Unhittable starting pitching has carried the Dodgers through the Wild Card and Division Series and staked them to a 2-0 lead over the Brewers in the National League Championship Series. But as Blake Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto have made the the biggest headlines, some of their elite hitters such as Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, and Will Smith have scuffled. Meanwhile Enrique Hernández and Teoscar Hernández (no relation) have picked up the slack, recalling their contributions during last year’s championship run; their efforts even bookended the fateful game-tying five-run rally in the World Series clincher against the Yankees. After subpar regular seasons married by injuries, both have rediscovered their groove in October.

At American Family Field on Tuesday night, the dynamic duo shone once again during the Dodgers’ 5-1 victory in Game 2. With the team trailing 1-0 in the second inning following Jackson Chourio’s leadoff homer off Yamamoto, Teoscar got ahead 3-0 against Freddy Peralta, then pounced on the next pitch thrown in the zone, a 3-2 hanging curveball, and demolished it for a towering solo home run — 105.9 mph off the bat, with a 39-degree launch angle — to left field.

That was Teoscar’s fourth homer of the playoffs, tying Michael Busch for the postseason lead (Vladimir Guerrero Jr. joined them on Wednesday). Two batters and one out later, Enrique worked the count to 2-2, then ripped a middle-middle four-seamer for a 98-mph groundball single into center field. He scored the go-ahead run when Andy Pages doubled into the right field corner. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve got some terrible news for you. The crime rate is way down. I know that sounds like it should be good news, but when it comes to baseball, it’s just boring. Nobody’s stealing any bases during the playoffs (except for Randy Arozarena and, of course, Josh Naylor). The 34 total playoff games have seen just 26 steals on 35 total attempts. That’s 0.51 attempts per team per game, a huge drop-off from a regular season that averaged 0.91. The Blue Jays and Dodgers have combined for just two steals on two attempts. Boring.

On its own, that doesn’t seem too surprising. This is the fourth year in a row that teams have attempted fewer steals per game in the playoffs than in the regular season. The reasons behind this are easy enough to understand. First, we have a logistical hurdle. Runs are harder to come by during the playoffs. This year, we’ve seen 4.45 runs per team game during the regular season and just 4.02 during the playoffs. On-base percentage is down 11 points, which means fewer baserunners and fewer stolen base opportunities to start with. Next, we’ve got the risk aversion angle. Those baserunners are a more precious commodity at a time when the stakes are at their highest. Running into an out on the bases is a very loud unforced error, the kind of thing you get roasted for in the papers the next morning. It’s a lot harder to see how much potential value you’re leaving on the table by just staying put. I feel confident that I’ve never read an article roasting a player for not trying to steal.

Read the rest of this entry »

SEATTLE — There’s an age-old question among pitching philosophers. Should an approach focus more on the pitcher’s strengths or the hitter’s weaknesses? In my experience, pitchers do not ask themselves this question, though. They almost always prefer to pitch to their own strengths. They might tweak their strategy if a hitter has an obvious and exploitable weakness that they feel comfortable attacking, but mostly they’d rather stick to what they do best.

But what happens when what a pitcher does best aligns perfectly with what his opponent does best? When it’s not just that he’s ignoring the hitter’s weakness, but that he’s also pitching to the hitter’s strength? Game 3 of the ALCS between the Mariners and the Blue Jays gave us a data point to consider when answering that question. Toronto walked away with a 13-4 victory in Seattle to cut the Mariners’ series lead to 2-1, and did so by sticking to its strengths in the batter’s box. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m trying out a new format for our managerial report cards this postseason. In the past, I went through every game from every manager, whether they played 22 games en route to winning the World Series or got swept out of the wild card round. To be honest, I hated writing those brief blurbs. No one is all that interested in the manager who ran out the same lineup twice, or saw his starters get trounced and used his best relievers anyway because the series was so short. This year, I’m skipping the first round, and grading only the managers who survived until at least the best-of-five series. Today, we’ll start with the two managers who lost in the American League Divisional Series, Aaron Boone and A.J. Hinch.

My goal is to evaluate each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of the outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things — getting team buy-in for new strategies or unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable — but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but Cam Schlittler and Michael Busch were also great this October. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Blake Snell is important because he’s great, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process.

