the NL Division Series.

You may have already read that this is the first postseason matchup between these two storied franchises. Since 1995, the first year the Wild Card was implemented, the Dodgers and Giants have made the playoffs in the same season just twice: 2014 and ’16. The success of each team has ebbed and flowed, with one thriving while the other flounders. A new chapter in this historic rivalry will be written this October, with the winner of this series the favorite to claim the National League pennant in the next round.

During the regular season, these two teams were pretty evenly matched. Both won 50 games in the second half. In their head-to-head matchups, San Francisco held the advantage in wins with 10 to Los Angeles’ nine, while the Dodgers scored just two more runs than the Giants in those games. When you break down their rosters into their individual components, these clubs were ranked right next to each other in offense and pitching, with team defense the lone factor separating factor. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you subscribe to the notion that styles make fights? I’m not 100% sure what that means — I’ve never been a boxing fan. But styles make for entertaining baseball games, and the Cardinals and Dodgers set out to prove that during Wednesday night’s National League Wild Card game.

The Dodgers brought the heavy artillery: a coterie of MVP winners, Silver Sluggers, and All-Stars who led the NL in scoring. Their splendor was slightly diminished by Max Muncy’s absence, but the offense still felt like a battering ram. Their starter? None other than Max Scherzer, the modern avatar of power pitching, all glowering stares and challenge fastballs.

The Cardinals? They’ve got star hitters, too, but nothing like the Dodgers’ onslaught. They thrived this year both by smacking home runs — Tyler O’Neill and Paul Goldschmidt are large and powerful — and by playing the best defense in the majors. Their pitcher of choice Wednesday? Crafty old Adam Wainwright, who rarely tops 90 mph on the radar gun but makes up for it with a time-bending curveball and pinpoint command. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: You can find the Dodgers and Cardinals Wild Card rosters and announced lineups here and here.

While it’s not the blood rivalry Yankees-Red Sox pairing of the AL Wild Card Game, the NL Wild Card matchup does not lack for story lines. The Dodgers are the reigning World Series winners, and despite tying the franchise record for wins (106), finishing with the majors’ best run differential (+269) and outperforming last year’s 43–17 juggernaut over their final 60 (45–15), they finished second to the upstart Giants by a single game, ending their eight-year run of NL West titles. They’re just the third 100-win team to wind up as a Wild Card, after the 2002 A’s (102 wins), who didn’t have to play a do-or-die game, and the 2018 Yankees (100 wins), who won theirs. That their season comes down to a single game despite their dominance over the long haul is either evidence that the current playoff format needs overhaul or that it’s perfect as is; you’re guaranteed to hear both points of view somewhere in the run-up to the game, and probably during and after as well.

The Cardinals (90-72) are the upstart comeback kids. Beset by injuries to an already-thin rotation, they were just 51–51 at the July 30 trade deadline, and their acquisitions of the well-shellacked Jon Lester and J.A. Happ drew more snickers than raves. They were below .500 as late as August 8 (55–56), at which point their Playoff Odds were a season-low 1.3%. Thanks in significant part to the league’s strongest defense and a suddenly-lively offense, they went 35–16 the rest of the way, better than all but the Giants (36–14) and Dodgers (39–11). While they were still just 69–68 as late as September 7, they embarked upon a 17-game winning streak, the longest in franchise history and in the NL since the 1935 Cubs won 21. The streak turned what looked to be a hectic five-team race for the second Wild Card spot into a laugher; St. Louis won going away, clinching on September 28 and outdoing the next-closest team, the Reds, by seven games. The 2.8% odds the Cardinals had on September 7 now stand as the lowest September mark of any team that has rallied to make the playoffs since 2014.

Beyond all of that and a marquee pitching matchup between Max Scherzer and Adam Wainwright, there’s the inevitable discussion of these two teams crossing paths in the postseason, where the Cardinals have gotten the upper hand four out of five times, leaving Dodgers fans smarting in the 1985 NLCS (Ozzie Smith, Jack Clark, Tom Niedenfuer) and the 2013 NLCS and ’14 NLDS (Clayton Kershaw, Hanley Ramirez, Matt Carpenter, and so on). That Kershaw wouldn’t have been the choice to start this one — he’s on the sidelines for October due to yet another bout of forearm discomfort — might only partially quell the anxiety of Dodgers fans given the continued presence of Wainwright and Yadier Molina. Oh, and Albert Pujols is here, too, albeit on the other side of the equation.

For as rich as those storylines may be, they’re not the same as actual analysis. There’s only so much one can do for a single game, but it’s worth touching on a few points. Read the rest of this entry »

Like the majority of the people reading this, I spent my weekend doing little other than watching baseball. The possibilities for real chaos were endless, and while none of the various bingo balls fell our way for a meaningful game on Monday, the season still ended with plenty of drama and interesting tidbits.

Clayton Kershaw Walks Off The Mound

In the midst of the exciting games with all sorts of playoff implications, it was a jarring moment when Kershaw came out of Friday night’s start against Milwaukee with what is being described as forearm discomfort. Based on both his and Dave Roberts’ post-game comments, whatever is going on with one of the best left arms in the history of the game is not good, and his 2021 season is likely over. As far as his Dodgers career, that’s still to be determined; his contract expires after the final out of the World Series.

