Three walks don’t seem like a big deal. Even if Doug Fister only gave up three walks once all year, you could look at the box score for Game Three of the National League Division Series and think, sure he had a Fisterian game. Nine ground balls to six fly balls, not many walks, a few strikeouts, and you look up and the Nationals have won behind him.

Except it didn’t really play out like that. Fister walked two of those three batters in the first inning. He went to eight pitches to get Joe Panik out. He went to five-plus pitches six more times before he got six outs. This was a man who averaged 3.7 pitches per batter faced during the regular season, averaging 4.8 pitches per batter in the first two innings. A man who once told us that he wants bad contact “in the first three pitches.”

After the game, Fister admitted that there was something going on early.

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On Saturday night, Matt Williams removed Jordan Zimmermann with one out to go, trying to preserve a 1-0 lead. Drew Storen entered immediately gave up a single to Buster Posey and a double Pablo Sandoval, tying the game at 1-1; the Giants would go on and win in 18. Williams was heavily criticized in the aftermath of the game for taking a pitcher out who was, at that, throwing a shutout, especially given that he had only thrown 100 pitches on the night.

But let’s just look at the numbers here for a second. We’ll look at career and 2014 batting against both pitchers.

On a per-batter faced, Drew Storen has been a more effective pitcher than Jordan Zimmermann. This shouldn’t be a big surprise, since good relievers are almost always the hardest guys in all of baseball to hit, and Storen is a very good reliever.

And as you’re probably sick of reading about by now, pitchers get worse the more often they face the same hitter within the same game. Here are Zimmermann’s career splits by times through the order:

The first time Zimmermann faces a hitter in a game, he’s lights out. Second time, still pretty good. Third time, he’s roughly league average. The fourth match-up has been a disaster for him.

And yes, Zimmermann was throwing the ball well on Saturday night, but you only get to face a guy a fourth time through the order if you’re pitching well, so that entire data pool is essentially comprised of performances against Zimmermann late in games in which he had already performed at a high level. 81 plate appearances is of course a small sample, but both the league-wide and Zimmermann-specific trends are clear; his performance declines the longer he stays in, and by the time a hitter has already faced him three times, they hit him pretty well.

Even if we cherry pick the numbers, we can’t come up with a scenario where the expected line against Storen would be worse than against Zimmermann. Storen’s career .273 wOBA allowed is better than Zimmermann’s career-best .280 wOBA allowed this year, so even if we give Zimmermann credit for his 2014 performance and still hold Storen’s entire career line against him, Zimmermann still loses out. Add in any kind of times-through-the-order penalty and it ceases to even be remotely close.

Storen was the right call. It didn’t work, but that doesn’t make the move a mistake.

This is a story all about how an umpire flipped-turned a playoff game upside down.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming the outcome of Saturday night’s marathon game between Washington and San Francisco entirely on fourth-year umpire Vic Carapazza, working in his first MLB postseason. I would never do that. Despite what disgruntled fans might lead you to believe, the blame for a team’s loss can never be placed on the shoulders of one individual. Especially not in a game that lasted 18 innings.

There are countless factors that played into Washington’s loss, and that’s been reflected in the media’s coverage of this game. The offense went scoreless for 15 innings after taking a 1-0 lead in the third. Many have focused on manager Matt Williams‘ decision to remove starting pitcher Jordan Zimmermann after a walk in the ninth. Some have focused on… the male genitalia? But a lot of attention has turned to Carapazza, who had a shaky strike zone and ejected Williams and shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera in the bottom of the 10th for arguing balls and strikes.

Cabrera and Williams need to keep their cool in that situation, but, boy, did Vic Carapazza have himself a rough night.
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Stephen Strasburg was hyped from before he was ever drafted, and when he made his big-league debut, he captured the national interest like few other prospects ever have or ever will. But a hyped Strasburg meant there would be a post-hyped Strasburg, and while people still recognize that he has electric, occasionally unhittable stuff, it’s felt before like something’s been missing. Maybe it’s on us for setting our expectations too high, or maybe it’s on us for not being patient enough, but Strasburg felt incomplete, and it wasn’t only the fans who felt so.

Last spring, a big-league pitcher remarked that his teammates would rather face Strasburg than Jordan Zimmermann. Against Strasburg, they were more comfortable, and while his numbers were clearly good, the point is that Strasburg didn’t feel like a whole pitcher.

And now? Now he feels a lot more like a whole pitcher. Some of it is just clearing 200 innings, but this year’s version of Strasburg has taken a step forward. This year’s version of Strasburg is maybe the ace of a staff full of aces, as he’s crossed more tasks off a shrinking to-do list.

Here’s the simplest way to put it: Strasburg, in 2014, threw more strikes. In 2012 and 2013, he threw strikes about 63% of the time. The average for a National League starter was about 64%. This season, Strasburg threw strikes about 67% of the time, one of the higher figures in the league. So, where Strasburg used to walk 7-8% of opposing hitters, this year he walked 5%, which is particularly low given his frequency of getting into deep counts.

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So, bullpens. We can all agree they’re pretty important, yeah? In the postseason, the importance of the bullpen is magnified. It’s on national television, everything is magnified. Every pitch seems more important. Every swing seems more important. Every decision made by a manager seems more important. Each of these things inches a team one step closer to a having World Series title, or one step closer to having tee times.