I’m always looking for new analytical wrinkles in critiquing managerial decisions. I’m increasingly viewing pitching as a tradeoff between protecting your best relievers from overexposure and minimizing your starters’ weakest matchups, which means that I’m grading managers on multiple axes in every game. I think that almost no pitching decision is a no-brainer these days; there are just too many competing priorities to make anything totally obvious. That means I’m going to be less certain in my evaluation of pitching than of hitting, but I’ll try to make my confidence level clear in each case. Let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »

Until the Mariners traded for the Diamondbacks’ Josh Naylor on July 24, they had a first base problem. For the second season in a row, subpar first-half production from their first sackers threatened to derail their bid for a playoff spot, and while they hadn’t shied away from addressing the issue last summer, they ended up missing a Wild Card berth by a single win nonetheless. In his first big swing at upgrading their roster this summer, president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto dealt for Naylor, and since then, he’s proven to be one of their most reliable players — not just at the plate, but on the bases and in the field as well. He’s shown off all facets of his game during this postseason, including in Monday night’s 10-3 ALCS Game 2 win over the Blue Jays, during which he notched his third three-hit effort in the past four games.

After collecting the hit that helped the Mariners clinch a playoff berth — a bases-loaded, eighth-inning double off the Rockies’ Victor Vodnik on September 23 — and closing the regular season with a 12-game hitting streak, Naylor’s October actually began inauspiciously. He went hitless in the Mariners’ first three Division Series games against the Tigers, with a first-inning walk against Game 1 starter Troy Melton his only positive result across a stretch of 14 plate appearances; he just missed hitting one out against Melton in the fourth inning of that game, a 108.2-mph drive hauled in just a few feet in front of the right-center field wall. Only once during the regular season had he gone hitless in three straight games, that from June 1–4 while a member of the Diamondbacks. One of the few highlights from his more recent dry spell was his unassisted double play to seal the Mariners’ Game 3 victory, when he speared a liner off the bat of Parker Meadows, then doubled Andy Ibáñez off first.

Naylor started filling in the hit column with a 3-for-4 afternoon in the Mariners’ 9-3 loss in Game 4, doubling off Casey Mize and scoring a run in the second inning, then singling off Tyler Holton and coming around to score in the fourth, at which point the Mariners led 2-0. He pulled off another unassisted double play in the fourth, this time off a Colt Keith one-hopper that caught Gleyber Torres retreating to first base. Alas, by the time Naylor led off the eighth with a single off Melton, Seattle trailed 8-3. Too little, too late. Read the rest of this entry »

Philadelphia, late in a must-win road game in a tightly contested playoff series, has all but gotten a stop. The team has held serve, against all odds blanking its opponent to force another frame and extend the season. Then, all of a sudden, the ball does something weird. It goes in a direction nobody anticipated, and as the entire Delaware Valley looks on in disbelieving horror, the home team scores to seal a walk-off win and advance to the next round.

I’m sure you’ve deduced from the lack of proper nouns in the previous paragraph that I’m not talking about the recently concluded Phillies-Dodgers NLDS, or the Orion Kerkering throwing error that ended it. No, I’m talking about this.

Oh yeah, Phillies fans, we’re gonna feel even worse than you thought today. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley revisit Meg’s experience of Mariners-Tigers ALDS Game 5 and recap the first few games of the Championship Series round, touching on postseason broadcast booths, the Mariners’ mauling of the Blue Jays in Toronto, Pat Murphy’s burnishing of the Brewers’ underdog image, broader narrative-building about the Brewers-Dodgers series, whether the Dodgers intentionally took it easy during the regular season, the GIDP heard ’round the world, starters moonlighting as relievers, Blake Snell, and more, plus closing banter about manager news and Pete Alonso’s contract target in his second crack at free agency.

Audio intro: Jimmy Kramer, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Tom Rhoads, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to sign up for Patreon
Link to Meg’s 2386 postscript
Link to playoff win expectancy changes
Link to Humpy article
Link to Humpy video
Link to worst BsR w/30+ SB
Link to AL team Gold Gloves
Link to NL team Gold Gloves
Link to The Bandwagon on Gold Gloves
Link to GIDP video
Link to GIDP article
Link to Cooper on the GIDP
Link to Turang on his near-HBP
Link to Stathead on 100-pitch playoff games
Link to jacked Jays fan
Link to Robles play
Link to Passan on the NLCS
Link to Murphy’s “eight guys” quote
Link to Defector comment
Link to Craig on the Dodgers
Link to Schildt story
Link to Hinch story
Link to Alonso report
Link to Sam on “seeking”

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It could not have started worse. Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s first pitch of NLCS Game 2 was a 97-mph four-seam fastball to Jackson Chourio, the Brewers’ powerful leadoff hitter. Chourio promptly hammered it 389 feet into the Dodgers’ bullpen. It landed like a signal to the relievers milling out on the berm: Be alert, you might be needed sooner than you thought.

