The recipe for winning in the playoffs really shouldn’t be that complicated. You want your good players to do well, and you want the rest of your players to do well enough. It shouldn’t take any more than that, so, for the Rangers, they came into the ALDS against the Blue Jays hoping to lean on Cole Hamels and Yu Darvish, which is totally fine. Those are two outstanding pitchers; you expect them to have outstanding games. Hamels, yesterday, allowed seven runs, and couldn’t get out of the fourth. Darvish, today, allowed five runs, and couldn’t get into the sixth. Now the Rangers are probably screwed. What do you do? They just got baseballed.

Darvish’s problem was that he allowed four homers. And I’m not going to try to defend him — you have to work pretty hard to give up four homers. But we should at least be able to excuse him for one of them. Behold Kevin Pillar doubling what was, in the moment, a one-run lead. I’d argue that Pillar might’ve done a worse job of executing here than even Darvish did. No, that sounds stupid, but, you know what I mean. What is this!

Literally just the other day, Pillar knocked a double against a pitch that was similarly high, but that double could’ve been caught, and at least the pitch was somewhere over the plate. Pillar went up and Pillar went in to take Darvish yard, and I just honestly don’t know what you’re supposed to do with this. This isn’t the pitch that Darvish wanted to throw, but it should’ve just put him behind 3-1 in the count, not 3-1 on the scoreboard.

Here’s a plot of all the 2016 home runs, with data borrowed from Baseball Savant. I put righty and lefty home runs on the same scale, such that pitches on the left are inside, and pitches on the right are outside. You can easily see here that Pillar’s home run is exceptional, relative to the pack.

Maybe it’s not the single most exceptional home run. Maybe it is? I don’t know. But it’s out there. It’s above most of the group, and it’s to the left of most of the group, and it’s both of those things at the same time, which makes it bizarre. It doesn’t reflect well on Pillar that he swung at this pitch in the first place while ahead in the count. It’s probably no mystery why Pillar is the owner of a career 85 wRC+. But on the other hand, maybe that is a mystery, because if Pillar can go yard against a pitch like this, what’s to stop him from going yard against almost literally anything?

I am a professional baseball analyst, writing for a website founded upon baseball analysis. So often, around this time of year, my analysis comes down to a “welp.” Pillar put a…good? swing on the ball. I don’t even know, man. But it sure was a dinger, all right.

You get into a bubble sometimes. Even when that bubble doesn’t look like other bubbles, it’s there insulating you from seeing something you should see. I’m always looking for that new thing, that change, that great new pitcher, that guy overperforming his expectations. That’s the fun thing to look at! An ace, pitching like an ace again, with wipeout stuff? Huh. Somehow, that might be my blind spot.

But then again, sustained excellence can do that to you. We didn’t really write about Jon Lester this year, for example. Jon Lester was excellent, of course. But he was excellent in the way he’s usually excellent. It’s worked out for the Cubs, but there’s material there for analysis.

Corinne Landrey’s been the only one to write about Yu Darvish so far this year, even though he was the second-best starter by strikeout percentage in 2016 while also the author of the best walk rate of his career. We should regularly write about excellence, and here’s Darvish taking on the Blue Jays for Game Two. Here’s an opportunity to pop the Yu bubble.

The thing is, it looks like he hasn’t changed much since he was so excellent before his Tommy John surgery. It looks that way. I’m not sure that’s true.

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When I used to come in to pitch, I’d take my eight warm-ups from the mound, and almost without fail I’d hear loud shouts from the other dugout that “this guy’s got nothing!” For the most part this was because they were right, I had nothing, I should’ve been terrible, but what I think kept me from being truly terrible was their own overconfidence. I was never the best pitcher on my team, and opponents would swing like I was the worst pitcher on my team, but thanks to that overeager aggressiveness, there were surprising numbers of clean whiffs and pop-ups. I was as surprised as they were, but at some point it stops being a fluke.

Marco Estrada is better than he’s ever been. When he was younger, he threw about a league-average fastball. Now he’s four ticks below the league mark. Marco Estrada is a finesse pitcher, and as a general rule, finesse pitchers are worse than non-finesse pitchers. But the best ones — they succeed in part because of their own abilities to locate, but they succeed also by turning hitters against their own selves. Power pitchers force a hitter to shorten up. Finesse pitchers tempt a hitter to lengthen. They tempt hitters to come out of their shoes, as if a 500-foot homer means more than its 400-foot equivalent. Facing a Marco Estrada is a test in self-discipline. As we’ve all experienced for ourselves, when pressure starts to mount, self-discipline can unravel.

Estrada dominated the Rangers on Thursday, Texas hitters frequently swinging out of their shoes. Even knocking Estrada around might not have done much: The Blue Jays won by nine runs. But Estrada came close to a complete-game road shutout, and his finesse-y repertoire worked out just peaches. Too often, the Rangers couldn’t help themselves but overswing. Here now are their five worst swings, along with one honorable mention.

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Come playoff time, you tend to see a lot of team-to-team comparisons. And when you see team-to-team comparisons, the people doing the comparing frequently lean on regular-season statistics. And, you know, in theory that makes plenty of sense. Those numbers are readily available all over the place, and, isn’t the regular season a hell of a sample? Doesn’t the regular season pretty adequately reflect the level of talent on a given roster?

