With the postponement of Wednesday’s scheduled ALCS Game 4, the de-juiced baseball remained a hot topic of discussion, particularly in New York, where the Yankees appeared to catch a game-changing bad break on Didi Gregorius‘ fifth-inning fly ball that instead of becoming a three-run homer that would have swung the lead in their favor, was caught at the warning track. Players and managers are talking about it, fans are talking about it, analysts are talking about it — here in New York City, even on the 10 pm local news. Like it or not, it’s an issue that won’t go away, in part because of MLB’s stubborn insistence that nothing has changed, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, as well as the reality that the league actually owns about 25% of Rawlings, the manufacturer of the baseball (the other 75% is owned by Seidler Equity Partners, founded by Peter Seidler, the leading investor of the Padres). While none of this invalidates what the players on the field are accomplishing, everybody is suddenly playing or watching a very different game than we’d grown accustomed to during the regular season.

On Saturday, our own Craig Edwards reported that Cardinals manager Mike Shildt said that his team’s analytical department had noted that fly balls are traveling four-and-a-half feet less far than normal. ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported on Wednesday that officials from two unnamed teams (quite possibly those of the Astros and Yankees, since Passan was reporting from New York) “concurred that whatever batch of balls has been used during October is not performing the way the ones in the regular-season did.”

The change concerns the drag on the baseball, which according to the work of Baseball Prospectus’ Rob Arthur has increased sharply relative to the regular season, strongly suggesting that different balls are being used. Arthur estimated that 50% more homers would have been hit if the regular season ball were being used. On Thursday, Arthur published a new piece showing that the postseason baseballs are also affecting pitchers, producing slightly less vertical break (by about 0.4 inches) on curveballs, and that “Sliders are cutting across the zone a little less; sinkers staying a little more buoyant… [The changes] all seem to hover on the border between just large enough that baseball’s tracking system can detect them and just small enough that a major-league hitter probably wouldn’t care.” Read the rest of this entry »

If Masahiro Tanaka has a signature pitch, it’s his slider. When he first came over from Japan in 2014, nearly half of his strikeouts came on the splitter despite throwing it only a quarter of the time. In his first three seasons in the majors, Tanaka threw his splitter more often than any other pitch and batters put up a feeble 37 wRC+ against it, while whiffing on the pitch 19% of the time. But in 2017, Tanaka used his slider more often than the splitter. In 2018, that trend continued; he got better results from his slider than he did with the splitter. This season the disparity in usage and effectiveness grew. Tanaka struggled with his splitter due to changes in the baseball, but even after re-configuring the splitter in July, his slider has remained his best pitch.

Against the Astros in Game 1 of the ALCS, Tanaka got eight swings and misses. Every single whiff came on the slider. Here’s how Tanaka’s usage of his slider has compared to that of his splitter this season:

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The Yankees and Astros both won over 100 games in the regular season but nobody beats Mother Nature. When a rainstorm causes cool terms like “bomb cyclone” or “explosive cyclogenesis” to be bandied about, you know you’re not expecting a light drizzle. Yankee Stadium is currently dry, but with a system the size of the mid-Atlantic barreling up the coast, it didn’t make sense for MLB to pretend that tonight’s ALCS Game 4 was going to take place. Just look at the radar, courtesy of the National Weather Service:

Yikes. The rain provides the Yankees and Astros with an extra off-day now at the expense of losing an off-day between a possible Game 5 and Game 6. This isn’t a big deal for the hitters, but it will result in some revised pitching plans. In a five-game divisional series, teams can generally muddle through with a three-man rotation. Due to the 2-2-1 format, no team plays on three consecutive days, and while the Game 1 starter would have to pitch Game 4 on short rest, the Game 2 starter can pitch in a possible rubber match on normal rest. This extra rest gives teams the flexibility to either stretch their best three starters or, as the Nationals demonstrated, use starting pitchers in relief more aggressively.

