Only two pitchers have ever thrown a postseason no-hitter: the Yankees’ Don Larsen with his perfect game in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series, and the Phillies’ Roy Halladay in the 2010 Division Series opener. On some level, the Braves’ Ian Anderson was vying to be the third; in Game 3 of the World Series on Friday night, he held the Astros hitless through five innings. But even from the start, anybody who has watched this postseason — where starters have averaged a hair over four innings per game — and understands the impact of the year-over-year workload increases that these pitchers are shouldering following the pandemic-shortened 2020 season could have told you that he wouldn’t get a chance to finish the job. That was doubly true on a raw and rainy night in Georgia and with a rested bullpen behind him. Backed by just two runs, Anderson and four relievers carried the no-hitter into the eighth and settled for a two-hit shutout, giving the Braves a 2–1 World Series lead.

Houston’s first hit finally came via a chip shot — 39 degrees, 70.7 mph — into left field by pinch-hitter Aledmys Díaz, the first batter faced by reliever Tyler Matzek. It fell in just in front of left fielder Eddie Rosario; according to Statcast, the catch probability for the play was 85%, but with shortstop Dansby Swanson running toward him and the cost of missing the ball being the tying run in scoring position, Rosario chose not to lay out.

It proved to be the right move. In fact, just about every major move the Braves made in Game 3 proved to be the right one, particularly manager Brian Snitker’s decision to trust his bullpen, no-hitter or not.

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José Urquidy delivered a relative gem in Game 2 of the World Series, punching out seven and giving up two runs with no walks in five innings. Included in that was a big bump in velocity across the board: Urquidy’s fastball gained 0.6 mph from its regular-season average (93.1 versus 92.5); his changeup spiked nearly two miles per hour (86.2 versus 84.4); and his slider saw the largest increase, from 79.3 mph to 81.7. Dialing up the velocity to this extent can effectively create new pitches, and with that an element of unpredictability, particularly when it comes to a pitch’s movement. That can be a plus in the postseason, but what about the flip side; could that extra velocity and movement make things worse?

On the surface, Urquidy throwing his hardest fastballs of the year in his most important start can’t be a bad thing, assuming it doesn’t compromise his command. Can he so precisely regulate the velocity of his offspeed offerings? Amazingly, we might be seeing the reverse from Urquidy, who seems to be throwing the offspeed stuff harder but holding back on the fastball.

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The Astros have powered their way into their third World Series in the last five years without the offensive contributions of one of their key players. In Houston’s 12 postseason games this October, Alex Bregman has hit a paltry .239/.308/.326 (.273 wOBA). He fared well against the White Sox in the ALDS, collecting six hits and two walks in those four games, but has just five hits in the eight games since and has been held hitless so far in the World Series. When your lineup is as deep as Houston’s is, you can survive a prolonged slump from one of your stars because there are so many other good hitters who can pick up the slack. Still, the Astros would rather Bregman hit than not.

These postseason struggles are just a continuation of a rough end to the regular season for the third baseman. He lost over two months of the season to a quad injury, keeping him sidelined from June 17 to August 25. After being activated from the injured list, he collected hits in 16 of his first 18 games back, but ended the season with just six hits in the team’s final 14 games. If you tack his postseason performance on to the end of his regular season, he’s hit just .200/.293/.313 (.269 wOBA) over his last 30 games. That late season swoon brought his wRC+ down from 130 on September 16 to 115 just 14 games later.

Bregman started his major league career with just two hits in his first 10 games, but pushed his wOBA up to .315 by his 30th game in the bigs. He’s had some slumps over the years — notoriously starting off each season slowly — but there’s never been a 30 game stretch where his wOBA has fallen as low as it is right now. Just looking at some of his peripheral stats during this stretch reveals where most of Bregman’s problems lie:

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After a one-year hiatus due to the oddity and non-celebratory feeling of a season truncated by a raging pandemic, we’re bringing back the Elegy series in a streamlined format for a 2021 wrap-up. Think of this as a quick winter preview for each team, discussing the questions that faced each team ahead of the year, how they were answered, and what’s next. Do you like or hate the new format? Let me know in the comments below! We’ve already tackled the AL and NL Central; now it’s on to the East, starting with the American League.

