Much has been made of Terry Francona’s bullpen use this postseason. His aggressive use of relievers, Andrew Miller in particular, has garnered him a considerable amount of praise from all corners. Phrases like “leverage index” have been evoked beyond just the confines of websites like this one. Francona has managed the postseason very differently from the regular season, and that approach has worked very well given the personnel with which he’s working. Francona has felt comfortable using Miller early in games to preserve leads and once even used him to maintain a tie. In the fourth inning of last night’s Game Five loss, however, Cleveland was presented with a high-leverage situation. Instead of turning to the bullpen, Francona chose to stick with his starter, Trevor Bauer. Bauer gave up three runs in what would ultimately be a 3-2 loss. Did Francona wait too long to make a move?

First, a bit of context. As noted, Bauer started the game for Cleveland — and, over the first three innings last night, was significantly better than he appeared in Game Two. In Bauer’s first World Series start, he recorded 71 pitches through three innings, labored to get outs, and struggled with the strike zone. After a walk, a double play, and a single, Bauer was out of the game, having thrown 87 pitches before completing four innings. Last night, Bauer completed his first three innings efficiently, requiring only 45 pitches against 10 batters, striking out five of them. When he headed out to pitch the fourth inning, Bauer had three very good innings under his belt.

The fourth inning didn’t go as well for Bauer, however. On the third pitch of the inning, he sent a sinker down the middle of the plate to Kris Bryant, and Bryant crushed it to tie the game. Nor was Bryant’s shot a wind-aided gift. Consider: of all batted balls this year which left the bat at 105 mph and with a 23-degree launch angle, 70% of them were home runs.

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This post is centered around a controversial call. Maybe I’m being mealy-mouthed. This post is centered around a bad call. As such, I want to make something clear right now. I don’t root for the Indians, and I don’t root for the Cubs. My team of choice is not very good, and it’s not alive in the playoffs. Hasn’t been in forever! This post is not about me complaining, and it’s not about excusing the Indians’ loss, or asserting that the Cubs got lucky. A game result comes out of hundreds of events, and had this particular event gone Cleveland’s way, chances are they still would’ve come up short. We all good here? I just want to point something out, and introduce some context. Sorry if it makes your emotions flare up.

Game 5, fifth inning, 3-1 Cubs. Runner on third, one out, full count on the hitter. The hitter was Brandon Guyer, and the pitcher was Jon Lester. Lester executed the pitch he wanted. The second out went up on the scoreboard.

The funny thing about that being the pitch Lester wanted — the pitch was more of a ball than a strike.

Lester nailed David Ross‘ target. That much can’t be argued. What also can’t be argued is that Ross’ target was off the plate in the first place. Tough calls are nothing unusual, but they mean the most in full counts in close games. When Guyer was hitting, the Indians’ win expectancy was right around 29%. Had that pitch been called a ball, as it should’ve been, the Indians’ odds of winning would’ve increased to 32%. The strikeout dropped their odds of winning instead, all the way to 22%. That’s a swing of 10 percentage points. That swing is huge. Jose Ramirez’s solo homer was worth 11 percentage points.

Yes, I know, having stuff like this pointed out isn’t fun. Cubs fans feel like something is being taken away from them. Indians fans feel like something was taken away from them. Sorry! Even zanier, Lester got a worse call against Guyer earlier in the same series. From the sixth inning in Game 1:

The replay tells you what you need to know:

The pitch was literally on the chalk, so Guyer got screwed. But the win-expectancy swing there was under two percentage points, so in the end no one minded too much. The Game 5 call was a bigger deal.

