Author Archive: Davy Andrews

Whether or not you tuned in for Game 3 of the NLCS between the Brewers and the Dodgers, you surely know by now that the highlight of the game belonged to Jake Bauers. After working a back-breaking 12-pitch walk that hastened Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s early departure from Game 2, Bauers put the Brewers ahead with a homer in the seventh inning on the 11th pitch he saw from Blake Snell. Ben Clemens wrote about it in his game story. Michael Baumann wrote about it in his article about the perils of leaving a starter (particularly this starter) in too long. Over at Brewer Fanatic, Matthew Trueblood wrote about both it and the also-impressive walk that Andrew Vaughn worked immediately beforehand. This is the kind of of moment that deserves to be enjoyed from as many angles as possible. As such, what follows is a pitch-by-pitch breakdown of the at-bat, diving into the intention and execution behind each pitch.

Pitch 1: Slider, Called Strike, 0-1

That may look like a get-me-over slider, and that Snell assumed Bauers would be taking on the first pitch because he’d just walked the previous batter, but it’s not. In his first plate appearance, Snell had started Bauers with a four-seamer and Bauers had fouled it off. In his second, he’d thrown a first-pitch slider just below the zone, and Bauers had whiffed. He’d swung at the first pitch in both his previous times up, and as you can see, he wasn’t up there looking to take. He fired his hips and had to check his swing. In fact, although Bauers had one of the lower swing rates in the league this season, his 33% swing rate on the first pitch was actually slightly above the league average.

Look at Will Smith’s glove as Snell delivers the ball. He’s got it all the way down on the ground. The plan was to repeat the first pitch from the second plate appearance, getting Bauers to chase another low slider for a whiff or maybe even hit a double-play ball. Instead, Snell missed — badly. The ball ended up right over the heart of the plate. This is a meatball, and Bauers failed to make Snell pay for it because he was focused on getting a fastball. “I was looking for a fastball, and I didn’t want to miss it,” he said after the game. “I said I’ll adjust to anything else, but get a heater, don’t miss it.” That’s certainly a reasonable approach, seeing as Snell throws his fastball half the time, and he’d already started Bauers with one earlier in the game. But it cost Bauers a chance at unloading on a good pitch and put him behind in the count.

Pitch 2: Changeup, Ball, 1-1

You can understand why Snell threw a changeup here. Bauers had tipped his hand with that check swing. He was way in front of that slider because he was looking fastball. You don’t want to give him a fastball, and you don’t want to give him two sliders in a row (especially because the last one ended up in murder-me territory). You want to throw something that starts out looking like a fastball, which eliminates the curveball. The changeup is all that’s left, but let’s be clear about how unusual that is. Snell throws his changeup to lefties just 3% of the time, and never in this situation. Over the past 10 seasons, he’d thrown just one 0-1 changeup to a lefty in the regular season. One. In 10 years. But he had also thrown one just 10 days earlier, to Drake Baldwin in Game 2 of the NLDS. The pressure of the playoffs can change even the most deeply ingrained tendencies.

Once again, Snell missed badly. The pitch was supposed to start out a strike and then drop below the zone, but it started too low and ended up bouncing. It never looked like a strike, and Bauers isn’t the kind of guy to chase on 0-1. This year, 206 batters saw at least 200 0-1 pitches. Among them, Bauers’ 35% swing rate ranked 200th.

Pitch 3: Fastball, Ball, 2-1

If we were talking about any other pitcher, you’d say this was supposed to be a get-me-over fastball, an attempt to get back on track after failing to execute two pitches in a row. But Blake Snell is not the kind of pitcher who lives up and chucks a pitch down the middle. Smith’s target was at the top of the zone. Snell had been racking up chases up above the zone for either whiffs or fouls all night, and he wanted another one. It sure looks like Snell yanked this one to his glove side because he was trying to put some mustard on it to make sure he blew it by Bauers. Instead, it was another bad miss and another easy take. This was a remarkable at-bat from Bauers, and it started out with him in an 0-1 hole against one of the best pitchers in the game, but it also started with Snell missing badly on the first three pitches.