But short of baseball going to some kind of impractical 2-2-1-1-1 format, that doesn’t quite work in a seven-game series. So unless you’re going to have your entire rotation do it 1930-style, you’ll need to use a fourth starter. That isn’t an ideal situation for either the Yankees or the Astros. From a pure projection standpoint, it’s actually doesn’t move the probabilities. The Astros get an immediate benefit in that they avoid a Bullpen vs. Bullpen Game 4; ZiPS takes bullpen depth into consideration and Yankees enjoy a significant projected edge in any such bullpen game. Before the rainout, ZiPS projected the Yankees to have a 56%-44% edge in a home bullpen duel, so it’s a nice game to delay if you’re Houston.

The problem you run into with this model is that the rainout doesn’t really add an extra day of rest, it simply moves it. Since there are only two days of rest for a Game 4 starter to pitch in Game 7 now, both teams end up repeating the dilemma of either using a fourth starter — particularly problematic for the Astros — or going with a bullpen game. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I wrote about some intentional walk decisions that merited further scrutiny. One of them was pretty bad and one of them was a little bad, but both managers advanced to the NLCS — and now, like clockwork, we have more intentional walk decisions to analyze. Playoff baseball is predictable like that, even as it’s unpredictable in other ways.

Let’s take these two chronologically. The Yankees had their backs against the wall, down 2-0 against Gerrit Cole to start the seventh. It got worse quickly, with two of the first three runners reaching base. That gets us to our situation; second and third, one out, and Alex Bregman at the plate facing Adam Ottavino. Aaron Boone put up four fingers; he chose to face Yuli Gurriel rather than Bregman.

The surface level math on this one doesn’t look that bad for Boone. The trail runner here simply doesn’t matter that much; if Bregman scores, it’s 5-0, and three innings to score five runs is a tall task against Gerrit Cole and the best relievers the Astros can muster. To approximate the lower run-scoring environment they’re facing, I lowered the run environment in our WPA Inquirer to 4.5. The decision hardly hurt the Yankees; their odds of winning fell from 12.3% before the walk to 12.0% afterwards.

When an intentional walk only costs 0.3% of win expectancy when ignoring batters, it’s more often a good one, and a cursory look at Bregman and Gurriel’s wOBA agrees with that. That doesn’t even add in platoon splits; Gurriel has a reverse split in his major league career, and even regressing it back to the mean leaves him only 3% better against lefties than righties. Bregman, meanwhile, clocks in at 6.8% better against lefties than righties post-regression.

Put that all together, and Gurriel’s projected wOBA against Britton (accounting for Britton’s own splits) comes out to .314, while Bregman’s is .372. Given that the Yankees gave up so little win expectancy by putting Bregman on, the back-of-the-envelope math makes the decision obvious. The team would need to face a batter who projected to be at least 31 points of wOBA worse than Bregman to make the decision worth it, and Gurriel is 58 points worse. Good intentional walk! Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK — The Yankees had their chances against Gerrit Cole on Tuesday afternoon, golden opportunities of the type few if any of the 29-year-old righty’s opponents saw this season — the type that can haunt a team if it fails to convert them. The Yankees could not, stranding nine baserunners through the first five innings and going 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position. Though less dominant than usual, the Astros’ co-ace wriggled out of jam after jam, and may have gotten the benefit of a de-juiced baseball when a fifth-inning Didi Gregorius drive that appeared destined to become a Yankee Stadium short porch special — a potential three-run homer that would have erased Houston’s 2-0 lead — died at the wall in right fielder Josh Reddick’s glove. Meanwhile, Reddick and José Altuve each homered off starter Luis Severino, helping to power the Astros to a 4-1 victory in Game 3 of the ALCS, giving them a two games to one lead.

As noted in my piece on Cole, throughout his otherwise incredible season, he was at his most vulnerable in the first inning, allowing 16 runs in 33 starts, a rate of 4.36 per nine innings. As the shadows stretched across the diamond in the Bronx, the Yankees were poised to add to that litany when leadoff hitter DJ LeMahieu singled up the middle on Cole’s fifth pitch, and Aaron Judge followed with a shift-beating single to right field. Through the entire season, Cole had given up just seven hits before recording his first out, and only once (April 20 against the Rangers) allowed back-to-back hits to start a game. Here he recovered to retire Brett Gardner on a routine fly ball and Edwin Encarnación on a popup, then walked Gleyber Torres on four pitches, producing just the ninth bases-loaded situation he faced all year. His first-pitch curve to Gregorius, however, produced a harmless groundout.

