Did you watch the Guardians and the Rays in their Wild Card Series? It was extremely fun, especially if you hate runs. Everyone got out so much! Both teams had a better WHIP than Justin Verlander. The Guardians batted .171. The Rays batted .115. Together they batted .143. That’s Robbie Ray’s career batting average. Robbie Ray is famously not a hitter.

While Cleveland and Tampa Bay pushed the boundaries of modern science searching for new and innovative ways to not get on base, I noticed that one player seemed to take his failures a bit harder than the rest. See if you can spot it as well. Turn your sound all the way up, especially if you’re at the office. If you’re at an elementary school or a place of worship, see if there’s a public address system you can plug into:

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The National League’s adoption of the designated hitter this season eliminated the most noticeable difference between it and the American League. Now, the National League is what makes grown men in scarves weep on public transit, and the American League comes with a slice of melted cheese on top. (No, I have not updated my pop culture references since 2009, and I have no plans to do so.)

The only remaining difference is that the AL gets an extra off day during the Division Series. MLB announced in August that contrary to prior practice, the Division Series would no longer have a travel day between Games 4 and 5. But while the NL would play two games, get a day off, and then play three in a row, the American League gets an extra day off without travel between Games 1 and 2.

When the league announced this new scheme, an obvious question occurred to my colleague Dan Szymborski: How would this affect pitcher usage? Previously, a Division Series contestant could run four pitchers on full rest, and have both its Game 1 and Game 2 starter on full rest for the decisive match, if necessary. Or it could bring back its Game 1 starter on short rest for Game 4, and have everyone else start in order on regular rest. Moving or eliminating the off day throws that practice into chaos. Read the rest of this entry »

Will the real 2022 Yankees please stand up? Projected to win 91 games, they spent the first half of the season looking a whole lot stronger than that, winning 61 of their first 84 (a .726 winning percentage and a 118-win pace) and building a 15.5-game lead in the American League East. Injuries and a disappearing offense — besides Aaron Judge — led to an epic slump as the team went 18-31 (.367) from July 9 to September 3 while that lead dwindled to four games. They righted the ship by going 20-9 the rest of the way, finishing 99-63 with their first division title since 2019 (and just their second of the past decade). While Judge set a franchise and American League record with 62 homers and several injured players returned, major questions linger as they attempt to win their first World Series since 2009.

Meanwhile, before issuing a two-game sweep to the Rays in a Wild Card Series capped by Oscar Gonzalez’s 15th-inning walk-off home run, the Guardians — the majors’ youngest team, with a weighted average of 26 years — surged down the stretch as well, going a major league-best 23-6 from September 5 onward. At 92-70, they ran away with the AL Central and were the division’s only team to finish above .500. Of course, as I’ve noted before, there’s very little correlation between a team’s September performance and their October success:

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The Tampa Bay Rays’ season came to an end yesterday, and as a result, so did Stan Boroski’s coaching career. An underrated part of the A.L. East club’s success for over a decade, Boroski joined the staff prior to the 2010 season — he’d previously tutored pitchers in the Houston Astros organization — and became the bullpen coach in November 2011. He announced last month that he’d be retiring at the end of the season.

I recently asked members of Tampa Bay relief corps about their highly-regarded coach. What’s made him so good at his job?

“I really think it’s his presence,” said Pete Fairbanks, a mainstay in the Rays bullpen for the past three-plus seasons. “It lends itself to the environment that we’re in down there. It’s a very loose and unfocused group, and Stan does a great job of managing that. There is also his ability to put across our message of attacking the strike zone, and just how valuable that is. That’s something he has preached all of the time I’ve been here, It’s like beating a dead horse, but it’s a horse that needs to continue to be hit, over and over again. It’s that important.”

The message has resonated well. Rays relievers walked just 2.79 batters per nine innings this year — only the Dodgers were better — and their 2.96 walk rate since 2018 is the lowest in either league. In order to reach base against Boroski’s bullpen, you’ve typically needed to hit your way on. Read the rest of this entry »

A day after playing the fastest postseason game since 1999, the Rays and Guardians combined for a game more than twice as long, lasting 15 innings and four hours and 57 minutes. Dominant pitching was the name of the game as both teams were held scoreless until the 15th inning — the longest scoreless postseason game in major league history. The decisive blow came when Oscar Gonzalez blasted a Corey Kluber cutter deep into left-center field for the walk-off win.

Between the two teams, 16 different pitchers combined for 39 strikeouts, eight walks, and 11 hits. They threw 432 pitches, 68% of which were strikes. Just 15 of the 58 balls in play were hard hit. No matter how you slice it, it was simply a masterclass in modern pitching by both teams:

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The Wild Card Series opener between the Rays and Guardians was quick-moving from the beginning. Rays ace Shane McClanahan worked around a few weakly hit singles in the early innings. Cleveland starter Shane Bieber’s only baserunner in the first four frames — Ji-Man Choi, who walked — was quickly erased by a Manuel Margot double play. The first five full innings were completed in just an hour and nine minutes despite playoff-length commercial breaks, largely due to the lack of offense and Bieber’s ridiculously quick pace on the mound. The matchup of two premier starters — the AL’s fifth- and seventh-best qualified pitchers by ERA — seemed to be everything fans were hoping for.