Pitch 4: Changeup, Foul, 2-2

Now this is a gutsy pitch. You just walked someone. You’re behind 2-1 because you failed to execute your last three pitches. Why not aim another left-on-left changeup right at the very center of home plate, and just hope that it finishes with enough arm-side run to make it to the edge? If it doesn’t break as much as usual, or if you miss to your glove side, then it’ll just kind of sit there out over the plate begging to be pounded.

Incidentally, we should probably mention Statcast’s run values per 100 pitches. Did you know that when he saw left-on-left offspeed pitches this season, Bauers’ run value was 1.5, and the only lefties with a higher mark (minimum 25 pitches) were Jac Caglianone, Juan Soto, Yordan Alvarez, Shohei Ohtani, Gunnar Henderson, Pete Crow-Armstrong, and James Wood? Sort of sounds like a list of the very best left-handed hitters on the planet, right?

Luckily for Snell, this pitch was perfect. It clipped the very edge of the zone, and Bauers, still looking fastball, was way out ahead of it. He just managed to hold back long enough to nick it. Smith extended the catcher’s mitt toward his pitcher to congratulate him on a perfect pitch. That made it 2-2, and under normal circumstances, that would be a big deal. The league as a whole had a wRC+ of 70 from 2-2 onward this season. Had Snell missed the zone yet again, he’d be 3-1, when the league wRC+ was 214.

Bauers himself ran a wRC+ of 87 after reaching a 2-2 count. Oddly, though, he was up at 127 after getting to 2-2 against lefties, because he walked 24% of the time, the second-highest rate in baseball. Considering Snell’s above-average walk rate and Bauers’ unusual ability to draw a walk in this exact situation, a walk seemed very likely.

Pitch 5: Slider, Foul, 2-2 (again)

This was the slider Snell meant to throw on the first pitch. It was maybe an inch or two higher than he would’ve liked – if he got it down a little bit more, maybe Bauers would’ve missed it entirely rather than fouling it off – but Bauers was again way out in front and on top of it. Look at the way the ball comes off the bat, straight down and hooked so hard that bounces in the left-handed hitter’s batter’s box. That’s not something you see every day. Snell had thrown three pitches in the strike zone, and Bauers was way out in front on all three of them.

Pitch 6: Curveball, Foul, 2-2 (again again)

Oh right, Snell has a curveball. It was his second-best pitch this season, but this was just the second one he’d thrown Bauers all game, because Bauers was one of the best left-on-left curveball hitters in baseball this season. He ran a .458 wOBA against them and had just an 11% whiff rate. Most of the time, he took them for balls. But what else was Snell going to do? The curve is his best non-fastball pitch. He couldn’t seem to get a whiff on the slider, and he’d already risked two changeups to a guy who crushes them. The curveball was the only thing left that could surprise Bauers, and surprise him it did. He took a late, defensive hack, and met the pitch just 20 inches in front of his center of mass. He threw his mechanics out of whack in order to do so, and ended up with another odd foul, chopping it straight down only to bounce back up into his torso as he nearly fell backwards out of the box.

Here, we should stop and note something. This was Bauers’ third foul of the at-bat, and he would go on to foul off three more. In one sense, it shouldn’t be surprising that he has worked some impressive long at-bats in this series. He averaged just under 4.2 pitchers per plate appearances in 2026. Of the 205 players with at least 400 plate appearances, that ranked 24th, putting him in the 88th percentile. However, he didn’t get all the way up there because he’s a wizard at extending plate appearances. To do that, you need to be great at fouling off two-strike pitches and Bauers is actually well below average in that respect. He fouled off 20% of the two-strike pitches he swung at this year, which put him in just the 13th percentile. His plate appearances are long simply because he’s very passive. His 41% swing rate landed in just the sixth percentile. That’s all it takes, people. If you want to be one of the best hitters in baseball at working a count, just don’t swing much. Sometimes it’s a very simple game.

Pitch 7: Fastball, Ball, 3-2

Snell had been busting Bauers inside with fastballs all night. Five of the eight pitches he saw in his first two plate appearances were four-seamers, and he’d flied out and struck out. Bauers was ahead on soft stuff, but not so far ahead that he was whiffing entirely. Perhaps that meant that he was somewhere in between, and after seeing soft stuff for three straight pitches and five of the last six, it would be possible to blow one by him.