The Yankees had another chance in the second inning, when with two outs, Aaron Hicks — starting his first game since August 3 after suffering a right flexor strain that was believed to be season-ending — battled his way to a 10-pitch walk, and LeMahieu smacked the next pitch up the middle for a single. Cole escaped by fooling Judge with a mix of curves and sliders, striking the big slugger out chasing one of the latter, low and away. Eleven batters into his start, the pitcher who punched out 326 hitters this year finally recorded his first K of the day.

“I actually think the beginning of the game he had a hard time finding his stuff and finding his tempo, his rhythm,” said manager A.J. Hinch afterwards. “He was still getting through his outing, made some really big pitches, had some pressure on him.” Read the rest of this entry »

It’s amazing how quickly a baseball game that has gone on for four hours and forty-nine minutes can end. On the first pitch of the bottom of the 11th inning — before the broadcast had even gotten a chance to fully cut away from its commercial break housekeeping — Carlos Correa ended Sunday night’s epic affair with a single swing.

It was a no-doubter right off the bat, and as Correa watched it fly, he pulled off one of the best postseason home-run celebrations we’ve yet seen. He walked down the line, bat parallel to the ground in his hand, before casting it aside; he cocked a hand to his ear, waiting for the cheers, daring any disapproval. Then, taking off down the bases, he pointed a finger upward, to all the fans leaping from their seats, before shooting his batting helmet into the waiting arms of his teammates, gathered around home plate to greet him.

One has to go on quite a journey to reach a point of such inspired triumph, and Game 2 certainly provided such a journey. Far from the one-sidedness of Game 1, Game 2 saw the Yankees and the Astros exchanging narrow leads before spending five innings knotted in a 2-2 tie. While the Yankees’ bats and the individual performance of Masahiro Tanaka shared the spotlight in Game 1, it was pitching on both sides that took center stage for most of Game 2 — though the two teams constructed their dominant performances in rather different ways.

In the early going, the game looked like it could easily get out of hand for the Yankees. Starter James Paxton walked George Springer to lead off the bottom of the first, which, unfortunately for him, turned out to be a harbinger of command issues to come. Paxton never seemed comfortable; there was some speculation that he was tipping pitches, or that the Astros were stealing signs. Whatever the cause, it didn’t take long for the Astros to jump on him. A single from Alex Bregman, a walk from Yordan Alvarez, and a double from Correa in the bottom of the second gave the Astros an early 1-0 lead. After Michael Brantley and José Altuve reached on back-to-back singles with one out in the bottom of the third, Aaron Boone went to his bullpen. Any hope of length out of Paxton was dashed early. Read the rest of this entry »

In a matchup between the two best lineups in baseball, you don’t expect to see a pitching duel. In a matchup between the team with the best starting rotation in baseball and the team with the best bullpen in baseball, you don’t expect to see many runs scored. This series was hard to characterize before it started, but last night’s Game 1 of the ALCS between the Astros and the Yankees felt neither like a pitching duel nor a shootout; it felt like a regular season game between two mismatched opponents, the last thing we expected from this much-anticipated series.

Soon enough, the games will be dominated by high velocity and overpowering four-seam fastballs. Justin Verlander and James Paxton face off today, followed by Gerrit Cole and Luis Severino. The flames the broadcast shows on the score bug for the fastest fastballs will get a workout. But yesterday, we got the kitchen sink; Zack Greinke, who sometimes throws his fastball more slowly than his changeup, took on Masahiro Tanaka, who pitches off of his slider and threw the fifth-lowest rate of fastballs among all starters.

Tanaka stuck with the blueprint that has served him well throughout his time in the majors; an even split of sliders, splitters, and fastballs. The slider was on point all night, and it’s a good thing; all eight of the swinging strikes he generated came on sliders, and it also got more called strikes than any other pitch.

