That chart doesn’t do this game justice. That was incredible. From Rich Hill to Julio Urias to Chris Heisey to Kenley Jansen throwing 50 pitches… and then the best pitcher of his time finally getting his legendary October moment.

For the Nationals, another tough loss ending a great season, losing by the thinnest of margins to another great team. They should have nothing to be ashamed of, even though this isn’t how they wanted it all to go.

What a spectacle. What a sport. Baseball is really just the best.

Over the coming weeks, Eric Longenhagen will publish brief, informal notes from his looks at the prospects of the Arizona Fall League and, until mid-October, Fall Instructional League. Find previous editions here.

I was in Mesa for the afternoon Fall League game and was walking through the parking lot to the stadium when I saw Chicago RHP Dylan Cease warming up for the Cubs and Angels’ combined advanced-instructional-league team for their game against the Reds. I stayed for Cease’s first inning during which he sat 96-plus and touched 99 three times. His breaking ball was the best I’ve seen it, flashing plus once or twice while always having shape and depth, though its bite was inconsistent. He struck out the side, including T.J. Friedl and Phillip Ervin of Cincinnati.

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Over the coming weeks, Eric Longenhagen will publish brief, informal notes from his looks at the prospects of the Arizona Fall League and, until mid-October, Fall Instructional League.

Athletics OF Lazaro “Lazarito” Armenteros continues to take better at-bats than I anticipated and has an advanced feel for his strike zone. The power is as advertised, too, though he’s extremely vulnerable against breaking balls and is often so far out on his front foot against them that he can’t do anything but foul them off and live to see another pitch. He has a 40 arm, is a 50 runner and a left fielder for me going forward.

Also of note for Oakland yesterday in a Fall Instructional game against the Angels was RHP Abdiel Mendoza, who just turned 18 in September. Mendoza is extremely skinny but loose and quick-armed. His fastball sat in the upper 80s but I think there’s a good bit more coming and I like Mendoza’s athleticism. He’s purely a teenage lottery ticket but one I think who’s worth following.

For the Angels, INF Julio Garcia took the field at shortstop, which is notable because I hadn’t seen him play there for over a year. Garcia, a switch-hitter, came over from the DSL late last summer and looked tremendous at SS, but has spent this year playing a lot of 2B and 3B in deference to, in my opinion, inferior prospects — and also lost a significant amount of playing time to a facial injury. Scouts like the glove, body and bat speed but want to see a more measured approach to hitting, especially from the left side. The Angels’ middle infield is crowded at the lower levels, a group that includes 2016 draftee Nonie Williams, who posted an above-average run time for me yesterday.

Also of note for the Angels yesterday was the cage work of 2016 2nd rounder, OF Brandon Marsh. Marsh has not played in games since signing (neither in the AZL nor during instructional league) but showed above average raw power during a side session yesterday. The body should grow into even more pop. Mid-way through his session Marsh paused to take instruction from a coach behind the cage and immediately made an adjustment on his subsequent swings.

In last night’s Arizona Fall League game between Peoria and Salt River, Mariners OF Tyler O’Neill posted a plus run time for me yesterday and showed off his plus bat speed on several occasions but I thought his at-bats were a little overaggressive. Seattle LHP Luiz Gohara sat 95-97, touched 98 and flashed a plus slider in the mid-80s but struggled with command and, at age 20, is already carrying what looks like 240-plus pounds.

Padres utility prospect Josh VanMeter squared velocity several times and had three hits. Orioles LHP Tanner Scott was touching 99 but not getting as many swings and misses as you might expect from a 95-plus mph heater and his low-90s cutter/slider wasn’t all that effective, either.

After witnessing the lengths to which Madison Bumgarner and the San Francisco Giants went in attacking Yoenis Cespedes‘ weak spot in the National League Wild Card play-in game, the natural progression was to wonder whether they’d do the same for any of the Cubs’ best hitters in the Division Series.