But Snell again missed his spot, this time to the arm side. Smith’s target was up again, but Snell was off the plate inside. It wasn’t a comfortable take for Bauers, who was finally seeing the pitch he’d been looking for, but it wasn’t easy either.

Pitch 8: Fastball, Foul, 3-2

There it is. That’s the elevated fastball Snell had been trying to throw. Nice and tempting, impossible to lay off. And at 98.2 mph, it was harder than the first two and with more induced rise than Snell’s average four-seamer. But Bauers wasn’t in between after all. With pinch-runner Christian Yelich breaking for second in the background, he still managed to get a piece of it. It was very high, and very definitely ball four. That’s a pitch designed to rack up whiffs. It was located 3.82 feet off the ground. This year, pitches that came in between 98 and 99 mph and between 3.8 and 4.0 feet had a 53% whiff rate. Maybe if he hadn’t just seen a fastball, Bauers would have been just that little bit farther behind, and Snell would’ve gotten the strikeout.

Perhaps we should acknowledge, though, just how good Bauers was against left-on-left four-seamers this season. He put up a .521 wOBA against them, second only to Ben Rice. His four home runs against them were tied for second. Snell was truly going strength against strength here.

Pitch 9: Changeup, Foul, 3-2 (again)

After throwing two fastballs in a row, and with Bauers clearly hunting velocity, Snell surely thought he’d set Bauers up so that he’d be out ahead of something soft. This changeup was much closer to where he wanted it, just an inch or so from the bottom of the zone. This time, though, Bauers didn’t look like he had to hold himself back for dear life. He was still very much ahead of the pitch, but by significantly less. You can tell because of the fact that he took a full, healthy hack, and Statcast backs it up; he made contact four inches deeper than he had on the first changeup.

Snell is no stranger to deep counts, but this is where things got scary. Bauers had been ahead of all the soft stuff he’d thrown at him. He took a defensive hack at that 2-2 curveball to stay alive. But then he got a piece of that absurdly high fastball, and on the very next pitch, a changeup down (though not quite as down as Snell would’ve liked it), he looked more comfortable. Look at the way he finishes his swing with a hop. This is what people mean when they say someone looks hitterish. That’s concerning.

Pitch 10: Slider, Foul, 3-2 (again again)

And we’re now escalating from concern to alarm. For Snell, it probably seemed like there was no right pitch to throw at this point. Even when he chased a fastball at his eyes, Bauers (like Vaughn before him) got a piece and stayed alive. He looked all too comfortable against the changeup, and how many left-on-left changeups can you really throw in one plate appearance? Until the playoffs, Snell had only once thrown more than one left-on-left changeup in a single game. The curveball might have made sense, but it also offered the least difference from the previous pitch in terms of velocity and movement profile. Snell had only followed a changeup with a curveball once all game, and it was to Vaughn in the previous plate appearance. The slider was the pitch Bauers had seen least recently, and sometimes it might just be that simple.

Regardless of the reasoning behind it, the pitch was nearly catastrophic. It was meant for the outside corner, and instead it ended up belt high out over the plate. Here’s a heat map that shows Bauers’ isolated power when he put the ball in play this season.

All the red and pink are up and out over the plate, right where this pitch was located. And it wasn’t just about the location. The location was a byproduct of the fact that this pitch was a hanger. Snell’s average slider this year had 7.2 inches of induced rise and 3.7 inches of glove-side break. This pitch had 9.4 inches of rise and 0.5 inches of horizontal break. It didn’t drop enough, and it basically didn’t slide at all. Snell hanged it and Bauers banged 305 feet — just foul. Whichever person at Dodger Stadium was caught on mic screaming for their life as this ball zoomed toward the foul pole was exactly right.