Now, eight swinging strikes isn’t an overpowering amount; Tanaka struck out only four batters. Even with the deadened postseason baseball, allowing that much contact is no way to live for a pitcher. How did Tanaka make it work? He controlled the count to great effect. He allowed 13 balls in play, and exactly one of them came with the batter ahead in the count (a pop up off the bat of Kyle Tucker). Read the rest of this entry »

While the Astros had to fight off the Rays in Game 5 on Thursday, the Yankees have been waiting around since Monday after finishing off a sweep of the Twins. This well-rested roster also gets back center fielder Aaron Hicks, who has been on the Injured List since early August, and CC Sabathia, who will be available out of the bullpen after being left off of the Division Series roster. Luke Voit and Tyler Wade are the odd men out.

Here’s how every member of the Yankees’ 2019 ALCS roster was originally acquired. The team’s full RosterResource Depth Chart and Payroll pages are also available as a resource.

Homegrown (5)

• Brett Gardner, OF: Drafted Third Round 2005
• Austin Romine, C: Drafted Second Round 2007
• Gary Sánchez, C: Amateur Free Agent (Dominican Republic) July 2009
• Luis Severino, SP: Amateur Free Agent (Dominican Republic) December 2011
• Aaron Judge, OF: Drafted First Round (32) 2013

Total WAR: 11.9 Read the rest of this entry »

After two very different Division Series, the two strongest teams in the AL by win totals and run differentials will meet in the ALCS. The Yankees (103-59) won just two games more than the Twins during the regular season, and were outhomered by one, yet they continued their post-millennial postseason dominance of Minnesota, beating them in a Division Series for the fifth time in the past 17 seasons, outscoring them by a combined total of 23-7 and producing the round’s only sweep. The Astros (107-55) looked as though they might sweep of the Rays as well after Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole produced two of the postseason’s most stifling performances to date, yet they needed the full five games to advance thanks to some strong pitching by the Rays, who kept most of the Astros’ big bats at bay.

This series is a real heavyweight bout. It’s the fifth time that two 100-win teams have matched up in a postseason series during the Wild Card era, all of which have taken place within the past three years: the 2017 World Series between the Astros (101-61) and Dodgers (104-58), the 2018 Division Series between the Red Sox (108-54) and Yankees (100-62), the subsequent ALCS matchup between those Red Sox and the Astros (103-59), and the aforementioned Yankees-Twins ALDS this year. In terms of combined wins by the two teams, this pairing is second only to last year’s Red Sox-Astros ALCS. Additionally, of course, this is a rematch of the 2017 ALCS, which was won by the Astros in a seven-game series during which home teams went undefeated. Houston has home-field advantage this time around as well, though they’re the one team from this pair who has yet to win a postseason game on the road. The series opens in Houston on Saturday, October 12, at 8 pm. Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, another Yankees-Twins playoff series. A retelling of a familiar tale. A classic first-round matchup simmering with revenge narratives. A chance for the Twins to change the course of — oh.

It’s over already.

While both NLDS series proceeded to white-knuckle Game 5’s, and the Rays forced the Astros to contemplate elimination, over in Minnesota, the Twins were quietly dispatched by the Yankees in exactly the way pretty much everyone feared that they would be.

This was a brutal tradition of the 2000s, in which the little-guy Twins would arrive, fresh from contention, and the Yankees, cementing their legacy as the underdog-kicking playoff behemoths, would squash them with elite talent and the favor of some twisted gods. Yet another Twins postseason defeat is behind us, and we’re left with more questions than answers. These games have historically been comprised of bummers, boners, and brims pulled low. Today is the anniversary of one of them, and we’re going to examine it.

For Twins fans, this story needs no retelling, but unfortunately, we must relate the tragic set dressing: The Twins dropped Game 1 of the 2009 ALDS 7-2, but had singled together a 3-1 lead late in Game 2. Alex Rodriguez shattered the delicate balance with a two-run shot off All-Star Twins closer Joe Nathan to tie it up. The game went into extras, and in the top of the 11th, Joe Mauer led off, and this happened:

On the one hand, this is baseball: It is nothing without its X-factors. Its chaos. Its precious human element. On the other, you can tell this is a conspiracy because of how grainy the footage is, or at least reasonably speculate. Read the rest of this entry »