Read the rest of this entry »

A SOUTHWEST FLIGHT HIGH ABOVE THE MIDDLE WEST — While waiting to board my return flight to Cleveland from Houston on Monday morning, I scrolled through the news on my phone, reading about the madness I’d witnessed at Minute Maid Park the night before. In the process, I came across something of interest, a comment made by Brandon Morrow following Game 5.

The Dodger reliever was candid and contrite in the wake of his club’s Game 5 loss. In the clubhouse afterwards, speaking to Yahoo! and other reporters, Morrow shouldered the blame, as some standup athletes will do. While elaborating on the reasons for his guilt, he produced a comment worthy of greater examination.

“We had a plan,” Morrow said. “And we’re very plan-oriented and try to stick to that. I made them deviate away.”

See, Morrow wasn’t supposed to be available Sunday night. Dodgers manager David Roberts had said before the game that he wouldn’t be available, having pitched in every game of the series following his emergence as one of Roberts’ most trusted relievers.

Read the rest of this entry »

As illustrated by basically all the win-probability graphs featured here on any given night of the season, the average baseball game tends to be composed mostly of plays that, individually, have little influence on the outcome but which, when taken collectively, push the game towards one conclusion or the other.

This graph from the Brewers-Cardinals game on the last day of the season illustrates the point:

You can see Brett Phillips‘ home run annotated here. That one play shifted the probability of victory about 20% in Milwaukee’s direction. Other than that one event, however, the game is defined mostly by a series of small ups and downs before it flatlines in favor of the Brewers in the ninth.

This is the how these win-probability graphs typically work. There aren’t often moments where, based on one play, you tell yourself, This game is over — or, alternatively, Wait a second, this changes everything. There’s usually some build-up, an accumulation of smaller moments leading to a bigger one.

This World Series, however, has abandoned the slow burn. It continues to produce big moments at an unprecedented rate.

If we define a “big moment” as the sort of play the produces a win-probability change of 25% or greater — that is, a play that brings a club back from precipice of defeat or, alternatively, appears to render a tight battle over — we find that 96 of the 113 World Series played since 1903 have featured four or fewer “big moments” over the course of an entire series. This year’s World Series matchup between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Houston Astros has beaten that number this series… in a single game… twice.

*Setting the bar at .25 is admittedly somewhat arbitrary, but going too much higher increases the rarity of something that doesn’t occur all that often. Even using the threshold of .33, for example, would reduce the number of instances by half. Similarly, lowering the bar to .18 would double the amount of plays. Although slightly haphazard, .25 seems to set a decent balance.

When the Dodgers and Astros combined for five game-changing plays in Game 2 of this series, it was unprecedented, and I wrote about it at length. To briefly recap: prior to Game 2, there were just three World Series games with four plays featuring a WPA of at least .25. Only 11 other World Series games had even had three such moments. Game 2 had five of those big, single-plays that change a game.Sunday’s night’s Game 5 matched that number and produced an even wilder result than we saw just last week.

As I did after Game 2 to provide some context, here are the biggest plays of this year’s postseason by WPA, with Sunday night’s game now included.

Of the 11 biggest plays in this year’s playoffs, eight have come during the World Series. The fact that it’s the World Series doesn’t make these plays more likely. Any individual game can produce dramatic swings — only one in three actually do have plays with a WPA of at least .25 — but this matchup has produced more dramatic moments than we’ve seen throughout the rest of the playoffs. Individual plays aren’t the end-all-be-all of excitement. In the bottom of the seventh inning on Sunday, for example, the Astros increased their win expectancy from 35% at the beginning of the inning to 93% by the end due to multiple plays of significance, but no single play did as much damage as the plays in the chart above.

When we consider the sheer number of plays we’ve seen in this World Series that have changed win probability by 25%, it blows away every other series we’ve seen, as the graph below shows.