Pitch 11: Fastball, Home Run

Clearly, Snell wasn’t going back to the slider. At a certain point, the game theory starts to get too complicated to track. Sometimes you need to just throw your best pitch. Man cannot live on breakers alone. Snell threw Bauers his best pitch, and once again he couldn’t locate it. It ended up in almost exactly the same spot as the first pitch of the at-bat, and you should take that very literally. Pythagoras tells us that the ball crossed the plate a mere 0.87 inches closer to the very center of the zone than that first meatball. Bauers, who had been fighting to stay ready for the fastball throughout the entire at-bat, finally got one to hit. This was the ninth fastball Snell had thrown Bauers on the night. You don’t need to squint to see what’s different about it.

Aside from that one overthrown four-seamer earlier in the at-bat, every single one of those fastballs had been buried inside. Snell threw his second meatball of the at-bat, and Bauers was ready to dig in.

This was truly an impressive at-bat. Although Snell, at the end of a brilliant performance, failed to execute several of his pitches, most of his misses were either well out of the zone or within an inch or two of the edge. He threw Bauers every pitch he had, even the changeup. He changed speeds and eye levels. Across 11 pitches, he only threw the same pitch in a row once, and he only repeated the same two-pitch sequence twice. Bauers looked more and more comfortable as the at-bat went on, and when Snell missed over the fat part of the plate, he crushed the ball, twice. He went from taking defensive hacks to stay alive to punishing mistakes. It would be hard to ask for much more on an October evening.

When you manage a big league ballclub, life is unfair. You’re always one bad season, maybe just one really bad month, from getting fired. Even when you’re doing a good job, a vocal contingent of your fellow citizens is likely still agitating for your ouster, mostly because they just kind of like the way they sound when they’re agitating for someone to lose their livelihood. Writers you’ve known for years will one day fire up their laptops and pen a thousand words about why you no longer have what it takes. And on top of all that unrelenting judgment, whenever you’re out there doing your job during the game, a camera is trained directly on your face. Any time you react to what you see, you’re likely to wind up on television, often in slow motion, slamming your hand in frustration or launching an F-bomb.

For that reason, managers tend to at least try to maintain a stoic front. Some are better than others, but I’ve always enjoyed watching Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy in particular. He seems to feel the game more than most managers. He’s constantly checking his notes, or scribbling more notes, or retreating a few steps into the tunnel that feeds into the dugout to think things through. Also, he tends to snack a lot. But on Monday night, as the Brewers took care of business against the Dodgers in Game 2 of the NLCS, I noticed that one emotion seemed to show as clear as day on Murphy’s face every time the camera found him. All night, it seemed to me, no matter how well things were going on the field, Murphy looked pissed off. Read the rest of this entry »

It wasn’t how manager Stephen Vogt drew it up, but after stealing Game 1 in St. Petersburg, the Guardians have won four in row and they now find themselves in the driver’s seat of the ALCS. On paper — on pretty much any surface you can think of — the Rays held the advantage coming into the series. They were the better team all season long. They dominated the Yankees in the ALDS, while the Guardians nearly fell to the White Sox. They were rested, while the Guardians had completely worn down their pitching. They had fearsome bats, and they had their rotation lined up the way they liked it.

Drew Rasmussen was coming off one of the most dominant playoff starts we’ve ever seen, throwing eight scoreless innings against the Yankees in Game 1 of the ALDS while allowing just one hit and striking out 10. What’s more, the Rays staked him to an early lead against Cleveland. But these Guardians just don’t seem to quit. After coming back from two games down in the ALDS, the Guardians came back from two runs down to beat the Rays on Monday. Then they poured it on, scoring in each of the last four innings to earn a 7-3 victory.

From the first pitch of the game, Rasmussen looked much less sharp than he had against the Yankees. His velocity was down compared to his regular season average. In each of the first two innings, he allowed two singles and notched just one whiff. Thanks to some help from his defense – catcher Nick Fortes threw out a stealing José Ramírez in the first and Victor Mesa Jr.’s rocket arm held Nathaniel Lowe to a single on a tailor-made double in the second – he escaped those two frames without surrendering a run. He allowed another single apiece in the third and fourth, but kept the Guardians off the board. His velocity ticked back up, but he didn’t throw a clean inning until the fifth. It would be his only one. Read the rest of this entry »

Pope Leo XIV may not have quite as much pull with The Man Upstairs as Chicago fans had hoped. After obliterating the Astros in the Wild Card Series and jumping out to a 2-0 lead in the ALDS, the White Sox dropped three in a row to end their miracle 2026 season. On the back of a brilliant performance from starter Gavin Williams, the Guardians defeated the White Sox, 2-0, in Game 5. They’ll now head to St. Petersburg to face the Rays on Monday night, making their second ALCS appearance in three years.