Say, Anthony Rizzo sure has had a miserable postseason so far. After going 0-for-6 in last night’s 13-inning thriller, the Cubs’ first baseman is 0-for-13 this postseason with three strikeouts and no walks, hit by pitches, or even sacrifice flies. Almost makes me wonder if the Giants aren’t exploiting some hole in his swing the way they exploited the whole in Cespedes’ swing.

First, Rizzo’s weakness:

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Position: Miami Marlins Baseball Analytics Intern

Location: Miami
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To be clear, there are two postings here.

Position: Philadelphia Phillies Senior Quantitative Analyst – Baseball Research & Development

Location: Philadelphia
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I know that the game has moved on — as I write this right now, the Nationals are beating the Dodgers 4-3 in the sixth inning of Game 3. This game will turn on so many things, a handful of them yet to happen. But I still want to take you back quickly to the bottom of the first. The Dodgers jumped out to a 1-0 lead, and Yasiel Puig came up with one out and a runner on second. He took three balls, then the count ran full, then Gio Gonzalez attacked Puig inside with a heater.

Let’s slow that down, with a ball-tracker that I will choose to believe in this instance is reliable:

That’s a good general pitch location, and that’s also a good job of receiving by Jose Lobaton. I’ve seen far, far worse pitches thrown in full counts. But that pitch isn’t a strike. That pitch isn’t even a borderline strike. That pitch is a ball, full stop. Gameday provides its own evidence:

From Baseball Savant, here are the 2016 full-count pitches called strikes against right-handed hitters. I’ve highlighted the pitch to Puig in blue.

I’m not writing this because I have a rooting interest — I don’t. And I’m not writing this because I think it’ll cost the Dodgers the game. I’m writing this only because it was an important pitch in an important game, and this was a pretty extremely bad strike call. Not the worst of all time or anything, but bad nevertheless, and this was the whole difference between a walk and a strikeout. Puig didn’t do anything wrong. He did what he was supposed to do exactly right — he took a pitch even in a situation in which he might’ve been feeling aggressive. Puig should’ve been rewarded for his patience, but instead Gonzalez was rewarded for, I don’t know, throwing a ball with precision?

I don’t want to dwell. Again, the game has moved past this, and the first inning has long since been forgotten. But had this pitch been called properly, it would’ve made a win-expectancy difference for the Dodgers of about five percentage points. Another way of thinking about it: the run value of calling this a strike instead of a ball was 0.6. More than half of a run, which is substantial, as individual pitch-calls go. We don’t get a whole lot of opportunities to come to the defense of Yasiel Puig’s plate discipline. Yasiel Puig should’ve drawn a walk. I don’t know what the hell this must do to a player psychologically.

Coming into the NLDS, Dusty Baker took a good number of questions about the shortstop position. Danny Espinosa finished the year in a hell of a slump, but as Baker said to the media, he didn’t really have any other options. Espinosa was and is the best shortstop on the roster, and you have to give him one thing: for all of his flaws, there might be no one better at getting hit by a pitch.

So, actually, nevermind, there is still a Brandon Guyer floating around out there. But Espinosa is a hit-by-pitch machine, and he’s already been struck three times in the series, which is incredible. Even more incredible is the most recent HBP, because, see, Espinosa was granted first base, even though he got hit by a strike.

A strike!

Danny Espinosa got hit by a strike.

A strike, is what Danny Espinosa got hit by.

A borderline strike — sure, I’ll grant that. Espinosa didn’t get hit by a pitch that was literally down the middle, because that would be a physical impossibility. But what we’re dealing with here is insane. I went to Baseball Savant and pulled all the 2016 hit-by-pitches. You can basically see the bodies of righties and lefties in the plot below, and the overwhelming majority of these pitches make total sense. With a few, you see the profiles of elbows. The pitch to Espinosa is the only one that would’ve otherwise counted as a strike for the pitcher.

There’s a rule about this.