But we’re not just dealing with freak called strikeouts here. Those aren’t necessarily good strikeouts, but Lester and Ross love those strikeouts. Here are all of Lester’s called strikeouts since 2014, with Game 5’s against Guyer in red:

Here’s the same plot, but with Game 1’s against Guyer in blue:

You see how they kind of blend in? Lester records a ton of arm-side called strikeouts off the plate. Over the last three years, Lester ranks 13th in rate of two-strike pitches taken for strikes. But he moves all the way up into second in rate of two-strike pitches taken for strikes off the plate in that neighborhood. Over the whole PITCHf/x era, Lester is the easy league leader in total number of these called strikeouts. And here’s a year-to-year breakdown:

An established, long-standing pattern doesn’t make the calls more correct, but it does make them less surprising. Lester loves that strikeout, and while he couldn’t get it without the umpires, it’s a credit to his own command, and it’s a credit to his catchers, which have often just been Ross. Lester can repeatedly hit that spot, and throughout the whole of baseball history, pitchers have been rewarded for being so accurate. I know that, from a certain perspective, it seems unfair. Strikes should be strikes, and balls should be balls. But it’s at least Lester’s own ability that leads him to a lot of these strikeouts, and while Brandon Guyer had every right to be annoyed, he couldn’t have been too astonished. Not in Game 1, and then, certainly, not Sunday night.

It was a few years ago when we all learned about Jon Lester’s pick-off problem. There was speculation that the Royals might take advantage in their one-game playoff against the A’s. The Royals could run, after all. And, against Lester that evening, Royals base-stealers went 3-for-4. In the one failure, Billy Butler just wandered off first base for some reason.

Lester’s same problem was supposed to be a major factor in the current World Series. The Indians were supposed to be able to take better advantage than the Giants and Dodgers. I suppose it’s possible that Lester could show up in relief in Game 7, but assuming that doesn’t happen, the Series is in the books as far as Lester on the field is concerned. Twice, the Indians were successful stealing against him. Twice, the Indians got thrown out. Jon Lester wasn’t exploited.

In the first game, Francisco Lindor went 1-for-2, as a runner. Sunday night, Rajai Davis was 1-for-1, and Lindor went 0-for-1. Davis stole in the sixth, and he scored to narrow the deficit to one. Lindor tried to steal in the sixth, but it didn’t work. It would’ve been a pretty big advance, but Lindor was done in in part by skill and in part by psychology.

Here’s Davis. David Ross couldn’t handle the baseball on the transfer, which is also how Lindor stole in Game 1.

And now here’s Lindor:

It’s time to dig into this! Quickly, you might notice something. Here’s Davis as Lester began to throw:

Here’s Lindor at almost exactly the same time:

Okay, that’s one factor — Davis had a better lead by about two and a half feet. In other words, Davis was about 4% closer to second base, based on the distance there from the secondary lead. Clearly, a huge factor is that, with Davis, Ross couldn’t even get off a throw. Ross got off a perfect throw with Lindor running. Javier Baez applied a perfect tag. Lester was even about 5% faster getting the ball to Ross in the first place. Compared to Davis, Lindor arrived at second base about 0.2 – 0.3 seconds slower. That’s huge, as steals are concerned, and so Lindor was out without so much as a replay review.

Lindor getting thrown out reduced the Indians’ odds of winning by about 3.7 percentage points. Had Lindor gotten in there safely, it would’ve increased the Indians’ odds of winning by about 1.9 percentage points, so, the break-even rate there is 66%. It made sense for Lindor to go if he believed he’d be safe at least two-thirds of the time. That feels like a safe assumption, when you’re Francisco Lindor, running against Jon Lester. It’s supposed to be nearly automatic, right? Even Joe Maddon conceded as much before the series began.

But not only did the Cubs execute with perfection — Lindor just couldn’t bring himself to go crazy. This is the same thing I wrote about a week and a half ago. Based on his lead and jump, sure, you can see how the Cubs threw Lindor out. But why didn’t he take an even bigger lead, to get an even better jump? Lindor simply would’ve felt too vulnerable. He would’ve felt naked out there, doing something you’re never supposed to do against a lefty. Jon Lester looks the part, and you have to really, really, truly believe he’s not throwing over. Lindor couldn’t accept that, even though Lester had just bluffed.

Go back to Game 1. This is nuts.