So many things about this series were odd. Both managers pulled every lever they could get their hands on. The first four games featured 49 pitchers and just 54 hits. Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt continued the trend in Game 5. He shook up his lineup, sitting catcher Austin Hedges in favor of Patrick Bailey, who homered in Game 4. Angel Martínez, who went 0-for-15 in the first four games of the series, got benched in favor of Petey Halpin, who ran a 66 wRC+ in the regular season. But after all the mixing and matching and overthinking, the rubber match was a genuine, old-fashioned pitcher’s duel. If you’re a fan of gaudy strikeout totals and teardrop curveballs pouring into the strike zone, this was the game for you.

The game also looked like it might be impacted by weather. Rain started falling before first pitch, with the intensity picking up in the bottom of the second. By the third, the television broadcast was cutting to Guardians fans wearing ponchos and the cleat cleaner was getting significant air time. The grounds crew replaced the cleat cleaner after the third, and just like that, the rain calmed down. By the fifth, it had all but stopped. Read the rest of this entry »

Stephanie, you can send it in.

Come on in. Thanks for coming all the way up on short notice, and, uh, sorry about the mess. I really should’ve saved Mr. Splash for later in the day. I’d never seen him fire that water gun in anger before, but he is remarkably accurate. Did you know he was a Green Beret? Anyway, have a seat. I have some difficult news for you.

Oh jeez, I didn’t think about the tail feathers. You can stand, whatever. You can stand.

So as you know, we have been forced to make some pretty substantial cuts. And believe me, it’s the last thing we want to do. We consider everyone who works here family. But there comes a time within any family when you have to identify your least productive family members, cut them out of your life forever, and leave them without any way to support themselves, at which point they’re not family anymore. They’re just strangers who know things about you that you’d rather not become public. Unfortunately, that includes you. Are – are you following any of this?

We’re going to have to let you go.

I realize that you’ve been with us for – wow – coming up on 50 years now, and I want to assure you that we are grateful for everything you have given to the Baltimore Orioles organization. You’ve brought happiness and joy to so many people. Unfortunately, it has been determined that keeping you on staff would be a suboptimal allocation of resources, because according to a report from this latest round of consultants – you know, I think you deserve to know the truth, so let me get my glasses so I can quote this accurately – “Happiness and joy don’t make the cash register go ka-ching.” So really, our hands are tied. Read the rest of this entry »

After cruising through the NLDS with a gentleman’s sweep, the defending-champion Los Angeles Dodgers are headed to the National League Championship Series for the third year in a row. A day after Yoshinobu Yamamoto silenced Atlanta’s bats in Game 3, the Braves and Dodgers ran out the finest Tylers they had to offer, and both pitchers excelled. The difference largely came down to the bullpens. With a bevy of rested options to choose from, Dave Roberts went and got his pitchers at the first sign of trouble. In contrast, Walt Weiss, who ran a bullpen game in Game 2 and needed four innings from his ‘pen in Game 3, stretched his pitchers a bit further than they could manage, and although it took seven innings, he finally paid for it. The Dodgers took the game 4-1 and the series 3-1. They now await the winner of the Brewers/Padres series in the NLCS, but you have to imagine they’re not too worried either way.

If you were the Braves, you might have circled Tyler Glasnow’s start on the postseason calendar. This Dodgers rotation has about as many soft spots as the four horseman of the apocalypse, but Glasnow missed much of the season with back spasms, hadn’t pitched in 13 games, and had underperformed his peripherals in a major way. Since he returned from the IL, Glasow had run an excellent 2.14 FIP because he was striking out nearly 13 batters per nine, but his ERA was an unsightly 4.46. When your other options are Yamamoto, Tarik Skubal, and Blake Snell, you’ll take it.