The World Series of 1912, which went eight games due to a tie in Game 2, featured eight big moments. Fred Merkle, who is known mostly for his “boner” in the 1908 series, very well could have been the hero in Game 8 after recording an RBI single off of Smoky Joe Wood in the top of the 10th that put the New York Giants ahead 2-1. He didn’t receive the distinction, however, as Tris Speaker produced an RBI single off of Christy Mathewson to tie the game and then a bases loaded sacrifice fly ended the series.

The 1975 World Series, perhaps most famous for Carlton Fisk’s Game 6 homer, also had eight big moments, including an RBI single by Joe Morgan in the top of the ninth of Game 7 that broke a 3-3 tie with two outs. This year, the Dodgers and Astros tied the record in Game 5 when Jose Altuve’s three-run homer tied the game at 7, and the two teams broke it three times before the game ended. Here are some of those same numbers from the graph above, but only showing the leaders.

All the years of the World Series omitted from the chart above — and there are number of them — featured fewer game-changing moments over the entirety of the series than occurred in Game 2 and Game 5 of this year’s Dodgers-Astros matchup alone. More than one-third of all series had either one or zero moments of that magnitude. They weren’t necessarily boring, but they might have lacked for some particularly big moments.

We’ve had eras off good and bad pitching and eras with a lot of homers, but we’ve never had a World Series quite like this one. Maybe the ball is juiced and slippery and maybe the teams and the bullpens are worn down because of the long season and increased usage of late, and maybe everybody is trying to hit it out of the park, but we aren’t just talking about homers here. Three of the five biggest plays on Sunday night were on batted balls that stayed in the park. Two were singles. Because we haven’t looked at it yet, here’s the win-expectancy graph from Sunday.

When looking at Game 2, I couldn’t help but compare it to probably the craziest World Series game anyone has ever seen: Game 6 in 2011. While Game 2 this year had five “big moments,” the moments back in 2011 were bigger at the top, and there was a lot more depth in terms of tension and moments. Game 5 comes a lot closer to matching up with Game 6, which, as an elimination game, carried a bit more weight in terms seasonal leverage.

Here are the top-20 plays in terms of WPA for each game:

Ultimately, even the games from the current World Series — objectively crazy as they’ve been — can’t compete with Game 6 from 2011, which featured three win-probability changes of at least 40%. Where Sunday night’s contest can match up with 2011 is the significance of the plays after the top three. If we simply average the top-10 plays, it comes to 28% for 2011 and 26% for Sunday night. If we go down to the top-20 plays, the averages are 19% and 17%, respectively.

While we might not remember it with all the hits, Sunday’s game also had its share of big outs. In Game 2, there were just two plays where the pitcher’s team increased its chances of winning by at least 10%; on Sunday, there were four. That doesn’t quite measure up to the seven from Game 6 in 2011, but it isn’t too far off. Game 6 also has the 11 plays with a leverage index greater than 4.0, compared to just one in Game 2 and three in Game 5.

Game 2 was crazy. Game 5 was even crazier. We aren’t guaranteed more of the same in the next contest (or two), and odds are actually against it. It felt surreal watching Sunday’s game go back and forth. The numbers support that feeling. Removing emotion from the equation reveals just as crazy an outcome as it felt watching — which for me, enhances my already great appreciation for the game.

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the madness of World Series Game 5, including slick balls and home runs, Clayton Kershaw and Yuli Gurriel, and the many moments when the game appeared to be over but refused to end.

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

After the way that Game 5 played out, I knew I had to give this some breathing room. There are things you want to talk and read about right after a game is finished, and there are things you want to talk and read about much later on. This is hardly the most important content about the Astros’ tie-breaking victory in their final home game of the season. I just have a question, and I’d love to see how you respond. I’ve been thinking about this since before I fell asleep.

