Earlier today, Eno Sarris took a look at the arsenals of tonight’s World Series Game Two starters, Trevor Bauer and Jake Arrieta. In this article, I’m going to hone in on one of those pitches in particular: Bauer’s curveball.

Pitchers want to disguise their pitches. This is a pretty obvious statement – it’s harder for a batter to hit a pitch if he can’t tell what’s coming. So naturally, conventional wisdom dictates that pitchers should try to make every pitch look the same coming out of their hand. You don’t want drastically different mechanics while throwing one type of pitch than while throwing another.

So when Trevor Bauer throws his curveball from a significantly different height than all his other pitches, that stands out. It’s hard to notice on television, but Bauer releases his curve a full six inches higher than all his other pitches.

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Jon Lester doesn’t throw to first. This isn’t new. In the National League Championship Series, Dodgers runners tried to dance off the first-base bag, taking large leads to try and disrupt Lester. By and large, it didn’t really work. The Dodgers didn’t take the extra base, and Lester had few problems pitching to the Dodgers with runners on.

Last night, in Game One of the World Series, the circumstances were mostly the same. On paper, at least. Cleveland did steal a base against Lester, but they also got caught stealing once, too. That’s actually a net positive for the Cubs in terms of runs. Again, on paper.

One of those stolen bases belonged to Francisco Lindor, though. Not only did the young shortstop steal a base in the first inning, but he preceded it with some of the same sort of dancing with which the Dodgers experimented previously. The end result of that first innings was two runs for Cleveland — the only two they’d need to win the game.

Was there anything Francisco Lindor did that might have gotten Lester out of rhythm in the first inning, or were the two walks and hit-by-pitch that followed simply ill-timed luck. Is there any evidence that ties Lindor’s steal to Lester’s head?

On the season, Lester threw 64% of his pitches for strikes. Generally speaking, he relies on swinging strikes to get batters out, as his strike-zone percentage of 46% placed him among the bottom quarter of qualified pitchers this year. Of the first eight pitches he threw before Lindor’s single, Lester recorded seven strikes, retiring Rajai Davis on four pitches and inducing a first-pitch out from Jason Kipnis. Lindor was only on first base for two pitches, both called balls by the umpire. The second pitch was in the strike zone, but as is sometimes the case on stolen-base attempts, David Ross‘ movements to prepare for throwing out the runner didn’t provide a good opportunity for framing; the pitch, likely as a result, was called a ball.

Six of Lester’s next eight pitches were balls, and suddenly the bases were loaded. For the rest of the game, Lester threw 64% of his pitches for strikes, just like the regular season. Unfortunately for Lester, one of the balls went to human ball-magnet Brandon Guyer, who has what could be generously called a “strategy” for getting hit. That HBP and a swinging bunt on the previous pitch led to the 2-0 Cleveland lead that proved to be the difference.

Let’s take a look at what Lindor did to “distract” Lester. Here’s the stolen base itself:

It doesn’t appear that Lindor does anything out of the ordinary here. He took perhaps a slightly larger lead than normal, and then ran on first movement. Lindor was safe, as Ross had difficulty getting the ball out of the glove. When August Fagerstrom discussed Lester and Ross, he went through the numbers on why it’s so difficult to steal on them despite Lester’s throwing problems:

Well, let’s run some math. The problem here is, Lester and Ross are quick. All of the following information comes from Statcast, provided by Mike Petriello. Lester was getting the ball to the plate between 1.1 and 1.2 seconds last night, and Ross’s average pop time for the season was 1.95, which ranked sixth among 83 catchers with at least five throws to second base. Both those figures could be considered plus to elite on a scouting scale, and as a battery, their ~3.15 time to second base is hard to beat.

Lindor took advantage of a slightly larger lead and the knowledge that he could leave on first movement without consequence. Those two things together likely put Lindor’s chances of stealing a base at something like average for him, after factoring in the speed of Lester’s delivery and Ross’s pop time. Did the steal get in Lester’s head to help cause the walks of the next two batters as Rajai Davis intimated?