Bieber’s start was masterful, matching his MO from the regular season: steal strikes with four-seam fastballs, then get hitters to chase his cutter and slider off the plate. The Rays’ righty-heavy lineup couldn’t figure it out for the entire game, coming up empty on 17 of their 27 swings against those two pitches. Unsurprisingly, every single one of those swinging strikes was located down and to his glove side. Bieber’s impeccable placement of pitches on the outer half was especially noteworthy against the chase-happy Christian Bethancourt and Randy Arozarena, who went a combined 0–6 with five strikeouts, four of which came on breaking balls off the plate. Bieber’s 7.2 innings of one-run ball made for the longest playoff start by a Cleveland pitcher in 15 years and will likely be among the longest starts of any pitcher this postseason. That’s a continuation of the impressive volume he put up in the regular season; he was one of just three AL pitchers to cross the 200-inning threshold. Read the rest of this entry »

Austin Hedges is Cleveland’s primary catcher because of his defensive value. That’s no secret: The 32-year-old backstop has long been a well below-average hitter — his career wRC+ is a woeful 54 — but when it comes to working with a pitching staff, few do it better. Under his and backup Luke Maile’s guidance, the Guardians rank third in the American League in pitcher WAR and fourth in ERA. It’s fair to say that pitching is the postseason-bound club’s greatest strength.

Hedges fielded questions about his time behind the plate in Cleveland prior to a recent game.

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David Laurila: Who has been the easiest guy on the team to catch, the pitcher for whom you’re kind of just sitting back there on a rocking chair?

Austin Hedges: “Our whole team does a really nice job of staying consistent with all of their pitches, which has made my job really easy. One of the guys in the bullpen that is surprisingly easy to work with — a pitcher with really good stuff — is Enyel De Los Santos. He doesn’t get the credit that a lot of the big dogs in our bullpen do, but he’s been a workhorse for us. He’s gotten big outs in leverage situations. He’s so consistent with all of his pitches that I always know what I’m going to get.” Read the rest of this entry »

Of the 12 teams in the playoffs in 2022, only one was projected by both ZiPS and FanGraphs in the preseason as a sub-.500 team: the Cleveland Guardians. But this lone Cinderella in a sea of mean stepsisters toppled the White Sox handily this year, pulling away from the pack late to finish with an 11-game cushion in the AL Central. As the league’s No. 3 seed by virtue of winning the division, Cleveland now hosts the Tampa Bay Rays in the three-game Wild Card Series.

Broadly speaking, there are broad similarities between the Guardians and the Rays. Both play in smaller markets and, depending on how you look at the issue, have a payroll attitude somewhere on the spectrum from admirably thrifty to Ebenezer Scrooge on tax deadline day. However they got there, these teams embraced modern analytics early on, long before it was de rigeur in baseball, and have seen advantages. The Rays were the league doormat during the early, very non-sabermetric days of the franchise, but after an abrupt change in direction, they have the fourth-most wins in baseball over the last 15 years. The Guardians are not far behind.

Despite both teams regularly making the playoffs, they’ve only met in the postseason once before, in the 2013 AL Wild Card Game. Things didn’t go Cleveland’s way then, as Alex Cobb and Tampa’s bullpen combined for a shutout, causing a quick exit from October. Now Cleveland has a three-game series to get its revenge. Read the rest of this entry »

Cal Quantrill epitomizes the term “pitcher.” Twenty-seven years old and in his fourth big-league season, the Cleveland Guardians right-hander not only attacks hitters with a multi-pitch arsenal, he does so with a combination of aggressiveness and guile. Mixing and matching with aplomb, he’s won 23 of 32 decisions and logged a 3.16 ERA in 336 innings over the past two seasons. As my colleague Michael Baumann pointed out just last month, Quantrill isn’t overpowering, but he gets the job done.

Drafted eighth overall in 2016 by the San Diego Padres out of Stanford University, Quantrill was acquired by Cleveland at the 2020 trade deadline as part of the nine-player Mike Clevinger deal. He’s expected to start against the Tampa Bay Rays on Sunday if their Wild Card Series requires a deciding Game 3.

Quantrill discussed his evolution as a pitcher and his it’s-all-about-getting-outs approach this past weekend.

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David Laurila: We discussed your repertoire in spring training of 2018 when you were in the Padres system. How have you changed as a pitcher since that time?

Cal Quantrill: “If we’re looking at it from a literal standpoint, I flattened out the slider and turned it into a cutter. I went to more of a 50/50 mix with the two-seam and four-seam. I’ve kind of kept a little curveball wrinkle to keep them off the hard stuff. Read the rest of this entry »

Bo Naylor made his MLB debut with the Cleveland Guardians on Saturday, and if all goes according to plan, he’ll be a mainstay in their lineup as soon as next year. His tool box and present performance are equally eye-catching. The 22-year-old Mississauga, Ontario native logged a 140 wRC+ between Double-A Akron and Triple-A Columbus, and a pair of counting stats were even more notable. Displaying unique athleticism for a backstop, Naylor swatted 21 home runs and swiped 20 bases in 24 attempts.

His emergence as Cleveland’s catcher of the future came on the heels of a confounding 2021 campaign. Returning to action following a minor-league season lost to COVID, the 2018 first-round pick struggled to the tune of a .612 OPS in Akron last year. A flaw in his left-handed stroke was the primary reason for concern. As Eric Longenhagen wrote last spring, Naylor’s swing “can really only cut through the heart of the zone.”

This past Sunday, I asked the younger brother of Guardians first baseman Josh Naylor if he felt that our lead prospect analyst’s assessment was valid. Read the rest of this entry »