The Braves manufactured the first run of the game. More specifically, leadoff man Michael Harris II manufactured it almost single-handedly. Glasnow started Harris with a 96-mph fastball right at the top of the zone, and Harris was all over it, shooting a low liner through the right side of the infield at 107 mph. With basestealing guru Antoan Richardson in the first base coaching box, Harris got out to a huge vault lead and easily stole second base two pitches later. He could have had third as well, but he didn’t see Will Smith’s throw continue into center field. Harris made it there eventually, advancing on a Matt Olson groundout. Three pitches later, Glasnow spiked a 1-1 curveball to Ozzie Albies, and Harris didn’t hesitate for a second. He broke as soon as he read the pitch’s downward angle. It bounced well in front of the plate, and Smith did well to block the high bounce, but he couldn’t keep it close. Harris scored easily. With their season on the line, the Braves had a 1-0 lead. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you ever stop and think about how baseball would be different if the ball smelled delicious? Imagine that Major League Baseball, in its never-ending quest to abase itself for sponsorship dollars, forges an innovative partnership with Willy Wonka. In exchange for the title of Official Chocolate of Major League Baseball and the right to outfit the umpires in his trademark violet velvet coats, the eccentric chocolatier uses his quasi-supernatural confectionary gifts to impart one of several dozen mouthwatering aromas to each and every baseball used in a game. This baseball smells like warm chocolate chip cookies, the next one like toasted marshmallows, and the one after that like snozzberries. You get the idea.

Now imagine you’re pitching in the World Series. The umpire reaches into the pouch that dangles from their belt (but awkwardly, because they first have to flap the side of their knee-length velvet coat out of the way), grabs a new pill, and fires it out to you. Millions of eyes are on you. The game is on the line. The season is on the line. You’d still raise the ball up to your face for a whiff before you got settled on the mound, right? You’d have to. Would you really be able to go without smelling the ball? You know it smells amazing, but you don’t know how. If you didn’t sniff the ball, wouldn’t the curiosity about its scent be so distracting as to have a deleterious effect on your ability to pitch? Could you really say you’re putting your all into each pitch if you’re not acquainting yourself as fully as possible with the one and only tool of your trade?

I imagine that sniffing the ball would be something of a flex for infielders. Those who gloved a grounder with time to spare would earn the right to take a healthy waft before firing it over to first. I further conjecture that throwing the ball around the horn after a strikeout would take longer because the outfielders would insist on being included too. More importantly, I imagine that the error rate might tick down just the slightest bit. I’m not saying that major league fielders lack motivation to hold onto the ball as things stand right now, but I hardly think it would hurt to supply them with an additional reason to give it their all. Letting a ball go right through your legs feels terrible, but it probably feels just a little bit worse when you know that along with hurting your team, you’ve fumbled away a transportive sensorial experience. Maybe that would push you to take that extra round of infield practice, to lock in on every single pitch, to lay out for that ball. Anyway, that’s what I was thinking about in the shower this morning as I reflected on the fact that last night, in the biggest game of the season, the New York Yankees played as if the ball smelled like a butt. Read the rest of this entry »

They opened the roof. That’s the first thing you need to know about Game 2 of the NLDS between the Milwaukee Brewers and the San Diego Padres. Nobody had to worry about knocking the ball off a girder or a wire or a catwalk or a dangling chain of sausage links hanging from the ceiling. More importantly, nobody had to worry about the damn thing blowing off in the bottom of the ninth, when Jackson Chourio, one strike away from defeat, turned around a 101-mph Mason Miller fastball for a game-winning, two-RBI single. Against the most formidable reliever in baseball, after trailing since the fourth batter of the game, the Brewers turned water into, well, beer, beating the Padres 4-3 to take a 2-0 lead in the series. It marked the first time in more than a month that the Padres have lost two games in a row.

