It’s perhaps easy to forget, given his postseason woes and the presence of a dominant left-handed rotation mate, but David Price remains, at age 33, among the premier starting pitchers in baseball. Price, in his career, owns a 3.34 FIP, 80 ERA-, and 82 FIP-. (For comparison’s sake, Justin Verlander is at a nearly identical 80 and 81, respectively.) Even in his injury-shortened 2018, Price still approached three wins, and his 24.5% strikeout rate in 2018 remains among top-25 marks in the major leagues.

Though he’s now a couple of years removed from his prime — during which he rattled off seven seasons of 4 WAR or more — he retains a five-pitch arsenal, three of which (fastball, cutter, and sinker) posted positive run values this year. He doesn’t throw as hard as he used to — Father Time is, after all, undefeated — but a 93 mph fastball and an above-average cutter and sinker should still be enough to get hitters out. They were, after all, during the regular season.

Except that, in his postseason career, David Price has posted a 133 ERA-, 115 FIP-, and -0.92 WPA. In 2018, in the postseason, Price has a 222 ERA- and 259 FIP-, “good” for a -0.38 WPA. In other words, David Price, regular-season ace, makes his teams worse in the playoffs. Price’s failures in the postseason are by now a well-known narrative. The Wall Street Journal’s Brian Costa and Jared Diamond called Price’s playoff misery one of “the Great Mysteries of October Baseball.” After the Sox’ October 6 loss to the Yankees in the Division Series, Bob Nightengale openly wondered if Price would even start again in the playoffs.

Let me start by saying that I am very much a lawyer, and not what one might term a “sabermetrician.” In other words, I profess no great or singular skill, unlike Dan Szymborski or Jeff Sullivan or Jay Jaffe. What I do have, on the other hand, is a healthy curiosity for this game we call “baseball,” and more specifically why things happen the way they do. Lawyers like patterns and predictability. We dislike anomalies. David Price is an anomaly.

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Let’s just get this out of the way now: That sucked. I mean, the game between the Astros and Red Sox was great, and it couldn’t have ended in a more dramatic fashion, but ultimately, the Red Sox won by two runs. And, in the bottom of the first inning, a controversial call and replay review might well have cost the Astros two runs. Yes, you’re right, the game would’ve played out differently had that call been made differently. We have no idea what that alternate game would’ve looked like. But the Astros have been pushed to the brink now, and a two-run homer would’ve been a pretty big deal. No one ever wants to think a game and season were damaged by umpires. It’s a very unsatisfying kind of disappointment, when the outcomes aren’t solely determined by the players themselves.

I don’t think we’re ever going to know for sure whether the right call was made. As such, it’s the sort of thing that’s going to linger, at least if the Astros fail to advance. Immediately, this has turned into a great What If?, and a target of Astros fan rage. Yet having reviewed all the evidence, I’ve come to the conclusion the call was good. And by that I mean, I think it was more good than bad. In the absence of anything conclusive, some amount of mystery is everlasting. But if you are to render judgment, you go whichever way you’re leaning. I’m leaning toward fan interference.

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Position: Boston Red Sox Analyst

Location: Boston, MA

Description:
The Boston Red Sox are seeking an Analyst for the team’s Baseball Analytics department. The role will support all areas of Baseball Operations while working closely with the SVP/Assistant GM, Director of Baseball Analytics, and the department’s team of analysts.

This is an opportunity to work in a fast-paced, intellectually curious environment and to impact player personnel and strategic decision making.

Responsibilities:

• Statistical modeling and quantitative analysis of a variety of data sources, for the purpose of player evaluation, strategic decision-making, decision analysis, etc.
• Effectively present analyses through the use of written reports and data visualization to disseminate insights to members of the Baseball Operations leadership.
• Maintain working expertise of leading-edge analytics, including publicly available research and novel statistical approaches, in order to recommend new or emerging techniques, technologies, models, and algorithms.
• Other projects and related duties as directed by the Director, Baseball Analytics, and other members of Baseball Operations leadership.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in an analytical field such as statistics, predictive analytics, data science, engineering, applied math, physics, quantitative social sciences, computer science, or operations research.
• Demonstrated experience with baseball data analysis.
• Advanced understanding of statistical methods or machine learning techniques.
• Proficiency with modern database technologies including SQL.
• Demonstrated experience with programming languages (e.g., R or Python).
• Demonstrated ability to communicate technical ideas to non-technical audiences using data visualization.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office (Excel, PowerPoint, Word).
• Demonstrated work ethic, passion for baseball, and strong baseball knowledge, including familiarity with current baseball research and analysis.
• Attention to detail while also having the ability to work quickly and balance multiple priorities.
• Experience working for a major league club preferred.
• Ability to work evening, weekend, and holiday hours is a must.
• Other programming and database skills are a plus.

