If you’d been asked, before this postseason, to name as many Astros relievers as you could, how many would you have rattled off before you had to stop? Many fans could probably recall Ryan Pressly, the closer with the high-spin curveball who’s been an integral part of Houston’s bullpen the last three seasons. Maybe Josh James is a familiar face if you’d paid enough attention, a young right-hander with a powerful fastball and questionable command who’s bounced between the rotation and bullpen.

After that, though, it’s likely a lot of blank stares and silence. The relief corps that the Astros turned to throughout the 2020 season was as anonymous as it was unexceptional. Houston’s bullpen ranked 16th in the majors in WAR and ERA and 18th in strikeout rate. By Win Probability Added, they were a miserable 26th. The only stat they were near the top of the league in was walk rate — 12.4%, second-highest in the league. None of that should have come as a surprise: The Astros lost two of their better relievers from 2019 in Will Harris and Joe Smith to free agency, then they saw closer Roberto Osuna throw all of 4.1 innings this year before blowing out his elbow.

The bullpen then became a carousel, spinning constantly as new bodies jumped on seemingly every day. Twenty-two different pitchers trotted out in relief for the Astros, most of them rookies, trying their best to fill what increasingly looked like a bottomless hole. Some of the names cycled through were downright Pynchon-esque: Cy Sneed, Nivaldo Rodriguez, Humberto Castellanos. Some players were barely there for a few days before disappearing while others stuck. And although the bullpen on the whole was never anything more than average, a few of those pitchers managed to secure a spot in Dusty Baker’s circle of trust. Read the rest of this entry »

Note: The Padres did indeed include Mike Clevinger on their roster, which was submitted on Tuesday morning, but not Dinelson Lamet. For more on the impact of both teams’ rotation and roster decisions, please see here.

Despite some nail-biting moments in their respective Wild Card Series, the Dodgers swept the Brewers and the Padres outlasted the Cardinals to produce a Division Series matchup that just so happens to pit the National Leagues’s two best teams by both won-loss record (the Dodgers went 43-17, the Padres 37-23) and run differential (+136 for the former, +84 for the latter) against each other. In that regard, it’s a pity the two teams only get a best-of-five series to settle things instead of a best-of-seven. With MVP candidates Mookie Betts, Fernando Tatis Jr., and Manny Machado — not to mention past MVPs Cody Bellinger and Clayton Kershaw — and perhaps some future Cy Young candidates, this one has the potential to be as entertaining as any later-round series.

The Dodgers, after playing at a 116-win pace during the regular season — not necessarily the best omen, mind you — never trailed the Brewers during the Wild Card Series. They didn’t exactly run away with things in their 4-2 and 3-0 wins, but none of their pitchers had to work back-to-back days. The Padres, who played at a 100-win pace but lost starters Mike Clevinger and Dinelson Lamet to arm injuries during the final week of the season, won their first playoff series in 22 years, beating the Cardinals despite not getting more than 2.1 innings from a starting pitcher in any of the three games. They lost Game 1 and had to climb out of a four-run hole in the later innings of Game 2, but won the rubber match via a nine-pitcher shutout, an unprecedented postseason showing. Four of their pitchers worked all three games, though none threw more than three total innings.

During the regular season, the Dodgers beat the Padres in six out of 10 games, and outscored them 60-48. A single 11-2 win on August 13 — during which Chris Paddack was shellacked for six runs in three innings while Julio Urías pitched 6.1 strong innings — accounted for the lion’s share of that run differential.

Worth noting: this series will be played in the Globe Life Field, the brand new home of the Texas Rangers. It’s covered, and has artificial turf, and with outfield dimensions of 329′-372′-407′-374′-326′ from left to right, it’s shorter to the power allies but deeper to center field than its predecessor. It plays as a pitcher-friendly venue, and could help the more fly ball-oriented Padres staff more than the Dodgers. The 66 homers hit there this year ranked 22nd in the majors, so for all the power these two teams showed during the regular season, there may not be as many fireworks. Read the rest of this entry »

If Major League Baseball awarded MVP honors for the Wild Card Series, then Max Fried, Ian Anderson and the rest of a Braves pitching staff that held the Reds scoreless for 22 consecutive innings would have rightly claimed it, but Freddie Freeman played a significant role in the Braves’ advancement as well. In the bottom of the 13th inning of Game 1, more than four and a half hours into a scoreless standoff that set a postseason record, the 31-year-old first baseman’s single up the middle brought home Cristian Pache, his latest big hit in a season that for all of its brevity has been full of them.