American Family Field presents quite a beautiful backdrop when it’s open to the sky and full of natural light. It feels vibrant and alive. It’s also not the friendliest place for hitters, who get to shift their worries from the roof to the shadows. The 3:09 PM local start time meant that when Logan Henderson threw the first pitch of the game, his shadow, already much longer than his six-foot-tall frame, stretched all the way across the mound and onto the infield grass toward third base. It twitched and wriggled as he went into his delivery, as if it believed this might be its chance to escape once and for all.

No player was more grateful for the open sky than Ty France, who on Saturday night experienced an even more unfriendly side of American Family Field. As you surely know by now, France flew out to deep left field by way of a ricochet off something or other up there by the roof. There’s some debate as to whether that ball would have both cleared the fence and stayed fair, but regardless, France certainly played like a man with a score to settle. He went 2-for-3 with two RBI singles and a hit-by-pitch, pushing his batting average this postseason to a respectable .487. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember that brief period of time when Tarik Skubal didn’t look like Tarik Skubal? In June, in his first three starts after returning from tiny-needle surgery, Skubal went 0-2 with a 4.96 ERA and a 5.86 FIP. He struck out as many batters as ever, but he just kept giving up home runs, and everyone whispered to their neighbors with alarm, “Maybe the needle wasn’t as tiny as we thought it was. Is it possible that it was just a regular needle with a good publicist?” Well, that period of time was shorter than you might remember. It was, in fact, just 12 days long. Over his final 16 starts, Skubal regained his form. He went 9-3 with a 2.36 ERA and a 2.14 FIP. Only once over that period did he allow even four runs in a start.

With Game 1 of the NLDS in the books, Skubal has extended that unhittable stretch to 17 starts. Under an oppressively hot midday sun in Los Angeles, the Dodgers quashed the Braves by a score of 5-3. The game started out looking like a pitcher’s duel, spent a few innings looking like it might be a rout, and ended up surprisingly close. All eight runs scored by way of the home run. Skubal was brilliant, striking out seven, walking two, and allowing two hits across six innings. At one point he retired 15 Braves in a row. The effort allowed him to lower his career postseason ERA of 2.04 even further. With a 1-0 series lead, the Dodgers have rounded into form, and the two-time defending champs look every bit the juggernaut we expected back in the spring. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the strong side of the bracket. This ain’t no Guardians-White Sox. They may not have been sanctified by the Bishop of Rome, but we’ve got a matchup between the Rays and the Yankees, the two best teams in the American League. Or, at least, the teams with the two best records. The Rays won 98 games, which gave them the best record in the American League by a whopping five-game margin. With 93 wins, the Yankees were the only team within 11 wins of the Rays! But according to both their BaseRuns and Pythagorean records, the Rays played above their heads and the Yankees are the better team.

The Rays won the season series, 7-6, but four of those 13 games took place very recently. In the penultimate series of the regular season, the Yankees took three of four from the Rays in the Bronx. Somehow, this is just the second time the Rays and Yankees have ever faced off in the playoffs. Tampa Bay beat New York, 3-2, in the 2020 ALDS. Gerrit Cole went 1-0 in two starts in the series, and Giancarlo Stanton batted .316 with four home runs. Aaron Judge knocked two homers of his own, but batted just .143. Yankees reliever Ryan Yarbrough pitched pretty well too, but he did so for the Rays. Anyway, that was six years ago in a season that just barely happened. So much for history.

In years past, we’ve hashed out and rehashed the great debate: Would you rather have a bye and risk the rust, or would you rather come off a series win, triumphant but unrested? This conversation has always been at least a little bit silly because it’s always better to take the bye; no one has ever lost a bye. Still, this year, it’s different. The Rays will be coming off five full days of rest. They could be rusty. But the Yankees won’t be tired. They got three days off before the Wild Card series, and they finished stomping a mudhole in the Red Sox on Wednesday night, giving them two full days off to recover. The entire bullpen is rested. Presumptive (read: 100% certain) AL Cy Young Cam Schlittler won’t pitch Game 1, but he’ll be on regular rest for Game 2 and a potential series-deciding Game 5. The offense that everyone was worried about just put up back-to-back nine-spots. Momentum may be a construct, but you’d still rather have it on your side, right? Read the rest of this entry »