To Apply:
To apply, please send an email to analyticsresume@redsox.com with the subject “Office Analyst”. Please include the following items/answer:

• Updated resume
• Example of analysis you’ve done, preferably related to baseball.
• What is a project that you believe would add substantial value to a baseball team? Please describe the project and provide an overview of how you would complete it.

I just polled you all about something last Thursday. I asked you how you feel about the diminishing role of the starting pitcher in the modern game. I don’t know what I expected, which meant I’d be surprised by *any* results, but here’s where things stand — 23% of you are neutral. Yet 57% of you have a negative opinion, while just 20% of you have a positive opinion. That’s almost a 3-to-1 ratio. We’ll see how things evolve over time, as we become increasingly accustomed to how pitching staffs are used, but there’s clearly a collective sense of loss. The audience likes to think of the starter as the protagonist. The protagonists shouldn’t be killed off in the fourth or fifth inning. Leaves too much of the story.

Now I’m going back to the well again. I have another question for you all. This isn’t about some sort of trend within the game. Rather, this is about one call. But really, it’s about how calls are made in general. It’s about how you prefer that judgment be rendered. We’re going back to Saturday’s Game 1 of the Red Sox/Astros ALCS. Let’s all watch Joe Kelly throw a curveball down the middle.

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There was a moment where Sunday’s Game 2 might’ve unraveled. David Price left the mound to a Fenway Park standing ovation, because he left the mound with a lead, but he also left the mound in the top of the fifth with two runners on in a one-run game. That meant it was up to the Red Sox bullpen to get 13 outs. It was, most immediately, up to Matt Barnes to get out of a jam. And within three pitches, the Astros got a break.

Barnes got ahead of Marwin Gonzalez with two quick strikes. At that point, Barnes came back with a breaking ball low. Gonzalez swung, and he came up empty, and that appeared to be that, but according to home-plate umpire Vic Carapazza, Gonzalez had tipped the ball before it landed in the dirt. So instead of Barnes getting out of the inning, he’d have to try again. Replays couldn’t confirm a foul tip, but a foul tip is a non-reviewable play. It was like watching a dramatic turning point in progress.

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Episode 839
Dan Szymborski is the progenitor of the ZiPS projection system and a senior writer for FanGraphs dot com. He’s also the guest on this edition of the program, during which he examines which managers have produced the best performances of the postseason. Also: Szymborski’s argument for playing Matt Kemp at shortstop. And: a status update on the forthcoming projections for 2019.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 49 min play time.)

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Jeff Levering has had a bird’s-eye view of bull-penning at its best. Perched alongside Bob Uecker in the Milwaukee Brewers radio booth, he’s gotten to watch Craig Counsell adroitly shuttle relievers in and out of games, most notably since the calendar turned to October. One thing he hasn’t seen — at least not often — is starters going deep into games. Brewers starters threw just 847 innings in the regular season, the fewest among teams that advanced beyond the Wild Card round.

A few months ago I asked Levering if he could share any observations, and/or opinions, on the current state of the game. He brought up pitcher usage.

“Baseball is trending to specialization, especially with how bullpens are being constructed,” said Levering. “You’re asking starting pitchers to give you five or six innings. You don’t have many guys like Max Scherzer where you can say, ‘All right, he’s going to give us seven or eight innings today, no matter what.’”

Levering proceeded to mention last winter’s free-agent environment. Rather than being priorities, as they had been in the past, starting pitchers were almost an afterthought. Lucrative offers were neither plentiful nor quickly-coming. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Mike Clevinger, Will Harris, and Brandon Workman— on how they learned and developed their curveballs.

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Mike Clevinger, Indians

“My curveball was pretty inconsistent in the past. I would get kind of slurvy with it — it was sloppy the past couple of years — but I’ve tightened it up. It’s more 12-6 now. I’ve been able to find a more consistent up-to-down break.

“There was a lot of process involved. It literally started as… it was almost like we were trying to catch a bass, just flipping it with a tight wrist. A reversed stance — my right foot forward, almost like a pickoff — and just flipping it, flipping it. We were kind of getting the feel for that, coming down and pulling out in front.