Since the ballots have been cast, that hit won’t affect the voting, of course, but Freeman’s regular season performance has given him a shot at becoming the first first baseman to win an MVP award since Joey Votto in 2010. His performance was all the more amazing given that he tested positive for COVID-19 in early July, and feared for his own life as he battled high fevers. Thankfully, he not only recovered and regained his strength but did so in time to be in the Braves’ lineup on Opening Day. Remarkably, he played in all 60 games, one of 14 players to do so (not counting Starling Marte, who squeezed in 61 while being traded from the Diamondbacks to the Marlins). Freeman hit a sizzling .341/.462/.640, placing second in the National League in all three slash stats and wRC+ (187) behind Juan Soto, who played 13 fewer games due to his own COVID-19 battle.

Big hits? Freeman batted .423/.583/.885 in 72 plate appearances with runners in scoring position, good for a major league-best 264 wRC+ in that capacity. While he finished second in the NL behind teammate Marcell Ozuna in RBI (56 to 53), he led the majors in Win Probability Added (3.17), more than a full win ahead of the 10th-ranked Ozuna. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

All four Division Series matchups pit division rivals against each other, but none have the same kind of recent history as the one between the Athletics and the Astros, their first ever meeting in the playoffs. These two teams have battled for the AL West crown the last three seasons, with Houston coming out on top in the two seasons prior before stumbling in this year’s shorter slate. That kind of familiarity and competition is a breeding ground for animosity. Tempers flared in early August when, after being hit by a pitch for the second time and a subsequent shouting match with Astros hitting coach Alex Cintron, Ramón Laureano charged the Astros dugout. On the other side, former Astro and current A’s starter Mike Fiers, the whistleblower who revealed the Astros’ illegal sign-stealing scheme during the offseason, has become a popular villain in Houston. There’s no love lost between these two clubs.

Houston dominated this matchup in 2018 and 2019, going a combined 23-15 against Oakland during those two seasons, the A’s worst record against an American League opponent during that period. They just couldn’t compete with the Astros’ high powered offense and elite pitching staff. But the A’s took advantage of Houston’s recent struggles to score and slew of diminished and injured arms to win seven of the 10 games these two teams played this year:

The Astros haven’t done much to put the concerns about their ability to score runs in the playoffs to rest. They scored just 3.8 runs per game in September and only pushed seven runs across against the Twins in their two game sweep in the Wild Card round; three of those runs came in the ninth inning of Game 1 after an inning ending ground out was botched on a bad throw to second by Jorge Polanco. Read the rest of this entry »

If you follow baseball, you probably have a rough understanding of the way Tampa Bay builds their roster. They assemble a ton of complementary pieces, put them in the best position to succeed, and build an offense that seems like more than the sum of its parts. Just as importantly, they do it without any true superstars.

In 2018, they finished with baseball’s ninth-best offense when Tommy Pham went incandescent for the last two months of the year. The best hitter on the team who made at least 400 plate appearances was C.J. Cron, and his 123 wRC+ won’t blow anyone’s socks off. In 2019, they had the 11th-best offense led by Austin Meadows with a 142 wRC+. This year, they finished with the eighth-best offense, with Brandon Lowe the headliner. Many pieces, no truly gamebreaking talents; it’s starting to feel like the Rays way.

None of those players, however, have actually been the best hitter in Tampa Bay this year. Pham is plying his trade for the Padres, Meadows was injured and ineffective, and while Lowe is a borderline MVP candidate after a great season, he’s not who I want to talk about today. The best hitter on the top seed in the American League is — well, crap, it’s Brian O’Grady, who batted .400/.400/.600 in five plate appearances. After him, though, it’s Randy Arozarena, who hit .281/.384/.641 in a still-tiny 76 plate appearance sample for a 176 wRC+.

The Rays seem to believe the hype. In the first game of the Wild Card round, Arozarena batted third in the lineup. In the second game, with the platoon advantage against Hyun Jin Ryu 류현진, he batted second. Tampa Bay is treating Arozarena like one of the best hitters on the team. Let’s take a quick look at how this can be the case for a player who wasn’t even in the Tampa Bay system or on any Top 100 prospect lists before this year. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the things 2020’s expanded playoff format robbed us of was a real American League East throw down. The Rays earned bragging rights, winning 13 of their 15 games in late August to turn a two-game deficit into a four-and-a-half-game cushion, ultimately taking the division by an impressive seven games and whomping the Yankees by an 8-2 margin in their head-to-head matchups. But the Yankees never really acted as if their season was in serious jeopardy because in the end, it never really was. After all, the stakes for winning the division versus finishing in second place have never been lower. With the pennant race defanged, a Yankees vs. Rays postseason matchup brings real electricity where their other 2020 matchups did not. The winner will be just one series away from a trip to the Fall Classic; the loser will be sent home to make plans for 2021.

What makes this matchup fun isn’t just that the results actually matter. There’s also a real contrast between how the teams are run. The Yankees may not spend with the same unchecked aggression they did 15 years ago, but they still agree to massive contracts when the right opportunity arises; Gerrit Cole isn’t being paid in exposure. New York is a standard modern juggernaut: big payroll, big power, and big plate discipline, but with an interest in developing players from within rather than cashing every top prospect into veteran deadline help.