Tampa Bay Rays (100-62)

The Big Question

The Rays are one of the best teams in history at competing on a year-in, year-out basis with a budget dwarfed by their rivals, right up there with Connie Mack’s, Charlie Finley’s, and Billy Beane’s A’s. But in a very tough division, they walk a very high player churn tightrope without a safety net. Would the Blake Snell trade finally be the one to knock Tampa Bay off that tightrope? The team has to stay smarter than its rivals, which is a lot tougher to do than it was in the heyday of any of the other teams listed above. It’s not so much of a question of if they got good value for Snell — they got real players in return — but whether the team’s rotation depth, already relatively thin with Charlie Morton‘s departure and Tyler Glasnow’s injury history, would be sufficient to prevent the Rays from having another down period. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night, the Astros got to Max Fried early, scoring five runs in the first two innings on their way to a 7-2 rout. It was a mirror of the first game of the series — and it was also a window into how Brian Snitker plans on managing his pitching staff for the series’ remaining games. With Charlie Morton out until next year, the Braves will be stitching together innings the rest of the way. That plan started last night.

The first part of the plan: Max Fried took one for the team Wednesday night. Yanking your struggling pitcher early is common in the playoffs — Dusty Baker did it to Framber Valdez two days ago — but Snitker let Fried work through his issues and eat innings at the same time. He threw 86 pitches and completed five innings, saving wear and tear on the bullpen even though Atlanta was unlikely to win the game in any case. That makes Fried less likely to come back on short rest — though he didn’t rule it out — but it gave key bullpen arms like A.J. Minter and Tyler Matzek the night off. Matzek had appeared in 10 of the team’s first 11 playoff games; giving him a rest was a prudent decision.

The next step: use the middle and bottom of the bullpen when you can. Dylan Lee, Jesse Chavez, Drew Smyly, and Kyle Wright handled the rest of the game last night, and acquitted themselves fairly well (three innings, five strikeouts, one run). Those aren’t the top names in their relief corps, but they’ll be important during the three-game stretch in Atlanta starting this Friday. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the more endearing (or maddening) features of postseason baseball is the random journeyman who seemingly comes out of nowhere to go on a tear long enough that he helps push his team through to the World Series. In the grand tradition of non-stars-turned-League Championship Series-MVPs such as Eddie Pérez, Cody Ross, Delmon Young, and Howie Kendrick comes Eddie Rosario. The Braves’ left fielder went 14-for-25 with three homers in the NLCS against the Dodgers, and carried that hot streak through Game 1 of the World Series against the Astros, though his 11-game hitting streak came to an end on Wednesday night; he was also charged with an error on a play that helped break open Game 2.

The 30-year-old Rosario has hit .426/.471/.702 (207 wRC+) with three home runs and 11 RBI in the postseason thus far while collecting hits in every game through the first two rounds, and adding two in the World Series opener. All of those homers and nine of those RBI came in the NLCS, when he hit .560/.607/1.040 and tied the single-series postseason record for hits shared by Albert Pujols (2004 NLCS), Hideki Matsui (2004 ALCS), Kevin Youkilis (2007 ALCS), and Marco Scutaro (2012 NLCS). Rosario is the only one from that group to need only six games to reach 14 hits instead of seven.

Rosario’s arc is all the more remarkable because he didn’t even debut for the Braves until August 28, that after being given away for essentially nothing twice within the past year. After six solid but unspectacular seasons with the Twins, where his power was often offset by low on-base percentages and occasionally spotty defense — his career highs of 32 homers and 109 RBI in 2019 yielded just 1.2 WAR, for example — he was non-tendered last December. He signed a one-year, $8 million deal with Cleveland in late January, but hit just .254/.296/.389 (86 wRC+) with seven homers and 0.3 WAR in 78 games before landing on the injured list with an abdominal strain in early July. Read the rest of this entry »

Daniel Espino has emerged as the top prospect in Cleveland’s system. Ranked sixth on Eric Longenhagen’s list coming into the season, the 20-year-old right-hander now ranks No. 1 after dominating hitters to the tune of 152 strikeouts in 91-and-two-thirds innings in 20 starts split evenly between Low-A Lynchburg and High-A Lake County. Moreover, Espino — a 6-foot-2, 225-pound native of Panama with a triple-digit heater — is currently No. 50 on FanGraphs’ ranking of the top prospects in all of baseball.

