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.

Last night, during Madison Bumgarner’s latest playoff masterpiece, someone asked me in our live blog whether Bumgarner’s postseason heroics have already been great enough to get him into the conversation about potential Hall of Fame pitchers, even though he’s obviously far short on regular season totals. And there’s no question that Bumgarner’s playoff numbers are staggering; he’s now thrown 97 1/3 innings with a 1.94 ERA, good for a 53 ERA-. He’s already thrown three complete game shutouts in his postseason career; the all-time Major League record is four. Bumgarner has already cemented himself as one of the best playoff pitchers in history, and he’s still just 27.

But while we’re all rightfully marveling at Bumgarner’s dominance today, it’s worth remembering that, for whatever reason, the current crop of Hall of Fame voters have shown no interest in enshrining quality starting pitchers, even ones with similarly unbelievable postseason numbers. For comparison, here’s Bumgarner’s career postseason numbers compared with those of Curt Schilling.

If Bumgarner throws another 40 innings at his current postseason pace, he’ll essentially match what Schilling did during his postseason career. Except Schilling also threw 3,261 excellent regular season innings, worth +80 WAR by FIP (#20 all-time) and +81 WAR (#32 all-time) by runs allowed. And the BBWAA members with Hall of Fame ballots haven’t cared at all.

In 2013, Schililng’s first year on the ballot, he got 39% of the vote. As the ballot got more crowded, he dropped to 29% in 2014, then bounced back to 39% in 2015. Last year, encouragingly, he got up to 52% of the vote, which puts him within striking distance of the 75% needed. Most guys who get over 50% within their first few years eventually get in, so Schilling has a shot at getting inducted.

But think about what we’d require from Bumgarner to get to Schilling’s career numbers. Not only does he have to throw 40 more amazing innings in the postseason, he’s almost 2,000 regular season innings behind; we’d basically need him to keep throwing 200 innings per year for the next ten years. And it’s not like Bumgarner got a late start on his career; he debuted at 19, and would still need to be throwing 200 innings per year at age 36 in order to get up to Schilling’s career innings total, without any injuries between now and then.

And if Bumgarner does that, his closest statistical comparison would be the kind of guy that voters kind of shrug their shoulders at, not sure whether he was worthy of the Hall of Fame or not. That’s just nuts.

Bumgarner, at this point, has more work to do to put himself in Hall of Fame consideration. He just hasn’t pitched enough at this point to be a strong candidate. But there’s no question that he’s put together one of the best postseason resumes we’ve ever seen, and if he remains a quality pitcher for most of the next decade, how could we possibly deny him entry?

But that’s what we’re doing to Schilling. If you’re awed by Bumgarner’s October dominance — and you should be — then you should support Curt Schilling for the Hall of Fame. I know he’s not the most likable guy in the world, but the Hall of Fame is for honoring the greatest players of all time, and Schilling was one of those. When you watch Bumgarner pitch, remember that Schilling was just as good for even longer, and then lobby your favorite Hall of Fame voter to recognize the guy who was doing this before Bumgarner came along.

The Blue Jays just walked off against the Orioles, with Ubaldo Jimenez giving up the game-losing home run to Edwin Encarnacion in the bottom of the 11th inning. The story, though, is that the Orioles used seven pitchers in their final game of the season, and potential Cy Young winning closer Zach Britton was not one of them. The Blue Jays beat the Orioles in large part because the Orioles didn’t use their best pitcher tonight.

At this point, there are two possible explanations for Buck Showalter’s decision.

1. Zach Britton wasn’t available, or felt something off when he warmed up in the 8th inning. Given that Buck Showalter seems like a reasonable human being, this should probably be our default assumption right now. Often times, when a manager does something inexplicable with their bullpen usage, there’s information asymmetry, and they know something we don’t know. That may very well be the case here.

OR

2. The “save” stat just cost the Orioles their 2016 season. If Showalter really used Brian Duensing and Ubaldo Jimenez before Zach Britton because he was waiting to get Britton a lead so that he could earn a save, then this is the craziest managerial decision that I can remember in my baseball-watching life.

I don’t see another possibility, really. Either Britton is hurt or Buck Showalter just screwed up in an historic way. It will be interesting to find out how honest the team is about Britton’s availability in postgame comments.

Update: It was option #2. A few quotes from Showalter.

Buck: "He was available"

— JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) October 5, 2016

Buck: "You could (regret) afterwards, but we went 4 innings trying to get to that spot (of using Britton)."

— JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) October 5, 2016

Buck: "Playing on the road had something to do with it too."

— JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) October 5, 2016

"Nobody has been pitching better for us than Ubaldo."

— JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) October 5, 2016

We’ve known for some time that the 2016 playoffs would begin on this evening. Many have known for less time that their favorite teams wouldn’t qualify for the tournament. My favorite team is done playing. This is a post and a poll for those of you who find yourselves in an identical circumstance. Of baseball’s 30 teams, 20 are finished. So for fans of those teams who’re finished, who from the remaining crop looks the most appealing, as a bandwagon?

I’ve run this once or twice before. I’ve been forced to acknowledge that there’s nothing I can actually do to prevent fans of playoff teams from also voting, presumably for their own playoff teams. I get that when one is overcome by the postseason spirit, irrational behavior can feel like rational behavior. But I would still ask you to please refrain. There is no benefit from a vote for your team. Literally nothing. Not even a moment of fleeting pleasure. I trust you’re not naturally inclined to be an asshole just because. You’re great! Keep it up!

Assuming you do indeed cheer primarily for a team of present-day golfers, who do you want to see do the best? Or can you not bring yourself to bandwagon at all? Vote below. And, vote, just.

Francisco Liriano has pitched his way into consideration for today’s American League Wild Card game by having been excellent since his return to the rotation — during which period he’s recorded 24.2 innings with 26 strikeouts, six walks, and four earned runs — but also by being on the right schedule to pitch today and by pitching with his left hand.

It’s easy enough to sort this list of teams and find that the Orioles have been the worst American League team against lefties this year. But that’s just what’s happened in the past. It doesn’t necessarily dictate what would happen in the future.

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You might’ve noticed that the regular season is over. As such, all the regular-season numbers are in the books, which gives us some good opportunities for evaluation on the outside. In this quick post, I would like to evaluate the preseason team projections. Last year, at least in the American League, the projections wound up being a mess. I remember there being a point about halfway through where it looked like one would’ve been smarter to bet the opposite of every AL team projection. How’d the numbers shake out in 2016? Below, see plots.

Several times before, I’ve used old team projections from seasons past. Not all team projections included here come from the same sources, because the same sources just haven’t always existed. For recent years, I’ve been able to use FanGraphs team projections. Going further back, I’ve had to search elsewhere, because FanGraphs just didn’t have projections. So I know that’s one potential source of error here, but I think it’s better than just not having data at all. And ultimately, all projection systems are built around similar foundations. You take recent numbers and weigh them and project them for the short-term future. There’s not a lot to change. So! Why don’t we just get to the information?

I have team projections stretching back to 2005. Here is a plot including actual team wins vs. projected team wins. What you see here is the average error per team per season:

This year, the projections fared much better than they did in 2015. I went with the last version of FanGraphs’ preseason team projections, and after the average projection missed by 8.1 wins a year ago, this time the average projection missed by 5.7 wins. That puts this year in line with 2014, as being fairly successful, math-wise. It would be the best-projected year since 2007. I have no idea if that means anything; I’m just putting it out there. This year’s biggest miss was the Twins, who fell an incredible 19 wins short of the March expectation. The word “Twins” has the word “wins” right in it. It also has a T, which looks like the symbol for perpendicularity. Other teams might be content to operate in parallel with winning. The Twins decided to challenge it head-on.

Another thing we can look at: What about BaseRuns wins vs. projected wins? We know there are elements that are just about un-projectable. What if we strip those away?

Last year, the average miss was 7.0 BaseRuns wins. This year, the average miss was 5.4 BaseRuns wins, standing again as the strongest year for the projections since 2007. You might say it’s strange that the projections haven’t improved on a set of projections from a whole decade ago, since that was so far back it was pre-PITCHf/x era. But this is at least evidence that last year’s weirdness was a blip. The biggest miss for 2016: The Red Sox, actually. They were projected for 89 wins, but they finished with 102 BaseRuns wins. Good team, the Red Sox. The Cubs were the second-biggest miss!

Just to close it out, we can leave out the projections entirely. Here are BaseRuns wins vs. actual wins. Are teams finding ways to beat their underlying statistics more often, or is that not the case?

This year, the average difference was 4.2 wins. That’s down from last year’s 5.1, but still, this is the second-biggest error in the sample. So that’s potentially of note. Last year it felt like the BaseRuns model was practically broken. This year has eased some of those concerns, but it’s still worth wondering about. The Rangers finished with 13 more actual wins than BaseRuns wins. The Rays finished with 13 fewer actual wins than BaseRuns wins. Go ahead and figure that one out. At least for the time being, I quit. What’s done is done!