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Inarguably, one of the biggest moments of Game 1 happened in the seventh inning. Really, a handful of the biggest moments of Game 1 happened in the seventh inning, but the top half ended with Andrew Miller whiffing David Ross with two down and the bases loaded. The score at that point was a manageable 3-0, and the showdown got people talking. In part, there was confusion over why Ross was hitting there in the first place. Ross is not that good a hitter! But, he was definitely the one up there, and he is not a bad baseball player. Maybe most remarkable was this:

That’s the other thing people have discussed. At 3-and-1, with nowhere for Ross to go, Miller threw a slider. At 3-and-2, with still nowhere for Ross to go, Miller threw a slider. Those are what are referred to as classic fastball counts, and the perception is that there’s a lot of risk in going offspeed, because those pitches are more likely to be balls. Indeed, the final pitch wound up out of the zone, but Miller got Ross to chase, which is kind of his thing. It’s not Ross’ fault that Miller is some sort of baseball god.

The at-bat inspired some wonderful writing. In there, you see a discussion over what pitches there were, and what pitches Ross was expecting. It takes some balls to throw back-to-back sliders in that situation. I searched for precedent. I bet you’re not surprised to learn Miller hasn’t pitched that much this year with the bases loaded. When he has, he’s even less frequently been in three-ball counts. In fact, this year, before yesterday, Miller had thrown two three-ball pitches with the bases loaded. They both came on May 6, with the Yankees leading the Red Sox 3-2 in the top of the ninth. Miller threw a 3-and-1 pitch to David Ortiz, and he threw a 3-and-2 pitch to David Ortiz.

Here’s the first of them.

The count ran to 3-and-1 in the first place after a fastball/slider/fastball/slider sequence. It’s the same sequence that took Miller to 3-and-1 against Ross. Back in May, against Ortiz, Miller threw a 3-and-1…slider, for a close called strike. Now, it looks worse in the video, because the catcher was crossed up. The catcher was crossed up! And Miller still got the strike. That’s good umpiring! But it made Ortiz upset, because he turned around and saw the catcher fumbling, and so he made some assumptions. John Farrell came out to keep Ortiz from getting ejected. Farrell got ejected.

So, full count. Bases still loaded, one still out, one still the deficit. This is about as high-leverage as it can get in the first week of May. Miller threw the baseball that he had.

Slider, called strike, strikeout. Does the pitch seem kind of low to you? It definitely seemed kind of low to John Farrell, who — wait, what was Farrell doing still in the dugout? Get out of there!

People were heated. Ortiz got ejected. His getting ejected mattered less after the at-bat than it would have in the middle of it. It was a generous strike call. It was maybe probably a ball. Tough couple pitches.

But it’s not the results that matter to me. It’s just the process and the precedent. Miller got a lot of credit for throwing Ross two three-ball sliders. On the only two comparable pitches he threw this year, he also threw sliders. That’s kind of the thing about guys who throw 60% sliders — they don’t do that unless they really, really trust the pitch. For all intents and purposes, Andrew Miller’s slider is his fastball. At least, in the way we think about pitchers conventionally. Against Miller, it’s impossible to rule out the slider, ever. It’s among the things that make him nearly unhittable.

Andrew Miller threw David Ross some tough sliders in a difficult spot. Andrew Miller throws tough sliders. The best pitchers can do whatever they want.

Larry Vanover was the home-plate umpire yesterday. At one point on Twitter I noticed he was trending, so, you probably know what that means. After one particular half-inning, Jon Lester walked over to Vanover to have a little chat, presumably to try to clear some air. There were disagreements. When the stakes are so high, it’s possible to see injustice everywhere.

