The National League East was stacked this year. The Braves were one of the best teams in the NL last year, the Nationals won the World Series, the Mets have talent, and the Phillies signed Zack Wheeler during the offseason. It’s no surprise, then, that two NL East teams are meeting in the NLDS. The Braves were again one of the best teams in the National League, and the Marlins… wait, sorry, the Marlins?!?

This preview isn’t a rehash of Miami’s remarkable regular season campaign. It’s about the five games that will be played to determine a spot in the NLCS. Both of these teams will come into the series rested and ready, at least to the extent that anyone is rested and ready at this point in the year. That doesn’t mean the regular season performance of both teams doesn’t matter, though, because it provides a window into both how these clubs are built and who is likely to win.

The Braves are built around a dynamic offense. Freddie Freeman is a leading candidate for NL MVP, and he may not even be the best hitter on his own team; Ronald Acuña Jr. has a solid claim to that crown. Acuña took a step forward this season, and he was already one of the brightest stars in the game. He added plate discipline and power, walking a career-high 18.8% of the time and clobbering 14 homers in just 202 plate appearances.

We’d be talking more about Acuña’s season if it weren’t for Freeman, who took his normal controlled aggression to a new level. He walked more often than he struck out for the first time in his career, batted a video-game-on-easy-mode .341/.462/.640, and had the underlying batted-ball metrics to back it up; a career-high barrel rate and hard hit rate were backed by a ludicrous 31.1% line drive rate. His 187 wRC+ was second only to Juan Soto’s 200 mark across all of baseball.

Behind Freeman and Acuña, the Braves have yet more pop. Marcell Ozuna is having a bounce-back season after two years of middling numbers for the Cardinals. Ozzie Albies is more than just a favorable contract; he’s also a solid hitter with above-average defense. Travis d’Arnaud, a castoff only a a year ago, hit a BABIP-aided .321/.386/.533 this year. Maybe you can’t count on d’Arnaud to keep that up, but the rest of the lineup — Austin Riley, Adam Duvall, Dansby Swanson, and even Nick Markakis — provides admirable depth to go along with the headliners.

The job of stopping the dynamic Atlanta offense will fall to a precocious Marlins pitching staff. Sixto Sánchez would be my choice for NL Rookie of the Year if I had a vote; he made only seven starts, but he immediately looked like he belonged. His four-seam fastball averaged 99 mph, a remarkable number for a starter even in velocity-mad 2020. His changeup and sinker were excellent as well; they combined to prevent opposing hitters from putting anything in the air, a key part of his phenomenal 0.69 HR/9 rate.

After Sánchez, Sandy Alcantara and Pablo López will both certainly make starts. Alcantara took a step forward this year after some inconsistent performances in 2018 and 2019. He set a career high in strikeout rate (excluding an 8.1 inning stint with the Cardinals in 2017), a career low in walk rate, a career high in groundball rate, and career lows in FIP, xFIP, and SIERA. Alcantara has always lived off of his fastball, and he’s throwing his sinker more than ever this year to good effect.

López is a clear third in the hierarchy at the moment, but he too gets a ton of grounders while still missing bats — his 24.6% strikeout rate this year doesn’t look like a fluke, as he got more chases and missed more bats than any of his previous major league seasons. After López, it gets dicey — Daniel Castano will probably make a start, and both José Ureña and Trevor Rogers are acceptable fifth starters.

Those starters would be well served to go deep into games, because Miami’s bullpen was abysmal this year. They looked excellent in two games against the Cubs, but Brandon Kintzler, Brad Boxberger, and friends were terrible on the year as a whole, and Braves batters hit .315/.395/.589 against them in 10 meetings this year, good for an 8.69 ERA and 6.65 FIP. The less the Marlins have to rely on their ‘pen, the better.

On balance, Atlanta has the edge when they’re batting. Their powerful lineup doesn’t need to win against Miami’s rotation, merely fight them to a draw and get to the bullpen. Most of the time, the playoffs would allow a more focused bullpen, minus the chaff, which might make Miami’s weakness less glaring. In their case, however, the entire bullpen is made up of chaff — only Yimi García pitched 15 or more innings with an above average xFIP or strikeout rate.