Lindor saw this for himself. In Game 1, he would’ve been an easy out, but Lester couldn’t do anything, so Lindor could scamper back. Lindor observed firsthand that Lester couldn’t and wouldn’t throw over. It’s so easy to sit here now and say “Just go! Just go! Who cares!” But that sells the psychology short. Lester is protected by the uniqueness of his pick-off problem. Francisco Lindor probably could’ve had a way bigger lead, and, given that lead, he probably could’ve stolen second base. It would’ve been a pretty important steal, with Mike Napoli batting. But Lindor fell into the same trap most runners fall into. Jon Lester’s problem doesn’t make sense. Therefore, it’s mighty difficult to believe.

The story of this World Series, to this point, has been Cleveland’s dominance over Chicago’s hitters. During the regular season, the Cubs had the best offense in baseball, once you adjust for the fact that they didn’t have the advantage of the DH, and they regularly pounded their opponents with great hitters and a deep line-up. In this match-up, though, their bats have gone quiet, as they have hit just .210/.281/.311, scoring all of 10 runs in the first five games.

The easy way to explain Cleveland’s success has been to point to greatness of Corey Kluber, Andrew Miller, and Cody Allen, and note that those guys have thrown nearly half of the team’s innings in the series. And it’s certainly true that the Tribe have leveraged their best arms to maximum efficiency, making it quite difficult for the Cubs to rally against inferior pitchers. But there’s more to this story than simply Terry Francona’s bullpen usage; the team is taking apart with the Cubs offense with a systematic plan to pound them with breaking balls.

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Aroldis Chapman had never recorded more than seven outs in a game. Last night, he recorded eight. Thanks to the Cuban flamethrower’s efforts — and Joe Maddon taking a page out of the Terry Francona playbook — the Cubs stayed alive with a nail-biting 3-2 win over the the Indians. The World Series now moves to Cleveland for Game Six, on Tuesday.

August Fagerstrom wrote about the difference between Cleveland and Chicago’s bullpen yesterday. Who knows, maybe Maddon read the piece and took it to heart? Regardless of the reason, his imitative stratagem cemented a win he described earlier in the day as being “as important as oxygen.”

“We got a little taste of our own medicine,” said Cleveland’s Jason Kipnis, after the game. “Late in the year, you don’t really hold anything back. They took a page out of our own book tonight.”

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It’s not the relievers themselves that have seemed to give the Indians a bullpen edge. I know that so many baseball fans have reduced the Indians’ playoff success to the words “Andrew” and “Miller,” but Andrew Miller might not even be the best reliever in the World Series. If you look only at this year, Aroldis Chapman was no less dominant. If you look over the last three years, Aroldis Chapman was no less dominant. Miller maybe feels somewhat fresher; Miller maybe has to try a little harder. But Chapman’s arm is amazing. It’s incredible that he’s ever blown a save.

So it’s not about how well the pitchers can pitch. It’s been about when the pitchers can pitch. The whole advantage with Miller has to do with his versatility, how he can pitch in any situation in any inning. Miller has given Terry Francona almost limitless bullpen freedom, and we’ve seen how that’s worked. With Chapman, things were a little more rigid. You might say traditional. Chapman, they said, was accustomed to his routine, and you wouldn’t want to risk a disruption.

Sunday night, the Cubs risked a disruption. Joe Maddon asked Chapman to be prepared to enter in the seventh. Chapman got warm in the seventh. Chapman came in in the seventh. No one had to relieve Aroldis Chapman. Maybe it wasn’t so much that Chapman got Francona’d — maybe it would be better to say he got Dave Roberts‘d. But for the first time in the playoffs, Chapman was pushed to the extreme, and now the Cubs know there’s something new he can do. That information could prove to be useful as the series shifts right back to Cleveland.

