The Astros are going to the World Series for a number of reasons.

Saturday night marked the culmination of a lengthy, creative, bottoming-out rebuild gone right, a rebuild so extreme it had earned the club the “Disastros” moniker. No one is laughing now.

The Astros are going to the World Series because of the accumulation of hirings, signings, draft decisions, development and strategies executed well. Not everything went perfectly, but this is a game of probabilities, not certainties, and a lot of things went right.

That’s the big picture view. The smaller-sample truth is they needed a Game 7 to win Saturday night to have such a happy narrative be written, to advance to a second World Series appearances in franchise history. The Astros needed to match the moment and they did. Read the rest of this entry »

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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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Astros, Yankees, Game 7. This should be fun. This has been a pretty terrific ALCS already, and with a winner-take-all contest to decide it tonight, this could end up being one of the best league championship series we’ve seen in a while.

For the Yankees, the plan seems pretty obvious. CC Sabathia is going to start the game, and given how he’s pitched so far this postseason, Joe Girardi will probably ride his veteran until he gets in real trouble. And then the Astros will deal with Tommy Kahnle and Aroldis Chapman, probably for at least a couple of innings each, with David Robertson around to try and redeem his disastrous Game 6 performance if Sabathia-Kahnle-Chapman isn’t enough to get through nine innings. If anyone besides one of those four take the mound for the Yankees, it will probably be because one of the two teams turned it into an early blowout.

The Astros, though, head into a potential season finale without as much clarity.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the home run’s postseason supremacy, Clayton Kershaw’s performance in NLCS Game 5 and the Dodgers’ World Series outlook, the Cubs’ upcoming offseason and long-term future, and the significance of the Tigers’ Ron Gardenhire hiring.

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Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating this offseason a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2017-18 free-agent market.

Below are links to ballots for five of this year’s free agents, including a number of infield types.

Other Players: Yonder Alonso / Alex Avila / Welington Castillo / Lucas Duda / Eric Hosmer / Chris Iannetta / Jonathan Lucroy / Mitch Moreland / Logan Morrison / Carlos Santana.

Howie Kendrick (Profile)
Some relevant information regarding Kendrick:

• Has averaged 457 PA and 1.5 WAR over last three seasons.
• Has averaged 2.0 WAR per 600 PA* over last three seasons.
• Recorded a 1.6 WAR in 334 PA in 2017.
• Is projected to record 1.5 WAR per 600 PA**.
• Is entering his age-34 season.
• Made $10.0M in 2017 as part of deal signed in February 2016.

*That is, a roughly average number of plate appearances for a starter.
**Prorated version of final 2017 depth-chart projections available here.

Click here to estimate years and dollars for Kendrick.

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If we know anything about Dallas Keuchel it’s that he possesses some of the best command in the game. No starting pitcher more often targets and hits the lower third of the zone — and the borderline, 50-50 area at the bottom of the zone — according to Baseball Savant’s pitch data. Keuchel located 29.4% of his total pitches in these zones this season, tops among MLB starting pitchers.

The following graphic shows what and where Keuchel threw pitches in his stellar Game 1 start against the Yankees.

Below are the results of the Yankee plate appearances. Not surprisingly for a pitcher who’s recorded a 1.41 career ERA against New York in the regular season, they were basically all good for Keuchel:

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Periodically, I’ll be posting notes from in-person observations at Fall Instructional League and Arizona Fall League play. Each are essentially the scouting calendar’s dessert course, both in their timing and sometimes dubious value. I take bad fall looks with a large grain of salt as players are sometimes fatigued, disinterested, put in difficult situations purposefully so that they’ll fail, or some combination of these or other bits of important context. With that in mind here are links to past notes followed by this edition’s.

Previously
9/20 (TEX, SD)
9/21-9/23 (CHA, MIL, SD, TEX)
9/24-9/25 (CHA, CIN, LAN, TEX)
9/27-10/2 (ARI, LAA, OAK, SF)

Instructional League plays is more or less complete. What follows represents my looks from the schedule’s last couple weeks. As the short season progressed, I made an effort to see teams whose minor-league complexes are located in the Phoenix Metro Area’s eastern reaches. Chronological drafts of this post were confusing, as many of these teams play against one another due to ease of travel. As such, notes in this edition are organized by team instead of date.

Colorado 2B Shael Mendoza had a monster summer in the Pioneer League, slashing .362/.412/.519 while swiping 25 bases in 55 games. While Mendoza has strong hands and wrists that lead to loud contact when he squares a ball up, he has some issues that dilute the quality and amount of contact he makes. He’s often out on his front foot early or excessively and his bat isn’t in the hitting zone for very long. He’s also a fringe athlete without great actions at second base. I do think there’s some physical ability with which to work, evident in Mendoza’s power on contact, but I think there’s significant risk that his 2017 on-paper performance was a bit of a mirage.

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Playoff baseball has changed in recent years. Where managers might have once employed tactics very similar to those used in the regular season, that has increasingly not been the case. In 2011, for example, Tony LaRussa used his bullpen just as often as he did his starting pitchers en route to a championship for the St. Louis Cardinals. A few years later, the Royals shortened games with an elite collection of relief arms on their way to consecutive World Series appearances. Last year, Andrew Miller appeared for Cleveland whenever the situation demanded, frequently throwing multiple innings.

Now everybody is using their bullpen more often. Relievers are accounting for a greater share of innings and wins in the regular season. This postseason has featured at least one game during which the winning team’s starter didn’t even survive the first inning. In terms of pitching effectiveness, it seems as though clubs are approaching an optimal state; however, there are some aspects that are getting worse, particularly when it comes to inherited runners.

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