BALTIMORE — The Orioles were one of the toughest teams to put away in the regular season, as their record, status as the AL’s top seed, and distinction of never having been swept all attest. But in Game 1 of the ALDS against a Rangers team that kept going the wrong way in the standings in September, the script was reversed.

In front of a capacity crowd in a game delayed an hour by rain, it was the Rangers who clung to a narrow lead for six innings, as every Baltimore rally fell short. Despite the conditions and an unfavorable pitching matchup, Texas took an upset 3–2 win behind the tandem of Andrew Heaney and Dane Dunning. With that win comes control of the series. Read the rest of this entry »

The wild card round is already short enough, and this year, all four matchups ended in sweeps. That’s not much postseason baseball for the Rays, Blue Jays, Brewers, and Marlins. Suffice it to say, none of those teams took October, despite what the t-shirts promised.

While I feel a twinge of heartache for the losing side in any postseason matchup, I feel especially bad for the first-round exits. After a 162-game slog with the playoffs as the only goal, their season is over in the blink of an eye. With time, some will be forgotten as contenders entirely. That seems a shame, considering how well each of these teams performed in the regular season.

With that in mind, I wanted to take one last moment to recognize the playoff performances of Miami, Milwaukee, Toronto, and Tampa Bay, before the winds of the postseason blow on to the Division Series matchups. To be clear, there isn’t a ton to celebrate; they were each swept, after all. Still, every eliminated team had at least one player whose postseason showing deserves a pat on the back. Read the rest of this entry »

After nearly two decades of postseason futility, the Minnesota Twins not only won a playoff game, they advanced to the next round for the first time since 2002. Their reward? Facing the Houston Astros, who have held a firm grip on the American League over the last six years, reaching the ALCS in each of those seasons to go along with two championships and another pair of AL pennants to boot. On paper, this seems like a classic David versus Goliath matchup, but there are key distinctions between the clubs that should make this a very entertaining series:

The Twins won a weak AL Central with relative ease thanks to one of the best starting rotations in baseball. That pitching staff is a big reason why they’re not simply the token representative from their division but a real threat to make a deep run into the postseason. They might not have quite the same star power of some of the other contenders in the American League, but there are few holes on their roster and it seems like they’re peaking at the right time. Read the rest of this entry »

For the first time since 2016, the Orioles are in the playoffs, and likewise for the Rangers, as both teams’ lengthy — and very different — rebuilding efforts have finally paid off. Under Brandon Hyde, the largely homegrown Orioles won 101 games, their highest total since 1979, and claimed the AL’s top seed, giving them a first-round bye. With future Hall of Fame manager Bruce Bochy coming out of retirement, the Rangers, who have been built much more through trades and a whole lot of money spent in free agency, won 90 games but coughed up a 2.5-game AL West lead. As they finished with the same record as the Astros but lost the season series, 9–4, they wound up seeded fifth as a wild card but ran circles around the 99-win Rays in the first round, outscoring them 11–1 in two games in front of paltry Tropicana Field crowds.

Injuries will color this series, most notably the absences of the Orioles’ Félix Bautista, who dominated hitters for five months before tearing his UCL, and Max Scherzer, who came over via a deadline trade with the Mets and pitched well before straining his teres major. Rotation-mate Jon Gray is also out due to a forearm strain.

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The Phillies summarily dispatched the Marlins in two games this week in the wild card round, setting up a rematch with the Braves in the NLDS. On paper, Atlanta is the superior team, one that topped the majors with 104 wins this season and won the NL East by 14 games over Philadelphia. But playoff series aren’t won on paper, and baseball is the coin-tossiest of the major sports; its playoffs aren’t about crowning the best team, but the winning team — two correlated yet different things. The Braves had a 14-win advantage over the Phillies last year, too, and that didn’t keep Philadelphia from sending Atlanta back home on a midnight plane to Georgia in four games. The Phillies could easily do it again.

The Phillies didn’t come away with a championship in 2022, but anyone claiming that they had an unsuccessful season should have their pants checked for fire-related damage. Knocking out the Braves ought to have given them significant satifaction last year, given how Atlanta had come out on top in recent seasons. Both teams spent much of the mid-to-late 2010s in rebuilding processes, but the Braves had considerably more success; their 2022 playoff appearance was their fifth in as many seasons. Philadelphia, on the other hand, had trouble developing impact players at the rate Atlanta did; 2022’s postseason run was the franchise’s first in 11 years. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve done for the past few years, I’m going to be grading each eliminated postseason manager on their decision-making. We spend the year mostly ignoring managers’ on-field contributions, because to be honest, they’re pretty small. Using the wrong reliever in the eighth inning just doesn’t feel that bad on June 22; there are so many more games still coming, and the regular season is more about managing the grind than getting every possible edge every day. The playoffs aren’t like that; with so few games to separate wheat from chaff, every last ounce of win probability matters, and managers make personnel decisions accordingly. What better time to grade them?