If the Marlins want to win, then, they’ll need to do it with generous contributions on the offensive side of the ball. This season, that production has come mainly from Miguel Rojas, Brian Anderson, and Garrett Cooper. Rojas, a glove-first shortstop who had never displayed much power before, cracked 10 doubles, a triple, and four homers in only 143 PA. Nothing in his batted ball data backs up the breakout, however, and even the Marlins don’t seem to believe it — he has batted seventh and eighth in their two playoff games.

Anderson, on the other hand, looks like the real deal. For a third straight season, he put up solid offensive numbers in relative obscurity. His only real shortcoming this year was a troubling uptick in swinging strike rate that ballooned his strikeout total, but he made up for it with more barrels and more power in general.

Cooper has flown under the radar in Miami, but he’s looked like a diamond in the rough this year; a bruising righty slugger who hits too many balls on the ground but makes up for it by spraying those grounders and making the most out of the balls he does hit in the air. He’s one of the rare hitters in baseball who doesn’t suffer against breaking balls; he does far more damage on contact against bendy stuff. That could pose a problem for any pitchers who like to spot in-zone breaking balls as a way to get ahead in the count.

Miami has some other hitters capable of hurting the Braves. Jesús Aguilar can still take mistakes out of the park and just posted the lowest strikeout rate of his career, albeit in only 216 PA. Matt Joyce still hits righties. Jon Berti provides league-average hitting and wow-he’s-fast speed. Corey Dickerson is a member of the Marlins.

One key question for Miami’s offense remains unanswered: what will become of Starling Marte? Marte was the team’s big deadline acquisition, likely the best offensive player on the team. He suffered a fractured pinkie when Dan Winkler hit him on the hand in Game 1 of the Wild Card series, and his availability is as of yet unknown. The Marlins played Magneuris Sierra in center field to replace Marte, a tough blow for an offense that was already short on difference-makers.

Atlanta has dealt with injury issues of their own; Mike Soroka and Cole Hamels, two of their top three starters, are both out for the year. Even pickled pepper picker Philip Pfeifer, a pitching prospect who was expected to be depth in case of injury, is out. That leaves Max Fried and Ian Anderson as the last two impact starters, with some combination of Kyle Wright, Huascar Ynoa, and maybe even Fried on three days’ rest to fill out the rest of the rotation.

The Braves didn’t allow a single run in their two games against the Reds, and while Fried and Anderson won’t get to pitch in every game of the NLDS, the bullpen will. Atlanta’s bullpen was excellent this year; Mark Melancon and Chris Martin led the way for a deep unit. Tyler Matzek, A.J. Minter, Shane Greene, and even Josh Tomlin all had excellent seasons. Will Smith was abysmal, but anyone can be abysmal in 16 innings — he struck out 29% of opposing batters but was victimized by a brutal 33.3% HR/FB; a full third of the fly balls he surrendered left the yard, and that probably won’t continue.

If the Braves are hoping to fight to a standstill against Marlins starters and then thrive against the bullpen, Miami needs to thread a trickier needle. They’ll be at a disadvantage against the high-octane parts of the Atlanta bullpen, and if Fried and Anderson are in late-season form, that’s no great shakes either. The latter part of the starting rotation is the best place to strike, but — curse you, math — it won’t come into play in the first two games of the series.

I’m not exactly going out on a limb here by saying that the Braves are heavily favored in this series. ZiPS sees Atlanta as 76.8% to win the series, about as lopsided as a five-game series can get. The Marlins have never lost a postseason series, as you might have heard once or 50 times during last week’s broadcasts, but they’ll need to pull off an upset against an opponent far more formidable than the Cubs to keep that streak going.

There was a philosophical quandary after Miami’s 2–0 Game 2 win over Chicago: Is it really an upset loss if the higher seed never looked like the favorite? The Cubs — NL Central champs, No. 3 in the postseason field, blessed with talent — are gone. The Marlins — bottom feeders the last several years, season nearly ended by COVID before it got started, built out of spare parts and held together with string, in the postseason by virtue only of its expansion — are moving on. And after two games in an empty and chilly Wrigley Field, that result doesn’t feel like a fluke.