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When it became very clear that the 2016 Chicago Cubs, the 103-win Chicago Cubs, were potentially one game away from their historical season coming to a disappointing finish, the pitcher standing on the mound was Travis Wood. Wood had just been brought in to face the left-handed Jason Kipnis, and Wood had just thrown three balls in four pitches to Jason Kipnis, and then an 87-mph cutter breaking right toward the heart of the plate. Kipnis hit the very hittable cutter 10 rows deep into the right field bleachers at Wrigley Field, on a windy night in Chicago when would-be home runs were becoming warning track fly outs all evening long. Not this one.

Nothing was stopping this ball, off the bat at 105 mph, from landing in the bleachers (and then immediately being thrown back onto the field), from giving the Indians a 7-1 lead in the game, and from getting the Indians one step closer to the 3-1 lead in the World Series which they now possess. And when that ball was on its way out of the playing field, Aroldis Chapman, Hector Rondon, and Pedro Strop, the three most important Cubs relievers during the regular season, looked on from the third-base bullpen, none of them having thrown a single pitch in the game.

Rondon eventually mopped up Wood’s mess — and Justin Grimm‘s and Mike Montgomery’s mess, too — throwing two scoreless innings, striking out two of the eight batters he faced while pumping fastballs that touched 99 mph. And the fact that it was Rondon who mopped up the mess caused by lesser relievers, while Chapman and Strop contributed nothing, highlights the key difference between the bullpens of the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians in this World Series.
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Rather than Andrew Miller, it was Bryan Shaw who was stretched past his typical workload in Cleveland’s 1-0 World Series Game Three win on Friday, throwing 31 pitches in a rare multi-inning appearance. Rather than Andrew Miller, it was Bryan Shaw who wound up throwing the high-leverage middle relief innings, handling four of Cleveland’s five highest-leverage at-bats before Cody Allen’s ninth inning. And, rather than Andrew Miller, it was Bryan Shaw who faced lefty Kyle Schwarber when he came off Chicago’s bench.

Everyone in the stadium was waiting to see when Schwarber would get his at-bat. Cody Allen was warm in the bullpen when Schwarber entered the game at at a time when one swing of the bat would have tied things up, but manager Terry Francona stuck with Shaw. Dave Cameron had written hours earlier about this very tango, suggesting that Francona flip-flop the accustomed usage of deploying Miller first, instead saving him for the later innings to make life tougher on Schwarber and Joe Maddon. What Cameron didn’t consider — and why would he have? — is that it wouldn’t be Miller or Allen facing Schwarber at all.

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Like a lot of people, I don’t gamble, but, like a lot of people, I have done it before. I was a sophomore in college, and I thought I knew an awful lot about baseball, so I thought, you know what, I bet I can monetize this. I decided to lean on my baseball expertise to bet on individual baseball games. I bet for two days, I lost about four hundred dollars, and I haven’t tried it again since. I’ve learned more about baseball over the decade, but, have I, really?

If there’s one thing we know about baseball, it’s that we can’t predict it. The smaller the sample, the wilder it gets. But we can be so, so easily tricked, and never is that more clear than it is in the playoffs. In the playoffs, see, individual games are under greater scrutiny. And when you get to the World Series, people are searching for possible keys everywhere. *Everything* is important. This pitcher’s vulnerability could be exploited. That player on the bench will have a good matchup. The guy over there’s a bad defender. We examine these games in so much detail that we start to convince ourselves the games can be actually predicted. We convince ourselves the games will make sense. Earlier Friday, in my chat, I fielded countless questions about the degree to which the Indians would be screwed in Game 3. Road park, Josh Tomlin pitching, wind blowing strongly out, DH in left field. It was all lining up for the Cubs. It was so easy to believe, yeah, this is the Cubs’ game. How couldn’t it be?

You can stare at a coin all you like, but heads or tails will still come up half the time. An exhaustively-examined game in the World Series is not meaningfully more predictable than an unexamined regular-season game in July. Give it one game at a time, and baseball’s likely to baseball. Give it one game at a time, and Tomlin and the Indians can knock off the Cubs 1-0 in a pretty extreme hitters’ environment.

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