The No. 7 pick in the 2006 draft out of a high school in the northern suburbs of Dallas, Kershaw came onto my radar that summer, when a veteran scout told me that he was the best pitcher at the complex level he’d ever seen over decades of experience. My first in-person look came the following spring during his full-season debut with Low-A Great Lakes. He reached Double-A that year as a teenager, and even though he walked nearly five batters per nine innings, much of that was the fault of minor league umpires who had no idea how to call a pure 12-to-6 curveball with more downward action than they had likely ever seen.

The first time I watched Kershaw for professional purposes came in March 2014 in a spring training game against the Padres. He was horrible, allowing nine base runners in his three innings of work; it was early, and he hadn’t ramped up. I still remember my report: “Fringy command of fringy weapons. Likely Cy Young candidate.” He’d go on to win his third in four years that season.

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Position: Junior Analyst, Baseball Operations

Summary:
The Baseball Operations team of the Los Angeles Dodgers is responsible for supporting the Major League Coaching Staff and Baseball Operations leadership group with data and information needed for strategic decision making. As a Junior Analyst, you will work with other members of the Baseball Operations team to build reports and visualizations to communicate insights clearly and concisely to stakeholders. This position offers the opportunity to push the boundaries of conventional thinking, grow analytically by solving challenging problems, and collaborate with some of the best baseball minds in the sport. As a member of the Baseball Operations team, you will see your work impact the Major League team on a nightly basis.

Job Functions:

• Develop and deliver reports to the Major League Coaching Staff and Baseball Operations leadership group in a timely manner
• Build new tools and improve existing ones, to optimize workflows and quality of information
• Perform ad-hoc research as requested, summarizing key findings
• Utilize statistical tools and metrics to analyze the Dodgers and upcoming opponents
• Perform other related duties as assigned

Basic Requirements/Qualifications:

• High school diploma, GED or equivalent
• Experience using R to wrangle and visualize data
• Familiarity with SQL and Git
• Knowledge of sabermetric research and principles
• Ability to work a varied schedule including evenings, weekends, and holidays
• Bachelor’s degree in a STEM field preferred
• Passion for a field outside of analytics that could be applicable to baseball (web or app development, design, or physics, to name a few) preferred

To Apply:
To apply, please use this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Los Angeles Dodgers.

This is the sixth 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.

As noted in the boilerplate introduction above, it is the primary goal of the Team Entropy project to root for extra baseball beyond the 162-game regular season. While the complicated scenarios involving more than a single isolated head-to-head tiebreaker game may be farfetched, appreciating the sense of possibility for greater things as events unfold is part of the package. This is as much about the journey as it is the destination, which so often remains abstract. There have been just three winner-take-all tiebreaker games played since I began this project in 2011.

The secondary goal of the Team Entropy project, and part of appreciating that sense of possibility, is to have at least some portion of the playoff picture at stake on the final day of the season. On that note, we have already achieved some level of success, as we enter the final day of the 2021 season with four teams still battling for the two AL Wild Card berths — one of which is attempting to make its first postseason in 20 years — and with the NL West title still in doubt as teams with 106 and 105 wins attempt to avoid a do-or-die Wild Card game. Read the rest of this entry »

Quick Sunday update. The Yankees lost on Saturday, furthering the potential for chaos, and the four-way tie is an increased possibility, at 6.5%. The chances of bonus baseball overall now stand at 57.6%. Good news for us and good news for the Rays, who will play one of these four teams later this week. It’s not something that’s captured in projections, but it’s interesting that if the Rays go full B-team, it reduces the chances of a tie, and as a result, a slight reprieve for the team they eventually play. Jameson Taillon is back in as the starter and Joan Adon looks to be Washington’s starter, which is to Boston’s benefit according to the projections.

The NL West remains unresolved, but simple: if the Dodgers win and the Giants lose, they play a tiebreak game. ZiPS has a 19.8% chance of a tiebreaker game, with the overall division as San Franciso 90.0%, Los Angeles 10.0%. Freddy Peralta is being held back for the playoffs with Brett Anderson going today. It makes sense too; it’s in Milwaukee’s interest to leave one of these teams more susceptible to getting knocked out of the playoffs by the Cardinals later this week.

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Below you’ll find today’s ZiPS stretch run update. For details on just what’s going on here, please refer to my original article describing all these mathnanigans.

American League Wild Card

The Yankees and their bats were largely quiet against the Rays on Friday, but they still basically control their own destiny as the team in the first Wild Card spot, albeit the one with by far the toughest opposition. The Blue Jays fended off a late-inning Baltimore rally and held on to the win, but the Red Sox winning was just as damaging to Toronto’s playoff hopes as the Jays’ win was helpful. Toronto’s still one-in-five to make the postseason, but needs some help now; since the Blue Jays are already assumed to be strongly favored to beat the Orioles, they get an even larger boost from a Nationals win. Read the rest of this entry »