The numbers on Chicago’s side of things are grizzly: 18 innings played, one run scored, that coming on a single hit: Ian Happ’s solo homer off Sandy Alcantara in the fifth inning of Game 1. Since then, no runs in 13 straight innings, most of them quiet and all of them frustrating. You saw plenty of that in Game 2: After struggling to get the measure on rookie righty Sixto Sánchez and his booming fastball early on, Cubs hitters seemed to figure something out the second time through the order. In the fourth, Willson Contreras and Kyle Schwarber drew back-to-back walks to open the frame. One out later, Jason Heyward cracked a broken-bat single to right, and perhaps feeling pressure to get on the board, third base coach Will Venable sent Contreras — not a glacier like most catchers, but no one’s idea of Billy Hamilton — from second. The play was close, but a strong throw from Matt Joyce and a nice tag by Chad Wallach got him at home to end the threat and keep things scoreless. Read the rest of this entry »

The Miami Marlins haven’t had a winning season since 2009, and coming into the year, there was every reason to think that the club’s playoff drought would eventually extend into a second decade. But with an expanded field, key contributions from rookies, and unexpectedly solid play around the infield, Miami slipped past the velvet ropes for the first time in 17 years.

Amusingly, the Marlins are the only franchise in baseball to never lose a playoff series. After a 5-1 victory in Game 1 of the Wild Card round, they’re just one win from extending their perfect record.

The importance of any one playoff game underscores how differently most of us watch them than regular season fare. Granular events — a single at-bat, a pitch even — take on much more resonance. In the regular season, a failure to execute in the early innings will be forgotten minutes later. Watching closely though, you recognize how missed opportunities shape a game every bit as much as the highlights shown on SportsCenter. Viewed under the microscope, baseball becomes a game of chances taken and chances missed.

For the Marlins, the early part of the game was dominated by the latter. Take Garrett Cooper’s at-bat in the fourth. With one out and a runner on third, Cooper had a great opportunity to plate the game’s first run. On a windy day, against a pitcher with below-average strikeout numbers, this was an opportunity to hunt for a ball he could hit in the air. Instead, he swung at the first pitch and grounded to third. Jesús Aguilar couldn’t advance, and was ultimately stranded after another ground out.

An inning later, the Marlins spurned another chance. With two on and nobody out, light-hitting Chad Wallach was ordered to bunt. The run expectancy table suggests swinging away is the better option here, but it’s very close, and given Wallach’s weak bat and the quality of his opponent, the bunt seemed like a reasonable option. He couldn’t get it down though, and eventually tapped into a rally-killing double play. Read the rest of this entry »

Seventeen years ago, the Cubs and Marlins met for the first and, until now, last time as postseason opponents in the 2003 NLCS, a series that then-Florida took en route to its second World Series title after a grisly Game 6 collapse by Chicago. The goat will always be Steve Bartman, who even in a Wrigley Field devoid of fans will be mentioned on the series broadcasts somewhere between 15 and 20,000 times, but plenty of players deserve a fair share of blame for the way the Cubs’ dreams of ending a long championship drought fell apart.

But that was then, and the failings of Mark Prior and Kerry Wood and Dusty Baker and Alex Gonzalez have little to do with whatever happens between these iterations of the Cubs and Marlins. The former are here by virtue of winning the NL Central, a mud fight of a division with four playoff teams that Chicago led virtually wire-to-wire; the Cubs are seeking to reverse a run of diminishing October returns. The Marlins, however, are here as predicted by roughly no one — literally no one, in the case of your humble FanGraphs staff — and thanks in large part to the rest of the National League East, the Braves excepted, being the equivalent of a stopped toilet. Even a long stoppage of play caused by over a dozen positive COVID-19 tests and the loss of nearly half the roster for multiple games wasn’t enough to slow down the Marlins, who snapped a playoff drought stretching back to that fateful 2003 season. (Fun fact: Every year the Marlins have made the playoffs, they’ve won the World Series, so get your bets in now.) Read the rest of this entry »

We’re a day away from the start of a bizarre, expanded postseason, one with an abnormally large field of teams, a short Wild Card round that makes the better ones unusually vulnerable, and a five-game Division round without an off day. The postseason’s new structure presents one-time advantages and disadvantages that could impact series outcomes. I’ve considered which aspects of roster construction might suit this unique situation (some more familiar than others) to determine which lower-seeded teams are especially strong and are perhaps teed up to make a sneaky deep October run.

For this exercise I’m only considering teams that currently have a winning percentage under .550, since while the Yankees and White Sox are currently seeded fifth and seventh respectively in the American League, I think they’re quite good and relegated to a lower seed purely due to the quality of their divisions. They’re not sleepers, they’re just a lower-seeded contenders. Let’s begin by looking at the obvious criteria.