If the Yankees are a 21st century Goliath, no team better personifies David than the Rays. There’s no denying that Tampa Bay’s tiny payroll includes a healthy chunk of parsimony, but most observers agree that the team lacks the revenue — and the possibility of such — to realistically challenge the luxury tax threshold. Whatever you attribute the club’s low payrolls to, the Rays have to be careful and clever. And as low-spending teams go, their record matches up with that of bigger payroll clubs exceptionally well. Since they dropped the Devil from their name before the 2008 season, the Rays have won 1081 games, the fifth-most in baseball, despite playing in one of baseball’s toughest divisions.

And the contrasts don’t stop at payroll. The Yankees have the name-brand superstars, while the Rays always seem to find a multitude of average-to-above-average players out of nowhere with almost paranormal ease. Back when we thought the season would be 162 games long, ZiPS projected four Yankees hitters to be worth at least three wins; only a single Ray (Austin Meadows) was projected to eclipse that mark. But the computer also projected 17 Rays position players to put up at least one win if used in a full-time role compared to just 11 Yankees. No Tampa Bay starter was projected to equal Cole, just as no Rays reliever was expected to be as dominant as Aroldis Chapman, but ZiPS saw the Rays as having 38 better than replacement level pitchers in the organization, the most of any team in baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s well-chronicled that the Twins have now lost 18 consecutive postseason games. What it isn’t is well-explained, and that’s for good reason. A streak this torturous is inexplicable. Getting swept in a short series is by no means uncommon, but having it happen repeatedly, at the worst possible time, is soul-crushingly rare.

Derek Falvey was asked about the failings when he met with the media following Wednesday’s elimination. Moreover, he was asked what can be done to reverse those fortunes in Octobers to come. Minnesota’s Chief Baseball Officer answered as best he could, but again, what’s beset his club is inexplicable.

I introduced that angle in a follow-up question near the end of Falvey’s session: Given the randomness of short series, is there truly anything that can be done to flip the postseason script? Are the Twins akin to the pre-2004 Red Sox in that they’ll only win once the Baseball Gods deem it time for them to win?

“I hear your perspective on trying to make sure we don’t overreact to some history,” responded Falvey. “We want to make sure that we assess this as objectively as we can… but I do think there is some reality that in a baseball season, over the course of two or three, or four or five games, things can go a little haywire on you — even if you feel you have a good foundation. Maybe if you played those games all over again, you might have a different result. I get that. That speaks to your question a little bit about randomness. Read the rest of this entry »

The 0-0 score in the middle of the fifth inning in Friday’s decisive Wild Card series Game 3 between the Padres and Cardinals was, technically speaking, accurate. It was true that neither team had tallied a run to that point in the contest. But the thing about scores is that they hide things, details that influence the way a fan actually feels while watching the game. In this case, the score conveyed a tie — a situation in which neither team had yet gained the upper hand. It probably would have been difficult to find a Padres fan who agreed, however. St. Louis had their ace on the mound going strong, and had yet to even warm up a second pitcher. San Diego, meanwhile, had already used up five pitchers in the game. Even without allowing a run, it felt the team was playing from behind. It had been that way ever since they lost their two best starters the final weekend of the regular season, and when they lost Game 1 of the series, and when they literally named Craig Stammen their starter in a win-or-go-home playoff game.

I’m not sure when it is that feeling went away. Maybe it was when the Padres scored their first run in the bottom of the fifth, or when they added two more in a seventh inning full of defensive miscues from St. Louis. Maybe it wasn’t until the end of the game that it finally set in that the Padres had accomplished something stunning — a 4-0 win carried out by nine bullpen pitchers that advanced the team to an NLDS standoff with the rival Los Angeles Dodgers next week. It is the most pitchers ever used in a shutout during the live-ball era, and the first playoff series win for San Diego in 22 years.

It was the second-straight day the Padres used nine pitchers, after doing so in the team’s 11-9 victory in Game 2 on Thursday. The day before that, the team had used eight pitchers. In both of those games, however, the conga line marching in from the bullpen was the result of starting pitchers who allowed the game to slip away from them early. In Game 1, Chris Paddack only made it 2.1 innings before allowing six runs on eight hits. In Game 2, Zach Davies went just two innings and allowed four runs on five hits. With Dinelson Lamet and Mike Clevinger already ruled out of the series because of injuries suffered last weekend, the Padres’ options for Game 3 were limited. It wasn’t until just a few hours before first pitch that the team announced Stammen — who last started a game in 2010, and held a 5.63 ERA in 24 innings this season — would get the ball in the first inning.

But Stammen got the first five outs of the game while allowing just a single hit, and each arm that followed simply continued to put up zeroes. Padres pitchers allowed just four hits and three walks, striking out eight and enjoying stellar defensive work from the infield behind them. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »