The beginning of the season was met with a juiced ball conspiracy; the end of the season has been greeted with more speculation about changes to the baseball. Jay Jaffe discussed whether the balls used in the playoffs are different from the homer-happy balls used all spring and summer. Rob Arthur presented research at Baseball Prospectus showing increased drag on balls used in the playoffs, and Ben Lindbergh has weighed in as well.

Ahead of the second game of the NLCS, I asked Cardinals manager Mike Shildt about a couple hard hit balls in the first game of the series, whether balls were carrying as far in October, and how it might impact his on-field decisions. He confirmed some of the suspicions about the dead ball.

I thought Ozuna got his ball, based on the sound, based on the swing. But clearly it didn’t get out. And you kind of realized then we were dealing with an evening where the ball wasn’t going to carry as much. I guess — I don’t guess, our front office analytical group is saying the ball’s not traveling at about a four-and-a-half foot difference. So I don’t know how that impacts what you do as far as your matchups or more inclined to throw a fly ball guy, I mean four-and-a-half feet is not overly significant, maybe gives us an opportunity to rob someone of a homer a little bit more. But I don’t think it really impacts how you make decisions. I don’t think it’s that much of a disparity in that to determine if you’re going to throw a guy a certain way or play a guy a certain way.

As to what was causing the drop in fly ball distance, Shildt refused to speculate:

I mean there’s probably all kind of different theories behind that that I won’t really get into. Just the fact of the matter, it could be any number of things. And again, small sample size. What we do with it is, it’s more of a fact than it is a bit of a tidbit than it is anything we’re going to really ultimately act upon. I don’t know whether it’s just our games or in total in postseason baseball or what have you. It’s not a big enough number or sample size for me to do anything about.

Shildt wasn’t the only person who noticed balls haven’t been flying quite as far. Dave Martinez, managing the Washington Nationals, said he noticed the change and thought it might have been the weather. The Marcell Ozuna ball in the second inning came off the bat at a launch angle of 36 degrees and an exit velocity of 106 mph, and went 382 feet. This season, there have been 68 batted balls with a launch angle between 35 and 37 degrees and exit velocity between 105 and 106 mph. The average distance of those fly balls was 399 feet; only seven went 382 feet or fewer. Forty-five of those 68 balls went for homers during the regular season. Martinez had this to say about Ozuna’s shot.

[W]hen he hit it, he hit it you awfully high and awfully hard. The thing I know about this time of year is the air gets a little heavy, so I was just hoping that the air was really, really heavy after he hit the ball and it stayed in the park. I think Gomes hit a ball really hard too and it short-hopped the wall. So I knew that the balls weren’t going to carry.

Martinez indicated that less carry actually impacted some of the decisions he made during the game.

[O]ur outfielders played a little bit more shallow yesterday than they normally do, only because we figured the ball was not going to travel as far. The other thing, too, is that I talked to the guys about maybe, last night, if they get an opportunity to bunt for hits or whatnot, that go ahead and try it.

He went on to say he absolutely did not tell Juan Soto to bunt on his attempt during Friday’s game. Whether MLB is using different balls from the regular season is probably still a question that needs answering, but managers and teams have taken note that balls aren’t traveling as far in the playoffs and making some strategic decisions based on that knowledge.

The best way to avoid a questionable bullpen is for a starter to pitch deep into the game. Aníbal Sánchez made for an unlikely candidate to do so, as he was the worst starting pitcher in baseball this season the third time through the batting order. But unlikely or not, Sánchez took a no-hitter into the eighth inning, was rarely in any trouble, and gave the Nationals exactly what they needed in the first game of the NLCS. Sean Doolittle got the final four outs of the game and Washington jumped out to an early series lead before its big three of Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Patrick Corbin could even take the mound.

Sánchez is known for mixing his pitches, and he played to the Cardinals scouting report, throwing fewer of the four-seam fastballs the Cardinals like and opting for a sinker he doesn’t use with regularity. On the season, Sánchez threw his sinker to right-handed hitters just 13% of the time, but through four innings he tripled that percentage. As the game wore on, he featured his fastball less as its velocity diminished, but the Cardinals couldn’t take advantage. And even when they got close, they were ultimately stymied. Ryan Zimmerman made what might have been a no-hitter saving play in the eighth inning on a hard-hit ball by Tommy Edman.