It’s a tale as old as time, but having starters who can twirl a gem gives you a puncher’s chance in a playoff series. Even if your offense does nothing, a dominant start means you’re, at worst, in a close game with a chance to squeak out a victory despite scoring few runs.

I’m certain this category is the one already most familiar to even casual baseball fans, let alone FanGraphs readers, who can all point at Trevor Bauer, Luis Castillo and Sonny Gray and know the Reds are especially dangerous in this respect. But I wanted to apply some amount of rigor and objectivity to this to make sure I’m not either overrating or overlooking anyone. So I turned to Game Score Version 2. It’s a nice shorthand more than it is a precise, meaningful stat, but while FIP (which I’ve also included in the following table) is a better proxy for overall pitcher quality, I wanted a measure that indicates a pitcher’s capacity to have a dominant and/or elite-level start. As such, in the table is each pitcher’s 2020 FIP, as well as how many times they’ve had a Game Score v2 start of 65 (Strong Starts) or better, and how many they’ve had at 72 (Elite Starts) or better. Read the rest of this entry »

The San Diego Padres are arguably baseball’s most-exciting young team. They’re unquestionably also very good. Heading into the final day of the regular season, the A.J. Preller-built squad boasts the second-best record in the senior circuit.

How do the 2020 Padres compare to the 2013 Tampa Bay Rays and the 2016 Texas Rangers? Given their respective relationships with those earlier playoff clubs, I asked a San Diego slugger, and the team’s manager, for their perspectives.

“I don’t think there are a ton of similarities, to be honest with you,” expressed Wil Myers, who played for the 92-win Rays in 2013. “Talent-wise, I would say that this team is definitely better than that team, especially from an offensive standpoint. The pitching for the Rays was obviously really good — David Price was a Cy Young guy — but we have Dinelson Lamet, who is a Cy Young guy. We have pitchers from top to bottom. So if you compare the 2013 Rays to the 2020 Padres, I believe from a pitching standpoint it’s pretty even, but from an offensive standpoint this team is much different, and more dynamic, than that team.” Read the rest of this entry »

Without a true minor league season on which to fixate, I’ve been spending most of my time watching and evaluating young big leaguers who, because of the truncated season, will still be eligible for prospect lists at the end of the year. From a workflow standpoint, it makes sense for me to prioritize and complete my evaluations of these prospects before my time is divided between theoretical fall instructional ball on the pro side and college fall practices and scrimmages, which will have outsized importance this year due to the lack of both meaningful 2020 college stats and summer wood bat league looks because of COVID-19.

I’m starting with the National League East. Players who have appeared in big league games are covered below, as are a few players who have been at the offsite camps all season. The results of changes made to player rankings and evaluations can be found over on The Board, though I try to provide more specific links throughout this post in case readers only care about one team.

Atlanta Braves

In an August post, I talked about how I was moving away from hitters who swing recklessly but failed to mention that I’d slid Drew Waters from the back of the 55 FV tier — around 50th overall — down to 76th overall, near a bunch of the high ceiling/high variance hitters grouped toward the back of the top 100.

I also slid Kyle Wright (now a 40+ FV — I know he has graduated off of other publications’ lists but even after counting his time on the roster I still have him classified as rookie-eligible, though perhaps I’m miscounting?) and Bryse Wilson (45+ FV). Both of them are throwing hard (Wilson up to 96 over the weekend, Wright up to 97 yesterday) but because they’re of the sink/tail variety, their fastballs don’t have margin for error in the strike zone and both of them too often miss in hittable locations. Each has the secondary stuff to start, but neither has seized a rotation spot even though Atlanta desperately needs someone to. Read the rest of this entry »

Two years makes a tradition: it’s now a ritual for the Marlins and Diamondbacks to make an intriguing trade leading up to the deadline. Last year it was Zac Gallen for Jazz Chisholm, and this year the Marlins are acquiring Starling Marte:

Caleb Smith, Humberto Mejia and one other from the Marlins to DBacks for Starling Marte, source tells The Athletic.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) August 31, 2020

When the Diamondbacks traded for Marte this offseason, they did so for two reasons. First, they wanted to make the playoffs. That one hasn’t gone according to plan; after starting 3-8, they briefly righted the ship at 13-11 but have since gone on a cold streak. They entered today at 14-21 and only a 9.9% chance of reaching the postseason per our playoff odds. Short seasons are tough: a cold spell can upset the best-laid plans.