Vanover, in truth, called strikes that were perfectly fine. There were borderline pitches, and any borderline-pitch decision will make half the viewers upset, but overall, the Vanover zone was good. Maybe great! Let’s use the artificially binary strike zone from Baseball Savant. During the season, 91% of the pitches taken within the strike zone were called strikes. Vanover called yesterday at 96%. During the season, 13% of the pitches taken outside of the strike zone were called strikes. Vanover called yesterday at 10%. More preserved strikes, fewer extra strikes. That’s good umpiring. He clearly missed a pitch or three, but that’s just part of the everyday arrangement. Sometimes I fall asleep without taking out my contacts. That’ll happen until we have lens-removing robots. (I, too, will not accept said robots until they are perfect.)

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If you attempted to characterize the starters for Game Two of the World Series merely by arsenal alone, you might end up somewhere you didn’t expect: the same place. Cubs right-hander Jake Arrieta throws a four-seam fastball with ride and good velocity; a sinker he’s gone to more often this year; a strong, harder breaking ball; an excellent, bigger breaking ball; and a change he doesn’t use very often. As for Trevor Bauer… Well, huh: he has the same stuff.

Maybe you scoff, because of the differences in the results. Arrieta has produced three consecutive excellent seasons; Bauer has shown promise and improvement, but seemingly not on Arrieta’s level. Regardless, the similarities are present — and remain so, even if you take a more numbers-based approach to the analysis.

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Several hours before the first pitch of the World Series opener in Cleveland on Tuesday night, a reporter opened the press conference with Indians Game Two starter Trevor Bauer by asking him what it was that he enjoyed about watching Game One starter Corey Kluber when he was at his best. Probably nine in 10 pitchers answer this question with some form of stock response, praising Kluber for the way he competes, his intensity on the mound, or his routines in between starts (Indians players love Kluber’s routines). Whenever nine out of 10 someones would say any one thing, Trevor Bauer is always that 10th guy.

“I like the two-seam fastball,” Bauer said, matter of factly. “That’s a pitch I’m fascinated with. A pitch I started throwing mostly by studying his, and figuring out exactly why it moves and all the science behind it. So I enjoy watching that because sometimes it moves a lot, and it’s really fun to see the reactions to it.”

Bauer spent blocks of time during the 2015 offseason watching film at 1,000 frames per second of Kluber’s two-seam fastball, studying its spin axis and the way Kluber achieves that spin and movement based on the way it comes off his fingers. That year, Bauer threw more than 350 two-seam fastballs, having thrown just seven in his career before learning it by studying Kluber. This year, the two-seam fastball trumped the four-seam as Bauer’s go-to offering, and he threw it more than any other pitch, turning himself into a completely different type of pitcher in the process.

On Tuesday night, we saw just why Bauer went to such lengths to mimic Kluber’s two-seamer, as it was the biggest reason Cleveland’s ace was able to carve up perhaps baseball’s best lineup, allowing just three baserunners in six scoreless innings while striking out nine, and turning Chicago’s biggest threat, Anthony Rizzo, into mush.

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Since the beginning of this year’s postseason, the present site has become littered with a collection of posts examining the somewhat novel (if also logically sound) deployment of relief pitchers during that postseason. A hasty examination of the archives reveals, for example, a post declaring the advent of the bullpen revolution; a meditation on likely bullpen usage in 2017; and then a third one about how another run might never be scored in a major-league game.

Given this trend, one might suggest that the editors of this site should change its name to BullpenGraphs. But only as a joke, presumably, is why one would do this. Because actually changing the site’s name to BullpenGraphs would represent a huge logistical nightmare — and would almost certainly hurt traffic. And therefore revenue. And therefore ruin the site entirely. Which, for someone who’s employed by that site and also possesses a mortgage, isn’t a particularly amusing joke.

In any case, mostly at the center of this enthusiasm regarding bullpen usage has been Cleveland left-hander Andrew Miller. And for good reason: not only has Miller been predictably effective, but he’s also been ubiquitous. Following last night’s appearance in Game One of the World Series, Miller has now recorded a strikeout rate of 47.1%, stranded every runner who’s been dumb enough to get on base, and conceded zero runs in 13.2 innings. So, roughly as good as possible.