Sometimes it’s just not your night. Two batters later, Sánchez’s countryman, José Martínez (H/T Enrique Rojas), hit a solid single; with the no-hitter over, Sean Doolittle came in to get the final out of the eighth. Read the rest of this entry »

After four division series losses in seven years, the Nationals finally advanced to the championship series with a dramatic Game 5 win over the Dodgers on Wednesday. They’ll face off against the Cardinals with mostly the same roster, although they’ll be without closer Daniel Hudson for at least one game — he has been placed on the paternity list — while Victor Robles and Kurt Suzuki are active but out of the Game 1 starting lineup due to injuries. Roenis Elias, who hasn’t pitched since September 5 due to a hamstring injury, and Javy Guerra have been added to the roster. Hunter Strickland did not make the cut.

Here’s how every member of the Nationals’ 2019 NLCS roster was originally acquired. The team’s full RosterResource Depth Chart and Payroll pages are also available as a resource.

Homegrown (8)

• Ryan Zimmerman, 1B: Drafted First Round (4) 2005
• Stephen Strasburg, SP: Drafted First Round (1) 2009
• Michael A. Taylor, OF: Drafted Sixth Round 2009
• Wander Suero, RP: Amateur Free Agent (Dominican Republic) February 2010
• Anthony Rendon, 3B: Drafted First Round (6) 2011
• Austin Voth, RP: Drafted Fifth Round 2013
• Victor Robles, OF: Amateur Free Agent (Dominican Republic) July 2013
• Juan Soto, OF: Amateur Free Agent (Dominican Republic) July 2015

Total WAR: 22.6 Read the rest of this entry »

The Nationals rotation is headed by Max Scherzer with fellow aces Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin falling neatly in line. Yet, when the Nationals take on the Cardinals tonight, Aníbal Sánchez will get the start. A hard-fought Division Series against the Dodgers saw Scherzer and Strasburg start the fourth and fifth games of the series with Corbin pitching in relief on Wednesday. With those three unavailable, Washington turns to their fourth starter in Sánchez.

Sánchez, who put up a six-win season with the Tigers in 2013, developed some home run issues from 2015 through 2017 before having a bounceback season in 2018 that continued into this year, as he’s been a solid, slightly above-average starter. He’s lost about three mph off his fastball since his career year, but he throws a mix of pitches to keep hitters off balance. He has three offerings he uses most of the time in a 90-mph four-seam fastball, a slow change, and a cutter. He also mixes in a splitter, and he got two strikeouts using that pitch against the Dodgers (both against Russell Martin). He throws the fastball outside to both lefties and righties. While Sánchez throws the change more often against lefties, he does use it a decent amount to come inside against righties, and that pitch is the 35-year-old’s only real swing-and-miss offering. Against the Dodgers, Sánchez got five strikeouts on the change, including this one against Cody Bellinger.

The four-seam fastball usage bodes well for the Cardinals, in theory, as they have feasted on the pitch all season long. However, the Cardinals have put up terrible numbers against both the cutter and the change. Potentially providing more trouble, the Cardinals won’t be able to try and get ahead in the count and expect the fastball, as Sánchez’s usage of the pitch actually goes down when he’s behind in the count. The righty threw his four-seam fastball in a 0-0 count 42% of the time this season, so if the Cardinals are going to look for that fastball, it needs to happen on the first pitch. Read the rest of this entry »

After two elimination games on Wednesday night, the National League Championship Series has its two participants: the St. Louis Cardinals and the Washington Nationals. It’s not quite the matchup most predicted — only four of 32 FanGraphs predictors pegged the NLCS correctly a week ago — it’s hard to say that either team got there cheaply. The Game 5’s were very different; one was a fantastic blowout, the other a fantastic crushing of Clayton Kershaw’s hopes and dreams, and just like that, the National League’s two winningest teams saw their seasons end before mid-October.

The Washington Nationals were a ZiPS favorite going into their series with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Not a literal favorite — the Dodgers were still projected to win 51%-49% — but certainly a team that was hitting above their seasonal win total. Over 162 games, there’s no doubt that the Dodgers were the better club, but over a short series of five games, Washington’s Big Three of Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Patrick Corbin match up against any team in baseball. It didn’t always work (see: Corbin’s first relief appearance), but combine the Wild Card and the NLDS, and Nats were able to use that trio in just under two-thirds of their total innings (66.3%). In the regular season, that number was only 40.1%.

Similarly, while the Washington relief corps still isn’t a good unit, they’ve at least been able to use the shorter timeframe of postseason baseball to lop off some of the dreadful performances at the back of their bullpen. Kyle Barraclough and Matt Grace weren’t around to start any late-inning conflagrations (Trevor Rosenthal was mercifully released in August). The bullpen combined for an abysmal 5.68 ERA in 2019, but the seven pitchers brought in this October have combined for a 3.90 ERA. That’s certainly not going to remind anyone of the Yankees, but it’s at least a serviceable group if you’re forced to use them.

In a seven-game series, the Nationals undoubtedly will have to utilize the bullpen more than they did in the NLDS. The two extra games the NLCS can run do not come equipped with an additional day of rest, so it would be even harder to feature a surprise guest appearances from their top starters. Aníbal Sánchez will certainly get another start unless Game 4 is an elimination game for the Nats, and while I wouldn’t count out a Scherzer appearance in a truly high-leverage relief situation, I think you’ll necessarily see Washington rely on its relief pitching more. St. Louis’ offense is not L.A.’s, something that’s not necessarily captured in Win Expectancy calculators, so the average relief outing is slightly less frightening against the Cardinals than an identical game state against the Dodgers. Read the rest of this entry »

The ball left Justin Turner’s bat at 70.3 mph, with a launch angle of 34 degrees. Per Statcast, batted balls with that exit velocity, hit on that plane, have an expected batting average of .550. A little better than a coin flip. There were two out, and nobody on base, and Sean Doolittle on the mound; there were thousands still left at Dodger Stadium willing the ball to fall, thousands more in the empty stadium in Washington praying for it to find a glove. The Washington Nationals had a 99.9% chance of winning the game. And also, Michael A. Taylor, out in centerfield, sprinting toward it — at the last moment, stretching out his glove — the ball, barely missing the ground, centimeters from escaping his glove.

Had the ball fallen, it barely would have made a difference. The Dodgers’ win expectancy would have improved to something like 0.5%. But that’s not what it felt like. Not for the Dodgers fans who had remained through the preceding disaster, looking for a sliver of hope, the slightest graze of cowhide against grass. Not for the Nationals fans, hoping for something they hadn’t yet seen — a glove closed around a ball for a series-clinching out, an end to the years of futility, the beginning of something completely new. This is where the postseason takes you: Years of your life, untold amounts of time and emotional energy spent, seeming to rest in the inches between a ball and a glove and a few blades of grass.

Taylor rose up and took the ball in his glove, a confused expression on his face. Turner, on the basepath 200 feet away, motioned to the dugout. But even as the game hung, for a few moments, in the purgatory of umpire review, the fans knew, and Sean Doolittle knew, jumping off the mound and into the stratosphere, and Adam Eaton knew, leaping in from right field. It was over. The Washington Nationals had won Game 5. They were advancing to the NLCS. And the Dodgers’ historic, 106-win season had ended. They were nine games too short, nine innings too short. A few runs, a few pitches, maybe. A few inches. Sometimes cliches are cliches because they’re true. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Jay Jaffe noted that starting pitching has been carrying a greater load in the playoffs this year than in the regular season and recent postseasons. One really good reason for that is the sheer number of very good starters in the playoffs this October. Take today’s games as an example. Jack Flaherty and Mike Foltynewicz will go head to head this afternoon, followed by Walker Buehler and Stephen Strasburg tonight.

Below, find a table with the NL pitching WAR leaders this season:

Three of this season’s top seven National League pitchers by WAR are set to start, and try to get their teams a series away from the NL pennant. It’s possible we see a few more of those pitchers throw in relief in tonight’s games, as well. Now, look at this table showing the NL pitching WAR leaders since August 6 when Mike Foltynewicz made his first start since returning from the minors:

We could very well see an offensive explosion today, but the scheduled starting pitchers are some of the best in the game this year, with Mike Foltynewicz joining the group over the last two months of the season. Elimination games are almost always exciting, and these ones are likely to feature great pitching to boot.

The postseason lends itself to all sorts of narratives. There are team triumphs and individual stories, but this postseason features something special you might not have noticed: a few teammates who have been playing together for nine seasons or more. When Adam Wainwright took the mound for his Game 3 start against the Braves and threw a first pitch sinker to battery mate Yadier Molina (Ronald Acuna Jr. would foul that first pitch off, but ultimately strike out swinging), it was hard to forget that this may well be Wainwright’s final season, marking the end of a career during which so many of the right-handers best moments have come with Molina behind the plate. That first pitch got me thinking: which playoff teammates have been together the longest?

To answer that question, I turned to the game logs here at FanGraphs to find the first day both teammates appeared in a game together at the major league level. I also looked at how many total games each pair has appeared in together, which includes pinch-hit appearances, pitching in relief, and defensive substitutions. This does not include any time spent on the Injured List and only includes games in which both teammates made an appearance. I excluded the postseason for parity; the data is updated through the end of the 2019 season. So, before the Dodgers and the Nationals and the Cardinals and the Braves play their Game 5’s, let’s take a look at the longest-tenured teammates we can watch this October.