In the bottom of the seventh inning, Sunday night, Carlos Correa faced Brandon Morrow and knocked a two-run homer out to left field. The Astros went ahead 11-8. In the top of the ninth inning, Yasiel Puig faced Chris Devenski and knocked a two-run homer out to left field. The Dodgers tightened the gap to 12-11. By the rules, both home runs were legitimate. There’s no question that the balls left the yard on the fly. Live by the Crawford Boxes, and die by the Crawford Boxes. Correa and Puig both hit two-run home runs. They were significant. But, in your own personal opinion, which home run was worse?

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 780
Like any pair of clubs, the pair of clubs currently participating in the World Series features certain players who’ve achieved major-league relevance by atypical means. Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen discusses that topic and also not that topic.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 2 min play time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

No one ever wants to have to talk about the strike zone. If the zone is called well, there’s nothing to discuss; if it isn’t, that’s a problem, but it’s all deeply unfulfilling. Fans don’t want to be helped by the strike zone, because it takes something away from a team’s own achievements. And fans don’t want to be hurt by the strike zone, because it leaves them feeling cheated. Every baseball fan everywhere acknowledges that the game involves a certain human element, but we all prefer to think the games are decided by the players, and by the players alone. Introducing a third party tends to make people upset.

Among the great reliefs of Game 5 is that it won’t be remembered for home-plate umpire Bill Miller. The game packed in enough astonishing action that there are more interesting and important points to make besides the zone having been so weird. Miller made some strange calls, but every pitcher was also entirely gassed, and balls were flying over the fence. Alex Bregman won the game with a walk-off single. Although the zone was pitcher-friendly, there were still 11 total walks and 25 total runs. The lingering image isn’t one of a hitter shaking his head.

Yet the obnoxious reality is that the zone was a factor. The zone is always a factor, because every game changes with every individual pitch. On Sunday, some pitches were called unlike how they usually are. The zone is woven in, inextricable, a part of the larger game story. We’d prefer not to think about it, but blissful ignorance doesn’t acknowledge all that went on.

Read the rest of this entry »

This has been a crazy World Series. Last night’s game was particularly nuts, but this whole series has been one long string of unlikely outcomes. Even the run-of-the-mill 3-1 Dodgers victory in Game 1 was remarkable for how short it was. Nothing in this series is usual.

But amidst all the bonkers plays that we’ve seen, I think there was one particular moment last night that still lingers. As I sit here roughly 12 hours after the game ended, I still don’t know how this happened.

Read the rest of this entry »

The ball is going faster in both directions these days. Velocities are up, exit velocities are up, and the players are openly discussing the changed nature of the ball. Slippery balls are maybe flattening out sliders this World Series. Are they, though? We can look at what’s happening now, and then we can also compare movement across different times in baseball’s rapidly changing environment as a comparison.

Turns out, movement is the product of a complicated relationship between the pitcher’s mechanics, the seams on the baseball, and how fast the ball is going. (Who would’ve guessed? Pitching is complicated.) Every ball is also slightly different — it’s put together by humans from the hide of a cow, after all — but we’ll never truly know exactly how different this World Series ball really is.

Read the rest of this entry »

HOUSTON — Game 5 resided at an extreme pole along the baseball entertainment spectrum. It’s not a game you want to experience every night, but it’s something about which we’ll be talking and of which we’ll be trying to make sense for a while. At least until Game 6.

That said, the aesthetic appeal of the game can certainly be debated: the way fly balls were leaving Minute Maid Park gave the night something of a College World Series feel during its peak-offense period. If you recall, that was an environment that forced the college game to make adjustments to its bats and balls to suppress run scoring, to provide sanity.

One of the overriding themes of the sport this season is the speed at which it has changed, how extreme it has become so quickly. The game continues to evolve even in the postseason, where the average launch angle is 11.9 degrees — up a fraction of a degree from the 11.8 mark during this year’s regular season and 10.8 degrees in 2015 regular season. The average air ball is traveling 291 feet, up from 287 feet in the regular season.

Read the rest of this entry »