But also, as our own Dave Cameron has pointed out, the importance of the bullpen is magnified in the postseason because, strategically, the role of a bullpen simply becomes more important the more times you work through a batting order. Relievers are often the most effective pitchers on a team and, at this point in the season, it doesn’t make sense to save or protect your arms. You use what you’ve got when you need outs.
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The field for the National League Most Valuable Player Award is wide open, and in a good way. There are a bevy of well qualified candidates, and even if voters may now be uncertain as to what do with Giancarlo Stanton now given his injury, there are still three no-doubt top-of-the-ballot candidates: Andrew McCutchen, Clayton Kershaw and Jonathan Lucroy. These three have been in the spotlight all season, and with Stanton, figure to be the ones who take home the hardware. But that doesn’t mean they’re the only ones for whom there is a case worth making. There as many as six other players who deserve recognition, and with white-hot finishing kicks could put themselves into the mix with the top dogs.
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When our other prospect writers submit scouting reports, I will provide a short background and industry consensus tool grades.  There are two reasons for this: 1) giving context to account for the writer seeing a bad outing (never threw his changeup, coming back from injury, etc.) and 2) not making him go on about the player’s background or speculate about what may have happened in other outings.

The writer still grades the tools based on what they saw, I’m just letting the reader know what he would’ve seen in many other games from this season, particularly with young players that may be fatigued late in the season. The grades are presented as present/future on the 20-80 scouting scale and very shortly I’ll publish a series going into more depth explaining these grades.   -Kiley

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Doug Fister is fresh off seven scoreless innings Monday night against the Braves. Quality starts are pretty much old hat to the Nationals by now, who’re successfully running away with the NL East, but it might be a little bit surprising that Stephen Strasburg hasn’t functioned as the rotation ace. Really, that statement just speaks to the silly amount of awesome depth the Nationals possess, but with his latest outing, Fister ranks eighth in baseball in ERA among starters with 100+ innings. He’s basically even with Jon Lester. He’s slightly ahead of Cole Hamels and Garrett Richards. When Fister has pitched, the Nationals haven’t surrendered many runs, and, isn’t that the whole point?

So, people loved the Fister trade from the Nationals’ end, and clearly it’s worked out very well for them to this point. But there’s another thing that’s a little bit surprising: 2014 Doug Fister hasn’t been 2013 Doug Fister. Usually, when people have thought about the Nationals and pitching to contact, it’s been with regard to Strasburg’s electric right arm. But, Stephen Strasburg’s strikeout rate is as healthy as ever. It’s Doug Fister who’s been pitching to contact, even despite a trade to the league where the pitchers have to hit.

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The Washington Nationals are a good team, probably the best in the National League. After they made headlines for winning games via walkoff only, they settled down and started winning games the traditional way. With a seven-game lead in the NL East, the Nats are all but a lock to at least qualify for the postseason this year. As of today, their playoff odds sit at 99.9%, with a 99.3% chance of holding on to the division crown, the highest marks in baseball.

By Base Runs and Pythag, their talent on-hand appears to be slightly better than their record shows. The Nats are a team best characterized as a great pitching team, with a formidable starting rotation and steady bullpen supported by strong defense. Their offense doesn’t get its due, boasting a 98 wRC+ for the season – though their non-pitchers rank among the best in the game.

It is somewhat surprising to see the Nats offense rank so high, given their high strikeout rate and lack of a single offensive force (Jayson Werth’s 136 wRC+ is best on the club, ranking him 21st among qualified hitters). But it is this offense that I believe makes them even more troubling for potential playoff opponents. The Nationals deadline deals and improving health might make the prospect of facing their lineup even scarier come October than a rotation stacked with studs. Read the rest of this entry »

August 7th, 2013: Jordan Zimmermann lasts only four innings in his start against the Braves, giving up seven hits and a couple of runs before Davey Johnson goes to the bullpen. In need of a bridge to the team’s middle relievers, Johnson calls in a rookie, Tanner Roark, to make his Major League debut. It is about as nondescript an appearance as one could imagine, as he faces six hitters, giving up a hit to B.J. Upton — okay, so one remarkable thing happened — but erasing it with a double play, and facing the minimum six batters over his two innings of work.

No one really thought much of it. Even in this post-game interview, Roark looks about as excited in his debut as everyone watching was. He was just a guy, a 25th round pick by the Rangers who was traded to Washington as half of the return for Texas’ acquisition of Cristian Guzman back in 2010. Fun fact; after the trade, Guzman hit .152/.204/.174 and was worth -0.7 WAR in just 50 plate appearances. Whoops.

But, really, giving up Roark wasn’t anything to lose sleep over. When Texas traded him, he was a guy with 75 strikeouts in 105 innings in Double-A, and he wasn’t even avoiding walks that well. He was an organizational guy, a non-prospect with no obvious upside who looked like a career minor leaguer. Even when he got to Washington, he didn’t really have any kind of major breakthrough. He just progressed through up the chain, got to Triple-A as a 25 year old, and then threw enough strikes in Syracuse last year that the team called him up when they needed a long man in the bullpen.

Well, he’s not a long man in the bullpen anymore. Since Roark’s debut one year ago today, here are the top 10 qualified starting pitchers by ERA-.

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