They would not be necessary. It’s hard to imagine a better pitching performance than that of Yamamoto’s teammate, Blake Snell, who delivered 10 strikeouts over eight innings the previous night. But Yamamoto managed to one-up him.

Over 111 magnificent pitches, Yamamoto rendered the Brewers’ bats rudderless, holding them to that single run over a three-hit complete game. It was the first in the playoffs in eight years, and it certainly offered one possible solution to the Dodgers’ bullpen woes: What if you just didn’t need those guys? Read the rest of this entry »

Shea Langeliers has emerged as one of baseball’s best backstops. Building on a 2024 season in which he swatted 29 home runs while logging a 109 wRC+, the 27-year-old slashed .277/.325/.536 with 31 home runs and a 132 wRC+. Moreover, he lowered his strikeout rate from 27.2% to 19.7%, and upped his WAR from 2.0 to 3.9. Those numbers came with the Athletics, who acquired Langeliers in the March 2022 trade that sent Matt Olson to the Braves.

Taken ninth overall by Atlanta in 2019 out of Baylor University, Langeliers was called “the consensus best catcher in [that year’s] draft not named Adley Rutschman” by Eric Longenhagen and Kevin Goldstein. When ranking Langeliers fifth in the Braves system in the spring of 2021, our then-prospect analyst duo also opined that “offensive development will dictate his ultimate value, as his defense is big league-ready right now.” As the numbers show, the right-handed hitter’s offense has developed just fine.

Langeliers sat down to talk hitting when the A’s visited Boston in September.

———

David Laurila: How have you changed as a hitter over the years? For instance, are your swing and setup any different from when you got to pro ball?

Shea Langeliers: “Those haven’t changed a whole lot. What has changed is how I’m mentally ready to hit sooner, throughout the process, if that makes sense. A good way to explain it would be, before release being able to physically pull the trigger on my swing. Being ready to hit earlier in the loading process gives me more time to see the pitch and react to it. It’s also a good mental cue for me.

“Another thing is that when I first got to the big leagues, I was trying to hit everything as hard as I can, all the time. I’ve dialed that down a little bit. There is a little more bat control now, so I’m missing fewer pitches.”

Laurila: Can you elaborate on being ready to hit earlier? Read the rest of this entry »

Say what you want about Blake Snell. You may not find his Only Use Strike Zone in Case of Emergency pitching style fun to watch, but in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series, the Brewers found it even less pleasant to hit against. Snell carved through a Milwaukee lineup that scored 22 runs in the NLDS like a knife through nothing at all, ending his night by retiring 17 straight. He faced the minimum over eight innings in an absolutely dominant performance as the Dodgers beat the Brewers, 2-1, to take a 1-0 lead in the NLCS.

A prolonged bout of shoulder inflammation limited Snell to just 11 starts and 61 1/3 innings this season, but over those 11 starts, he was excellent, running a 2.35 ERA and 2.69 FIP. He’d been even better in the playoffs, earning wins against the Reds and Phillies and allowing just two runs, five hits, and five walks while striking out 18. On Monday night, he made those performances look like warmup outings. Snell went eight innings for just the second time in his entire career, and finished with 10 strikeouts, no walks, and one hit. That one hit was a weak line drive that third baseman Caleb Durbin dumped into center field in the third inning. Durbin then broke for second way too early, allowing Snell to throw over to first and catch him easily at second. “You gotta disrupt it,” said Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy between innings. “You gotta do something. He looks really sharp.” The Brewers didn’t do anything.

It wasn’t surprising to see Snell dealing, but it was surprising to see him not walking anyone. The game plan for the Brewers was simple, if difficult to execute. They had the lowest chase rate and the sixth-highest walk rate in baseball this season. They needed to be patient and force Snell to throw the ball in the zone. The Dodgers wanted the same thing. “I can’t have him nibble,” said Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts before the game. Snell didn’t nibble. He hit the zone 50% of the time, well above his regular season rate of 44%, and only a hair under the major league average of 51%. It was just the third time in the past two seasons that he’d gone without a base on balls. His changeup was particularly devastating, and he threw it 37% of the time, the second-highest rate of his entire career. Between innings, he sat on the bench and flipped through a half-inch three-ring binder that held either scouting reports or notes for an AP chemistry midterm. Read the rest of this entry »