I’m not going to argue that regular-season numbers are or aren’t more important than, say, postseason numbers. The regular season obviously has the biggest and therefore the most meaningful sample. But as should go without saying, things change come October. Rosters are optimized, and usage patterns shift. For example, during the year, Rangers hitters had a 98 wRC+. Rangers hitters on the roster today averaged a weighted 106 wRC+. During the year, Rangers relievers had a 100 ERA-. Rangers relievers expected to relieve in the playoffs averaged a weighted 75 ERA-. The Rangers aren’t what they were for six months. No team is, entirely. So what do we have now? What does the actual, weighted playoff landscape look like?

Time for some tables of numbers. That’s almost as fun as actual baseball!

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I’ve got a vote for American League Manager of the Year this season and I’m terrified. My first vote as a member of the Baseball Writer’s Association, and it’s the impossible one.

Maybe impossible is too tough a word. I’m sure I’ll figure something out in time to submit a vote. But evaluating the productivity of a manager just seems so difficult. We’ve seen efforts that use the difference between projected and actual wins, or between “true talent” estimations for the team and their actual outcomes. But those attribute all sorts of random chance to the manager’s machinations.

I’d like to instead identify measurable moments where a manager exerts a direct influence on his team, assign those values or ranks, and see where each current manager sits. So what are those measurable moments?

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As you’re no doubt aware, it’s been a hell of a season in Texas. The Rangers own the best record in the American League, with the eighth-best run differential. They’ve destroyed their Pythagorean record, which has caused them to destroy their BaseRuns record. Much of this has been fueled by historic success in one-run games, and much of that has been fueled by historically clutch hitting. Teams are successful every year, but the Rangers have followed an unusual course. It’s been simultaneously thrilling and bizarre, something difficult for analysts to explain. At this point, there might not be any sense in trying.

There’s one more nugget I want to throw on top of the others. For the reasons detailed above, this Rangers season has been truly exceptional. It’s hard to imagine a team drawing it up like this. Yet there’s another split you might have trouble believing. I know I did! Which is why I’m writing this in the first place. I don’t really know what it means, but I can’t not bring it to your attention.

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Rangers’ success in one-run games. They actually lost by one run yesterday, but if you’ve been paying attention, that was the first time that’s happened all season, probably, and one game doesn’t upset the whole pattern. The regular season is just about done, and the Rangers have put together an incredible stat. That’s — well, it’s incredible. I don’t need to provide any other words.

It’s tricky to write about these things, and I wasn’t looking to cover this in the familiar way. We’ve all read a number of articles about what the Rangers have done. We’ve all read articles before about similar teams doing similar things. It’s boring to say “luck,” and it’s tired to say “luck,” and with the playoffs around the corner pointing toward luck is additionally irrelevant. The Rangers have done what they’ve done, and their fans have been able to enjoy it. There’s no taking any of that enjoyment back for math-y purposes.

I’ve just been amazed by how the Rangers have stood out. They’ve won 77% of their one-run games. The Yankees are in second at 69%. Then you have the Tigers at 62%. Thinking about the Rangers got me wondering: Is this the most extraordinary team statistic of the year? I’ll tell you right now: It’s not! Follow along below.

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I don’t know how else to begin, so let’s begin like this: Over 126 games spent with the Astros, Carlos Gomez was worth 0.6 WAR. Over 25 games spent with the Rangers, Carlos Gomez has been worth 0.7 WAR. Now you know the story — there are characters, there’s a plot. When the Astros acquired Gomez in the first place, they figured he could be a real difference-maker. He’s making a difference now, just for a division rival instead.

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The Rangers as a team have posted an OPS of .753. The Rangers as a team have allowed an OPS of .752. That gives them a positive difference of .001. They stand today at 80-54, atop the American League.

The Rays as a team have posted an OPS of .737. The Rays as a team have allowed an OPS of .732. That gives them a positive difference of .005 — four points better than the Rangers, in fact. They stand today at 56-76, 23 games behind Texas, wallowing around the league’s basement.

There’s no opinion being expressed here. This isn’t supposed to be good, and this isn’t supposed to be bad. This is just what is. The events that go into OPS have happened. Wins and losses have happened. This is essentially making the point that BaseRuns does — BaseRuns strips away timing and context, and if you do that, the Rangers lose 12 games, and the Rays gain 11. The thing about stripping away timing and context, though, is that you can’t do that. Not when you want to talk about the present standings. And the Rangers have gotten to where they are by playing like one of the most clutch teams in the past 40+ years.

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The other day, I was reading a profile of Rougned Odor, the person. As shouldn’t come as any surprise, the public doesn’t have a real nuanced understanding of the guy — he’s just the little dude who clobbered Jose Bautista, and that makes him either likable or detestable. Like everyone else, the real Odor is a human being, something far more complicated than the single most well-known thing he did, and the consensus from those who know him is that Odor plays with an admirable edge. Maybe it makes him like a baseball version of an agitator, but those who’ve spent time with Odor tend to wish there were more players like him.

As a player, then, perhaps Odor is uncommon. And as a player type, he’s at least just as unusual. Speaking in a general sense, Odor appears to have an atypical engine. And he’s also weird when you get into the details. This is a baseball stats website. I’m here to deliver you some baseball stats.

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