My goal is to rank each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things – getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable – but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Coverage of the Twins’ sweep of the Blue Jays focused on Carlos Correa’s crafty veteran playoff leadership, but Royce Lewis, Pablo López, and Jhoan Duran were key parts of Minnesota’s victory too. Forget trusting your veterans – the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Correa is important because he’s a great player and great leader, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process. Yesterday, I covered the two American League teams that lost in the first round. Today, it’s the senior circuit’s turn. Read the rest of this entry »

You know how these articles go. There are two teams facing off in the playoffs. I name the players on each team, and maybe offer some lukewarm and heavily caveated opinions as to who is better. If I’m feeling punchy, I might slip in some jokes. Maybe there are some tables, perhaps named “Tale of the Tape” or something similar. It’s a tried and true formula.

For this series, I’m not going to do that, because you know who the Dodgers are and you probably just spent two days seeing the Diamondbacks announce themselves. We get it: the Dodgers have Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, and the Diamondbacks have a bunch of fast guys headlined by Corbin Carroll. No one needs to see 2,000 words worth of that. Instead, let’s try to predict the matchups that will determine this series. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve done for the past few years, I’m going to be grading each eliminated postseason manager on their decision-making. We spend the year mostly ignoring managers’ on-field contributions, because to be honest, they’re pretty small. Using the wrong reliever in the eighth inning just doesn’t feel that bad on June 22; there are so many more games still coming, and the regular season is more about managing the grind than getting every possible edge every day. The playoffs aren’t like that; with so few games to separate wheat from chaff, every last ounce of win probability matters, and managers make personnel decisions accordingly. What better time to grade them?

My goal is to rank each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things – getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable – but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Coverage of the Twins’ sweep of the Blue Jays focused on Carlos Correa’s crafty veteran playoff leadership, but Royce Lewis, Pablo López, and Jhoan Duran were key parts of Minnesota’s victory too. Forget trusting your veterans – the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Correa is important because he’s a great player and great leader, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process. Let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Sunday in Arizona, Kyle Tucker came to the plate in Game 162 with 29 home runs, one shy of his career high of 30 recorded in both 2021 and ’22. He also had a career-high 30 stolen bases to his name, giving him a chance to become just the second player in Astros history to record a 30–30 season, after Jeff Bagwell, who did so in 1997 and ’99. (To be precise, he’d be the third Astro with a 30–30 season — Carlos Beltrán was dealt to Houston partway through his lone 30–30 campaign in 2004 — but just the second to reach those marks in a full season in an Astros uniform.) Tucker would join four others — Ronald Acuña Jr., Francisco Lindor, Julio Rodriguez, and Bobby Witt Jr. — in the 30-30 club this season, which would have been the biggest cohort of 30–30ers in a single year in big league history. In a game where there was a division title at stake, he had a shot to add some metaphorical hardware to his personal trophy case as well.

In the fifth inning, Tucker, well, touched ‘em all:

He struck a line drive into right field, where Arizona’s Jake McCarthy misjudged it with a few steps inward, allowing it to sail over his head. Tucker got on his horse, coasted into third, and appeared to pick up on some lackadaisical defensive effort on Arizona’s part, at which point he took off for home. He was there before the back end of the Diamondbacks’ relay could realize it was happening and do anything about it. Read the rest of this entry »

I guess we statistically inclined writers aren’t technically supposed to believe in momentum. At least, we’re not supposed to believe it’s measurable or predictive. In baseball as in physics, the trajectory of events can be altered in the blink of an eye. Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint the moment momentum changes. Not so here.

On Wednesday night, Aaron Nola followed up Zack Wheeler’s Game 1 masterpiece with seven scoreless innings of his own. The Phillies got to Braxton Garrett early and broke the game open with a late Bryson Stott grand slam. Final score: 7-1. Time to crank the Tiësto remix of Calum Scott’s cover of “Dancing On My Own,” play the video of Harry Kalas singing “High Hopes,” and hop on a plane to Atlanta for the NLDS.

It looked very, very easy, even by the standards of a two-game sweep, but it was not preordained. Needing one win to clinch the series, the Phillies were presented with two obvious chances to seize control of the game. They grabbed both without hesitation. Read the rest of this entry »