The Marlins, on the other hand, came into the year as playoff longshots. After a surprising run following their COVID-induced layoff, however, they’re 14-15 and are currently in playoff position. We still don’t like their odds — we give them a 22.7% chance of holding onto a spot — but that’s the best shot at playing October baseball they’ve had in years, and Marte will help immediately.

But that’s not the only reason the Diamondbacks traded for Marte. He still has a club option for one more year at $10.5 million (it’s $12.5 million but with a $2 million buyout) after signing an extension with the Pirates. That made him more than a one-year rental; two years of above-average center field play for reasonable rates is an enticing package.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Toronto Blue Jays’ situation at shortstop has been less than ideal since Bo Bichette went down with a knee injury a couple weeks ago. Joe Panik has gotten a lot of starts, with Santiago Espinal playing a platoon role. With Bichette’s return date uncertain (he’s at least resumed baseball activities), the Blue Jays opted for some immediate help, which will serve as potential Bichette insurance if his return is delayed and as a decent bench piece/pinch runner when Bichette comes back. Ken Rosenthal first reported Jonathan Villar is headed from Miami to Toronto/Buffalo. Craig Mish first reported the return as Griffin Conine.

Blue Jays receive:

• Jonathan Villar

Marlins receive:

• PTBNL (Griffin Conine)

Eric Longenhagen put a 40 on Conine in the offseason, noting his power, but also his strikeouts. The 23-year-old has yet to play above Low-A. Villar is a little bit below average as a batter and a bit below average as a shortstop as well. He’s generally a good baserunner and base stealer, though he’s been thrown out five times in 14 chances this season and his sprint speed is down quite a bit from previous years. Read the rest of this entry »

“They already have their own helmets.” — NASA recruiter, The Right Stuff

When word arose that the Marlins were so desperate for players in the wake of a coronavirus outbreak that sidelined more than half of their Opening Day roster — and threatened the viability of the remainder of the 2020 season — that they were calling up an Olympic speed skater, it felt like the scene in The Right Stuff where Jeff Goldbum and Harry Shearer pitch President Dwight Eisenhower, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, and NASA bigwigs on the possibility of using race car drivers, circus acrobats, and other daredevils as astronauts. “Besides turning left, I don’t think there’s much similarity,” said 30-year-old second baseman Eddy Alvarez of the similarity between baseball and short track speed skating, the sport in which he won a silver medal at the 2014 Winter Olympics as part of Team USA’s 5,000 meter relay team.

One of 17 players added to the Marlins’ active roster at various points last week as the team returned to play following the postponement of seven games due to the outbreak, Alvarez debuted on Wednesday against the Orioles, becoming the first Winter Olympian ever to reach the majors, and the first non-baseball Olympian to play in the majors since Jim Thorpe (1913-19). He entered Sunday having gone 0-for-9 with five strikeouts, but collected his first big league hit off Met ace Jacob deGrom, a hot smash that third baseman J.D. Davis could only stop. It was one of his three hits in the game, accompanied by another infield single off deGrom, and a double off Edwin Díaz; Alvarez reached on an error in his other plate appearance, and also added a stolen base and a great diving play at second base. Have a day, Eddy.

Despite Alvarez’s banner day, the Marlins lost, 4-2, but even so, a team that went 57-105 last year finished the weekend with a 7-3 record, putting them into a tie with the Braves atop the NL East. Just what in the name of Don Mattingly’s sideburns is going on?

By now, the contours of the Marlins’ mess, the largest outbreak on any team to date, are at least somewhat familiar. Just before their Opening Day game against the Phillies on July 24, they placed catcher Jorge Alfaro on the Injured List for undisclosed reasons. Then, just before playing the Phillies two days later, MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reported that starting pitcher José Ureña was scratched due to a positive test, and soon afterwards, he added first baseman/designated hitter Garret Cooper and right fielder Harold Ramirez to the list of positives. Even so, the team went ahead with the game; it was initially reported that they did so after deciding to play via a group text centered around shortstop Miguel Rojas (Phillies general manager Matt Klentak clarified that the decision came from MLB). A day later, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that eight more players and two coaches had tested positive, and the hits kept coming; by July 31, the count included a staggering 18 total players — more than half the active roster. Read the rest of this entry »