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A night after he was pilloried, both here and elsewhere, for sticking with his starting pitcher for too long, Yankees manager Aaron Boone did it again — this time in an elimination game. It wasn’t quite as egregious, and it didn’t turn the contest into a blowout, but the rookie skipper was short on urgency with his team’s season on the line, and it cost them. The Red Sox beat the Yankees 4-3 in Game Four of the AL Division Series (box), closing out the series on their rivals’ home field and moving on to the ALCS for the first time since 2013.

With the Yankees down two games to one in the Division Series, Boone started CC Sabathia, who at 38 years old is long on experience and guile but short on stamina. Of the 128 pitchers who threw at least 100 innings as a starter this season, the big man’s 5.28 innings per turn ranked 102nd. It didn’t prevent him from turning in a valuable season: over the course of 153 innings, he delivered a 3.65 ERA, 4.16 FIP, and 2.5 WAR, the last mark 0.6 wins higher than last year in a similarly sized body of work (148.2 innings). Some credit for that is due to Boone for limiting Sabathia’s exposure the third time through the order (when his wOBA allowed jumps to .391), and some to the pitcher himself, for accepting his role and his limitations.

On Tuesday night, against a lineup stacked with righties — Ian Kinsler and Eduardo Nunez were back at second and third bases, respectively, in place of Game Three heroes Brock Holt and Rafael Devers, while Steven Pearce subbed again for Mitch Moreland at first base — Sabathia wobbled through the first inning on 20 pitches. After retiring the first two hitters, he loaded the bases with two singles and a walk before escaping via a towering Kinsler fly ball that left fielder Brett Gardner ran down near the foul line. He prolonged his second inning with a two-out walk of Christian Vazquez, the No. 9 hitter and a guy who posted a 42 wRC+ in the regular season. That required him to face leadoff hitter Mookie Betts again. On the 15th pitch of the inning, though, Betts hit a routine fly to right for the third out.

Sabathia was in trouble from the outset of the third, hitting Andrew Benintendi with a pitch and then yielding a single to Pearce that sent Benintendi to third; he soon came home on a J.D. Martinez sacrifice fly, the game’s first run. Sabathia induced Xander Bogaerts to ground out, but by this point had thrown another 16 pitches, running his count to 51. Boone, with a rested set of A-listers (save for Chad Green, who threw 29 pitches on Monday night, at a point well after any of them mattered), had finally gotten David Robertson up in the bullpen — the kind of power arm sorely needed in mid-inning on Monday night, but one who never got the call.

Kinsler smoked a double (exit velocity 106.2 mph) over Gardner’s head in left field, scoring Pearce and putting the Red Sox up by a score of 2-0.

Boone stayed put.

Nunez hit an RBI single to right, pushing the tally to 3-0.

Boone stayed put.

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Brock Holt had a fun night on Tuesday, recording four hits in the Red Sox’ commanding 16-1 victory over the Yankees in Game Three of the ALDS. Even more notable than the number of hits recorded by Holt was the type. He followed a fourth-inning single with a fourth-inning triple with an eighth-inning double with a ninth-inning home run. Put all those together and the result is the first cycle in postseason history.

A cycle obviously isn’t the most potent collection of four hits a batter can record. Replacing the single with a double would technically represent a “better” night at the plate. Replacing all the hits with four home runs wouldn’t be so bad, either. A cycle is fun, though. It’s impressive for its offensive impact and unusual for the distribution of hit types.

Brock Holt’s cycle, specifically, occurred in a blowout, so most of the component hits had little bearing on the Red Sox’ win. We’ll get to that in a bit. First, let’s take a look at why there have been no playoff cycles before this one.

For baseball to facilitate 100 years of postseason play without producing a single cycle seems odd. Consider, though, that the modern MLB season features around 2,400 games and that those 2,400 games have yielded only about three cycles per season this decade (and fewer in earlier eras). Meanwhile, there have been only about 1,500 playoff games. In other words, using historical averages, there’s still about a one-in-three chance of no cycles occurring across the entire swath of postseason history. Limiting the calculus to playoff games since 2010 — or roughly 300 postseason contests — there’s a two-in-three chance of zero cycles.

While Holt’s was the first official cycle, history has produced a number of close calls. A few searches of Baseball-Reference’s Play Index reveals 152 player games in which a batter finished one hit short of the cycle. Those hits are broken down as follows:

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