No. 5: Freddie Freeman and Julio Teheran

Debut as Teammates: May 7, 2011

Kicking off our list is the pitcher/first baseman duo for the Braves. These two have been staples in Atlanta for several years now; this year Julio Teheran became the only pitcher in Braves’ franchise history to start six consecutive Opening Days. Freddie Freeman has been at first base for all of them.

Teheran was initially left off the Braves’ Division Series roster but when Chris Martin suffered an oblique injury, Teheran took his place. Now both he and Freeman are trying to push Atlanta into the Championship Series for the first time since 2001, though they’re likely both hoping for better individual performances in Game 5; Freeman, perhaps still hampered by an elbow injury, is slashing just .125/.222/.313 with a 38 wRC+ in 18 postseason plate appearances, while Teheran took the loss in Game 4 after giving up a walk-off sacrifice fly to Yadier Molina that scored Kolten Wong.

Total regular season games together: 200 Read the rest of this entry »

Ryan Zimmerman gave the best of himself to Washington Nationals teams that were not yet ready to produce moments big enough for him. By the time the talent surrounding him began to live up to his own, he had crossed over into a more treacherous, injury-marred phase of his career. Over the course of 15 years, Zimmerman’s fortunes and those of the Nationals have rarely been in harmony. But on Monday night, staring down elimination on its home field, Washington pulled back the curtains once more, and its first-ever star stole the show.

Zimmerman walked to the plate with a 2-1 lead in the fifth inning, watched Los Angeles right-hander Pedro Báez hurl a high fastball toward him, and crushed the pitch over the center field wall for a three-run homer that powered a 6-1 victory over the Dodgers in Game 4 of the NLDS. Nationals ace Max Scherzer was brilliant in seven innings of one-run baseball, striking out seven and allowing four hits and three walks, before turning the ball over to Sean Doolittle and Daniel Hudson for the final six outs.

With their help, the Nationals preserved themselves for another game against the Dodgers, this time in a decisive Game 5 slated for Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium. Washington will likely send Stephen Strasburg to the bump, while Los Angeles is expected to counter with Walker Buehler. Both starters were dominant in their first games of the series, with Buehler tossing six shutout frames in Game 1 and Strasburg dealing seven shutout innings in Game 2. It will be the fourth time in eight years the Nationals will play Game 5 of the NLDS. They have lost all three of their previous tries.

Monday’s bottom of the fifth inning began with a small-ball sequence from yesteryear. With the game tied 1-1, Washington shortstop Trea Turner lined a single to left field against new Dodgers reliever Julio Urías, and advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt by Adam Eaton. Anthony Rendon then smacked a single to center that scored Turner, and two batters later, advanced to third base on a single by Howie Kendrick. With two on and two out, Los Angeles summoned Báez — a right-hander with a 3.10 ERA and 3.52 FIP in the regular season — to try and keep the game where it was. Báez got ahead with a strike. Ahead 0-1, he elevated a fastball where he thought Zimmerman couldn’t reach it. He was wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

In my head, the playoffs have always had a unique relationship with analysis. Things are happening, always new and exciting things, and I feel a strong desire to know what’s skill and what’s luck, to sort out whether Adam Wainwright found the secret formula to pitching or whether he just had a good breakfast Sunday, while the Braves stubbed their collective toes on the hotel bed frame.

But for the most part, there’s not much to say conclusively about one pitching outing, or even a few pitching outings. The samples are vanishingly small in the postseason, and so I watch for the narratives and the drama, rather than trying to find an interesting line to analyze. Sure, I have opinions about the players in the playoffs, formed from a year of crunching numbers on their performances. But for the most part, I don’t use October to tell me new things about them.

If Patrick Corbin comes in and gives up six runs in relief, is he bad? Is he unsuited to relieving? Did he just not have it that day? I don’t know, and short of some velocity or spin rate smoking gun, I’ll probably never know.

Having said all that, there’s one thing I feel very comfortable analyzing. Managers still walk people intentionally in the playoffs, and maybe they shouldn’t. Dave Martinez and Mike Shildt succumbed to the temptation of making a difference over the weekend, and while neither decision ended up impacting the final accounting of the game, I was curious to see what those walks did to the teams’ chances of winning.

Let’s talk about Martinez’s decision first, because it’s much stranger. We’ll set the stage with all the essentials: in Game 2 of their series against the Dodgers, the Nationals took a 4-2 lead into the ninth inning, with Daniel Hudson taking the mound following a dominant inning by Max Scherzer. Justin Turner doubled to start the inning, but Hudson rebounded, striking out A.J. Pollock and getting Cody Bellinger to pop out to third. Read the rest of this entry »