Some time ago, in another InstaGraphs post, I mentioned something that could potentially become true about the 2016 Reds. We spend a lot of time writing about things that could potentially become true, and inevitably, a lot of those paces fall off. There are reasons for that, and that would be a subject for another post. But the 2016 numbers are official now, dammit. There’s no more “on pace for;” there only is. Here is something that is:

That’s bad! Boy, it gets worse. Here are the worst team pitching staffs since 1900, by our version of WAR:

To be absolutely clear about what we have here: By our numbers, the Reds just became the first pitching staff in modern history to finish with a negative WAR. It’s only slight, sure, and the difference between them and those 1915 Athletics is less than one win, but that negative symbol is conspicuous. It pushes the digits over to the right, so they can stand out. The Reds, as a collective, featured a major-league pitching staff that was a worse-than-replacement-level pitching staff. That’s almost unfathomable, is what that is.

Did the Reds really have the worst pitching staff ever? I mean, hell, I don’t know. Their pitching staff had one of the biggest home-run problems ever. By actual runs allowed, they were a little bit better than replacement-level, but you know where we stand on all that. There’s no way to actually compare across seasons or eras, not with the desired level of precision. We just don’t understand pitching that well yet, and we understand it even less the further back we go into history. We can say this: If you wanted to talk about the worst staffs of all time, you might use FanGraphs WAR as a starting point. It couldn’t make the Reds look any worse.

Reds pitchers, month by month:

• April: -1.3 WAR, 30th place
• May: -1.1, 30th
• June: -0.6, 30th
• July: +1.9, 20th
• August: +1.0, 26th
• Sep/Oct: +0.2, 30th

The first half is what did the Reds in. In the second half, they accumulated 3.2 WAR, good enough to edge out the Twins, Braves, and Diamondbacks. In each of the last three months, the Reds’ staff finished in the black. Yet it’s appropriate that, in the final stretch, they were dead last again. All they needed were one or two more good games, to avoid finishing in the…red. But a league-worst September and October locked the Reds into place. They had a chance to run away from history, but instead they suffer its embrace.

A negative WAR. It’s not that there weren’t some success stories. Anthony DeSclafani was pretty good. Dan Straily was all right. Raisel Iglesias adjusted well to the bullpen. Brandon Finnegan got stronger in the second half. But let me tell you: 32 Reds pitchers pitched. Twenty of them finished below 0.0 WAR. Alfredo Simon allowed more runs in 58.2 innings than Jon Lester allowed in over 200. J.J. Hoover allowed more runs in 18.2 innings than Zach Britton’s allowed the last two years combined. For the Reds, 2016 was never going to be about winning. Yet it also definitely wasn’t supposed to be about this.

To be clear, there are three postings here.

Position: Colorado Rockies Analyst – Baseball Research & Development

Location: Denver

Description:
This individual will collaborate with the Research and Development team and will assist in the development and maintenance of a player information and projection system along with other statistical analysis and on field strategy. This position requires strong statistical development skills and experience as well as a demonstrated ability for independent curiosity and a commitment to excellence while working within a team framework.

Responsibilities:

• Utilize advanced statistical techniques to analyze large datasets for actionable conclusions.
• Design and document development of new analytic applications to assist in player evaluation.
• Utilize existing Baseball Research and Development applications and databases in order to perform quantitative research related to baseball strategy and player evaluation.
• Work with Baseball Research and Development team to design and integrate new statistical ideas into existing analytical systems.
• Build automated solutions to import, clean and update datasets for use in downstream analyses.
• Complete ad-hoc database queries to answer specific questions from Front Office colleagues.

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The Nationals have had an excellent bounce back season after last year’s struggles, and have already locked up the NL East with a 91-65 record. But all is not well in Washington.

The team was already dealing with the potential absence of Stephen Strasburg, who had to leave his first start back from the disabled list with lingering soreness. Daniel Murphy, probably the team’s MVP this year, has not played in over a week due to a glute strain, and while it doesn’t seem like a major injury, you never like to see important players dealing with issues right before the playoff start.

And now, the Nationals will need Murphy more than ever, because Dusty Baker just confirmed that starting catcher Wilson Ramos has suffered a torn ACL, ending his season a week before the team takes on the Dodgers in the NLDS.