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There’s a chill in the air, as Halloween and the long winter that follows have begun to beckon for those of us who make their home in the Midwest. This is a special fall season for many Midwesterners, as someone’s long regional nightmare is about to end: either the Indians or Cubs are going to win the World Series for the first time since either Truman beat Dewey, or Taft beat Bryan.

This week, let’s take a macro, ball-in-play-oriented look at each team and its key players. Today, it’s the AL champs in the barrel, as we examine granular data such as BIP frequencies, exit speeds and launch angles to get a feel for what made the Indians tick in 2016.

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The Cubs should win this. I know that sounds crazy from the perspective of someone who cares a lot about baseball history, but this is the greatest Cubs team in ages, and that team is the World Series favorite. Maybe you don’t think they should be favored as strongly as they are on our pages. Maybe you don’t think they should be favored as strongly as they are in various betting markets. But you’d have to put an awful lot of weight in the American League’s superiority to think the Indians are at least a coin flip here. Home-field advantage doesn’t make up for the Indians’ deficiencies. Even if you figure their odds are about the same as, say, Joey Votto’s odds of reaching base, Votto usually doesn’t reach base. In any at-bat, Votto’s the underdog. In this World Series, the Indians are the underdog.

Which is one of the reasons why August wrote up a post titled “How the Indians Can Win the World Series.” Obviously, there are paths that would lead the Indians to victory, and it’s interesting to think about how it could happen. It’s maybe less interesting to think about how the Cubs could win; “continue being the better baseball team” isn’t a satisfying answer. But still, there are things the Cubs can do. There are things for them to try to ignore or exploit. The Cubs have some keys to victory, just as the Indians do.

So this is the second half of our post-pair. How can the Cubs win the World Series? They can play like they’ve played practically all season. But what about specific little details? I can offer some of those. Here are some potential talking points.

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In many ways, the Chicago and Cleveland clubs about to begin this year’s World Series are similar teams. We know about the lengthy championship droughts each share, as well as their general, respective histories of futility. More specific to this season, one finds that both teams traded for relief aces from the New York Yankees, both won their divisions handily, and both advanced to the Series in relatively easy fashion. Each of the clubs is located in the middle part of the country, and each of them have relied on a collection of young, homegrown players.

So there’s a lot in common between the two teams. But there’s also one major advantage which Chicago possesses over their counterparts in Cleveland: money. While both teams feature younger players who’ve assumed major roles, the Cubs have gone out and made major fortifications through free agency while Cleveland has had to complement the core of their roster through the free-agent bargain bin.

Both teams have some dead money on their payrolls. Michael Bourn, Chris Johnson, and Nick Swisher remain on the books for Cleveland; Edwin Jackson still received money from Chicago. For Cleveland, though, those expenditures amount to roughly one-fifth of payroll compared to under 10% for the Cubs. Regarding the active World Series rosters, the Cubs are paying $147 million in salaries this year, an average of nearly $6 million per player. Cleveland, meanwhile, has invested only about $59 million in 2016 salaries, an average of $2.4 million per player. Only three Cleveland players — Jason Kipnis, Mike Napoli, and Carlos Santana — earn more than the average Cub, and Santana’s $8.45 million salary, Cleveland’s highest, would rank seventh among Chicago players. The graph below depicts the salaries for the active rosters of the two teams, with salary data from Cot’s Contracts.

Where a player was making above the major-league minimum and traded midseason, only the portion of the salary that was actually paid by the team was included. This applied to Aroldis Chapman, Coco Crisp, and Andrew Miller. Both teams feature a lot of homegrown talent, but when the Cubs needed to make a push for contention, they were able to sign Jason Heyward, John Lackey, Jon Lester, and Ben Zobrist to big contracts. Cleveland, partially hamstrung due to Zobrist-size deals for Nick Swisher and Michael Bourn, signed Mike Napoli and Rajai Davis to fortify the roster.

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