(6.08) The batter becomes a runner and is entitled to first base without liability to be put out (provided he advances to and touches first base) when:
[…]
He is touched by a pitched ball which he is not attempting to hit unless (A) The ball is in the strike zone when it touches the batter, or (B) The batter makes no attempt to avoid being touched by the ball;

If the ball is in the strike zone when it touches the batter, it shall be called a strike, whether or not the batter tries to avoid the ball. If the ball is outside the strike zone when it touches the batter, it shall be called a ball if he makes no attempt to avoid being touched.

Usually, when people complain about HBPs, they complain that umpires don’t enforce the make-an-effort part of this rule. That whole thing about making an attempt to avoid being touched by the ball — umpires almost literally never use that. So, the precedent has essentially been established. The rule is a non-rule. But here people can complain twice over. Espinosa made no attempt to move, and the pitch was a strike. So that’s two reasons why he shouldn’t have been granted first base, two reasons right there in the rule book. Dave Roberts, though, came out to make his case, and Espinosa still remained at first. He was never called back, and he was never going to be. The rules take care to detail what ought to count as a hit-by-pitch, but it seems that that part of the book was never assigned in umpiring school.

As I was preparing this little post, the Dodgers scored a first-inning run against the Nationals. Interestingly, while the run was driven in by an extra-base hit, it was not driven in by a homer. So far in the playoffs, that’s been slightly unusual!

I think it was Joe Sheehan who came up with the “Guillen Number.” You take all the runs scored directly off homers, and then you divide by the total number of runs. I’ve taken care to calculate playoff Guillen Numbers during the wild-card era, stretching back to 1995. Here you are:

Now, this is coming into today, so this doesn’t include the Dodgers’ one run so far. And, yes, I know, it’s early, so very early, and the numbers still have time to sort themselves out. But in the playoffs to this point, more than half of all the runs have been driven in by dingers. We’re at 32 of 59, to be exact, even though the average before this year was 39%. Over the preceding decade, 37%. It’s easy to tell that this year stands out, and if you’ve been following the playoffs yourself, you’ve presumably noticed. It feels like the winners have been determined by who hits the long ball, or the biggest long ball, and that feeling is supported.

It’s not like home runs are necessarily out of control. Hitters in the playoffs are slugging just .378, which isn’t unusual. We aren’t really seeing an offensive resurgence. Rather, sort of the opposite?

Home runs are more responsible for offense right now because it’s less easy than it’s been to generate other kinds of offense. Batters have reached less than 27% of the time, and though that makes it more difficult to hit a multi-run homer, that also means there have been fewer opportunities to drive a run home with a single or a double. One interesting indicator: we’ve so far seen just two sac bunts. The sac-bunt rate is way down, and maybe that’s a coincidence, or maybe managers aren’t trying to play smallball because outs are already coming in such droves.

There are many games left to play. Importantly, so far we’ve mostly just seen the best starting pitchers. The numbers will change, to some degree. But if you’ve felt like offenses have leaned on homers — yeah. Yeah, that’s basically what’s been happening.

As I write this, the Indians lead the Red Sox 4-0, thanks primarily to a three-run homer from Lonnie Chisenhall. The home run from Chisenhall, off David Price, was his first home run off a left-hander this season. That would be notable, except that the first few days of this postseason have been filled with home runs from guys you don’t expect home runs from.

At this point, 15 different players have hit a home run in the postseason, Wild Card games included. Here are those 15 players, along with their regular season HR and wRC+ numbers.

Eight of the 15 players to hit one out so far this year had single-digit home run totals on the season; seven of the 15 had a wRC+ below 100. Besides Trumbo, Encarnacion, and Bautista, this is just not a group that you think of as big time sluggers. But facing some of the best pitchers in baseball, these are the guys muscling up and hitting the ball over the wall.

Of course, we’re talking about a half dozen games, so this isn’t really meaningful data. But it is a bit of a continuation of the trend we saw this year, where low-power guys started hitting for more power, and a reminder that the home run spike of 2016 has been led by the middle class of hitters.