There it is. Wilson Ramos has a torn ACL, Dusty Baker says.

— CSN Nationals (@CSNNationals) September 27, 2016

Ramos’ career year has been one of the primary reasons the Nationals have been better this year than last year, as he’s posted a 124 wRC+ and +3.5 WAR, solidifying what was a black hole in 2015. He gave the lineup depth it didn’t have last year, and provided some right-handed thump to counter team’s left-handed pitching; he had a 160 wRC+ against LHPs this year, second-best on the team.

Jose Lobaton will take over as the Nationals starting catcher, and the offense is going to suffer as a result. Lobaton has a career 77 wRC+, and is putting up a normal-for-him 82 wRC+ this year. He takes some walks and makes okay contact, but there’s not much power there, and the Dodgers pitchers will probably have no problem coming right after him and making him do damage with his swing. Facing a pitching staff as good as Los Angeles’, especially one with two frontline left-handed starters, Lobaton is going to be a huge dropoff from Ramos.

This injury doesn’t sink the Nationals chances, of course; no one player is that important in baseball, and Ramos isn’t the kind of impact player that can swing a series by himself. But no question, this is a significant loss for Washington, especially given that the Dodgers are a formidable opponent. The team has had a great season, but they’re likely going to need some Murphy and/or Strasburg to make it back for the NLDS, because without Ramos too, they’re going into the playoffs undermanned.

Think about what you know about hitters and pop-ups. Pop-ups, for all hitters, are bad. They might as well be one-pitch strikeouts. And, you know who doesn’t hit them? Joey Votto. You know that Joey Votto pretty much never hits a pop-up. It’s among the many things that make him extraordinary. Joe Mauer also doesn’t really hit pop-ups. Christian Yelich. Ryan Howard. Shin-Soo Choo. On and on. And there’s Howie Kendrick. Kendrick doesn’t hit pop-ups. But:

@based_ball ICYMI: Howie Kendrick hit a pop-up today. (leading off the 7-th inning).

— Santiago Padilla (@SantiPadillaR) September 25, 2016

That was tweeted at me yesterday. And when I checked the live statistics on FanGraphs, Kendrick had an infield fly. Yet when I check those same statistics today: nothing. It’s as if it’s been erased. Here is the batted ball in question:

Fielded comfortably by the second baseman. We’d all identify that as a pop-up, right? In one sense, then, Kendrick did pop up yesterday. You could say it’s the most important sense. Yet, here’s the leaderboard, when I look at everyone who’s batted at least 500 times over the past three calendar years. This is why this matters. (It doesn’t matter-matter, but, you know.)

Kendrick is the only guy with double zeros. Everyone else has hit at least one infield fly. So, what are we supposed to do, here?

In truth, it’s not that much of a mystery. We get batted-ball data from Baseball Info Solutions, and they have a specific definition of what makes an infield fly. Yesterday, when I checked the live stats, those were getting fed in by MLB Gameday, and that has a different, looser definition. So Kendrick’s fly ball was a pop-up by one definition, but not by both. If you take the BIS data as gospel, Kendrick objectively remains without such a blemish. But you can’t really say Kendrick hasn’t hit a pop-up. He just hasn’t hit one particular kind of pop-up.

Heck, this was just a matter of weeks ago:

The last time I checked, the BIS cutoff was 140 feet. That is, any fly ball hit more than 140 feet wouldn’t count as an infield fly. Kendrick still hasn’t popped up within the infield. But these flies flew only a little beyond 140. And now that we have Statcast, we can try to run some numbers ourselves. We’re still going to have to define things arbitrarily, and Statcast sometimes has trouble picking up batted balls hit at extreme angles, but let’s just see what we can do for 2016. Why don’t we set a cutoff at a launch angle of 60 degrees?

Joey Votto has zero such batted balls. Christian Yelich, zero. Joe Mauer, one. Howie Kendrick, one. Starling Marte, one. I don’t know how many batted balls are missing from the sample, so it’s not authoritative. But, it’s something. No definition of a pop-up is going to be the definition of a pop-up. This is the issue with bucketing. But Howie Kendrick either has a pop-up or two, or he doesn’t. According to the numbers we have here, Kendrick hasn’t popped up once in three years. That’s amazing! It still, no matter what, reflects a legitimate ability of his, but his is a soft zero. There’s no arriving at a one true answer.

Howie Kendrick most certainly doesn’t hit pop-ups. Except for the rare occasions when he does. Welp?