Espino discussed his development, including an impactful mechanical adjustment, near the end of the minor-league season.

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David Laurila: I’ve seen the scouting reports, but how would you describe yourself? What do you bring to the table as a pitcher?

Daniel Espino: “I feel that everybody knows about my fastball; they know how hard I can throw. I see myself as a competitor who doesn’t give away at-bats, doesn’t give away pitches. I also feel that I’m smart. That’s the best quality I have: being able to read hitters and understand the game. I feel that’s the biggest thing.”

Laurila: You’re 20 years old. A lot of pitchers your age are more “throwers” than they are “pitchers.” Do you feel that you’ve already crossed that threshold? Read the rest of this entry »

Position Title: Senior Analyst, Baseball Informatics

Reports To: Senior Director, Baseball Informatics

The Pittsburgh Pirates are seeking an experienced individual to help drive player- and coach-facing analysis at all levels, playing a key role in the strategic direction of player/coach facing analytics, mentoring analysts and support staff, and identifying opportunities in this area. Key responsibilities include:

• Leading the process of creating data-driven targets for player improvement and facilitate their use. This individual will be expected to help players and coaches understand and apply insights using developmentally appropriate language.
• Managing the effort to track and monitor progress on the targets in conjunction with analysts and developers through player- and coach-facing deliverables. The deliverables will include metric development, data visualization, integration into proprietary systems, advance reports, and other research items.
• Performing, publishing, and communicating analysis on specific players throughout the year, providing insights from a data-driven perspective as needed as well as lead other analysts in this process.
• Collaborating with staff and Informatics in exploring and implementing technology solutions in Baseball Operations.

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Please note, this posting contains two positions.

Position: Baseball Operations Associate Analyst

Reports To: Baseball Operations Analyst
Department: Baseball Operations
Status: Non-Exempt
Position Type: Seasonal
Location: Minor League Affiliates (Sacramento, Richmond, Eugene, San Jose)

Position Summary:
This individual will travel with a minor league team and provide on-site analytics and technology support serving staff and players while helping to implement key organizational initiatives. The ideal candidate will possess technical skills, the ability to communicate effectively to non-technical people, and both passion and intellectual curiosity for the game of baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

After a rough Game 1 loss to the Braves, Astros manager Dusty Baker spoke confidently about his team: “I’ve never seen these guys worry. They know they can play.” His confidence was reflected in his decision to stick to the script and start José Urquidy in Game 2 rather than go with a fully rested Luis Garcia, the star of Game 6 of the ALCS. Part of the logic of having Urquidy pitch Wednesday came down to his fly ball tendencies and the availability of the DH, which allowed the Astros to run out their best outfield defense (in Games 3, 4 and 5, the Astros will likely be somewhat compromised in the field by starting Yordan Alvarez in left). In Urquidy’s disastrous first postseason outing, he only managed to get five outs while allowing five earned runs, mostly due to command struggles that led to a grand slam by Kyle Schwarber. But when Urquidy is right, he throws endless strikes and gets weakly hit fly balls and pops ups with a plus fastball that he throws over 50% of the time.

Urquidy looked sharp to start the game, pumping fastballs and working tremendously quickly. He has pretty strong reverse splits thanks to a nasty changeup that he features to lefties, and he got Atlanta’s hottest hitter, Eddie Rosario, to strikeout swinging on a changeup to lead off the first. It was a glimpse of things to come. His other key secondary offering is his slider, which is his main weapon against righties. After Ozzie Albies reached with two outs on a swinging bunt (55.8 mph exit velocity), the right-handed heart of the Atlanta’s lineup came up. It quickly became clear that Urquidy didn’t have his slider. Austin Riley drilled one into right field for a base hit, after which Urquidy hung a couple to Jorge Soler before getting him to strikeout on a fastball to end the threat.

Unlike the Astros, the Braves didn’t really have any questions about who they were running out for Game 2. Max Fried was their ace during the second half of the season and one of the best pitchers in baseball over that span. The injury to Charlie Morton in Game 1 put even more pressure on Fried to step up and deliver not one, but two strong outings in this series. A matchup with the Astros isn’t easy for any pitcher but it’s especially difficult for a lefty like Fried, as Houston posted a 117 wRC+ against southpaws this season, tops in baseball. Read the rest of this entry »