Like a lot of people, I don’t gamble, but, like a lot of people, I have done it before. I was a sophomore in college, and I thought I knew an awful lot about baseball, so I thought, you know what, I bet I can monetize this. I decided to lean on my baseball expertise to bet on individual baseball games. I bet for two days, I lost about four hundred dollars, and I haven’t tried it again since. I’ve learned more about baseball over the decade, but, have I, really?

If there’s one thing we know about baseball, it’s that we can’t predict it. The smaller the sample, the wilder it gets. But we can be so, so easily tricked, and never is that more clear than it is in the playoffs. In the playoffs, see, individual games are under greater scrutiny. And when you get to the World Series, people are searching for possible keys everywhere. *Everything* is important. This pitcher’s vulnerability could be exploited. That player on the bench will have a good matchup. The guy over there’s a bad defender. We examine these games in so much detail that we start to convince ourselves the games can be actually predicted. We convince ourselves the games will make sense. Earlier Friday, in my chat, I fielded countless questions about the degree to which the Indians would be screwed in Game 3. Road park, Josh Tomlin pitching, wind blowing strongly out, DH in left field. It was all lining up for the Cubs. It was so easy to believe, yeah, this is the Cubs’ game. How couldn’t it be?

You can stare at a coin all you like, but heads or tails will still come up half the time. An exhaustively-examined game in the World Series is not meaningfully more predictable than an unexamined regular-season game in July. Give it one game at a time, and baseball’s likely to baseball. Give it one game at a time, and Tomlin and the Indians can knock off the Cubs 1-0 in a pretty extreme hitters’ environment.

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Corey Kluber pitching on three days rest — and starting three games if the Series goes seven — won’t be all that uncommon. Teams have employed their best starter that way in the postseason numerous times. Sometimes the strategy works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Terry Francona doing so with Kluber makes perfect sense. Not to take anything away from Ryan Merritt, but the rookie repeating his shock-the-baseball-world outing against the Blue Jays would be… well, even more shocking. Lightning rarely strikes twice, and this is the World Series. Plus, Chicago’s lineup isn’t Toronto’s lineup (although both have issues against curveballs). Francona may be managing in Cleveland, but he lives in match-up city.

His explanation of the pitching plans show that logic, not desperation, is the determiner. Read the rest of this entry »

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John Lackey might be slightly overlooked on a Chicago Cubs team that’s almost ideally constructed. He isn’t young and he isn’t really a star — which tend to be the two traits that earn a player attention during the postseason. He is an above-average pitcher, though, and as the Cubs’ starter for Game Four of the World Series, he’s in a position to exert some influence over the club’s chances of winning the championship. With all of his antics on the mound, it’s hard to say Lackey does anything gracefully. What he has done, though is age quite well, putting up one of the best two-year runs among pitchers his age over the last three decades. And here’s something about him that’s relevant for Saturday’s game against Cleveland: while he doesn’t need a generous strike zone to succeed — his pitching ability and the great Cubs defense are enough — Lackey, more than most, is in a position to benefit from one.

Over the past two seasons, John Lackey has pitched more than 400 innings with a better-than-league-average FIP. Over the last 30 years, he’s one of just a dozen pitchers to pull off that feat between the age-36 to -37 seasons. While his 6.7 WAR total over that interval might not seem incredibly high, the only pitchers over the last three decades to pitch more innings with a higher WAR are (listed in order of wins) Randy Johnson, David Wells, Chuck Finley, Dennis Martinez, Jack Morris,  R.A. Dickey, Greg Maddux, and Woody Williams .

The relatively even success over the 2015 and -16 seasons doesn’t mean that Lackey hasn’t made adjustments. As Eno Sarris wrote, Lackey improved his change and took a different approach against left-handed batters this season that could have lessened his platoon splits. He both struck out and also walked a few more hitters this year while giving up homers at a higher rate (something to watch for if the wind is blowing out on Saturday), but because of the overall increase in scoring this season, Lackey’s fielding-independent numbers remained nearly identical when taken in context. While he isn’t mowing hitters down, he has continued to record an above-average strikeout rate and walk rate, and the Cubs appear to have gotten a pretty good deal on the two-year, $32 million contract Lackey signed, even if the team did also have to concede a draft pick.

Lackey is a pitcher who relies on swings to get batters out. His strike-zone percentage at 48% is a little below average, but he’s one of just five starting pitchers (Kevin Gausman, Cole Hamels, Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander) in 2016 to finish among the top-20 starters in out-of-zone swing rate (O-Swing%), in-zone swing rate (Z-Swing%), and overall swing percentage. Among the right-handers in that group, all of them throw several miles per hour harder than Lackey — and even the lefty Hamels throws a bit harder on average. Lackey relies on being close enough to the zone to (a) elicit swings on pitches that will either be missed or yield weak contact or (b) get called strikes on borderline pitches. Read the rest of this entry »

The Fall Classic is underway, with the underdog Cleveland Indians landing the first haymaker blow for their third series in a row. The NL Champion Chicago Cubs were clearly the best team in baseball throughout the regular season; will they be able to do what the Tribe’s previous postseason opponents couldn’t, and fight their way off of the ropes and onto ultimate victory?

This week, we’re taking a macro, ball-in-play-oriented look at each team and its key players. Earlier this week, we looked at the AL champs; today, it’s the Cubs’ turn under the microscope, as we examine granular data such as BIP frequencies, exit speeds and launch angles to get a feel for what made them tick in 2016.

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Right-hander Josh Tomlin starts for Cleveland tonight in Game Three of the World Series. While he does a lot well, he also has a weakness — namely, that he gives up more homers than the average pitcher. It’s possible that, among the explanations you’ll hear regarding that weakness, most will relate either to how it’s because Tomlin lives in the zone or never gives in or something along those lines. He certainly doesn’t walk people, so there would seem to be some logic to that argument.

It’s also tempting to point to the relationship between his walk rate and his home-run rate because of the extremes he’s reached in both departments. Record-setting extremes, actually. This year, Tomlin gave up 16 more homers than he did walks. In over 5200 qualified starting-pitcher seasons since World War II, nobody has ever produced a greater discrepancy in that department. Only four times — Carlos Silva in 2005, Brian Anderson in 1998, Brad Radke in 2005, and then Tomlin this year — has that difference run into double digits.

Still. The walk rate is nice. And it’s probably not why he gives up homers.

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Earlier recaps: Episode 1 / Episode 2 / Episode 3 / Episode 4.

Welcome to our recap of the fifth episode of “Pitch”, entitled “Alfonzo Guzman-Chavez”. As always, there are spoilers, so proceed with caution.

It’s 48 hours until the MLB trade deadline. The Padres have just won their sixth game in a row. Changes are likely coming, as the front office prepares for a postseason chase.

The Padres clubhouse is tense, with players obsessively checking for trade news and rumors. Mike (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) assures Ginny (Kylie Bunbury) that she isn’t going anywhere. Blip (Mo McRae) feels Mike needn’t worry, either, since he has a no-trade clause. Blip is concerned for himself, because one article mentioned him as a potential target for the Cubs.

General manager Oscar (Mark Consuelos) has three things he wants: “a setup guy, a utility infielder, and a cornerman who can hit.” Oscar asks manager Al (Dan Lauria) if he feels the team has a shot at contending should these be acquired. (You’re the GM, Oscar — that’s really more your call.) Al promises to keep the Padres in the playoff hunt if Oscar holds up his end of things.

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So, Kyle Schwarber is apparently not rusty. His first two games in Cleveland were so impressive that the Cubs even explored whether he was healthy enough to play the field in Chicago, before doctors put the kibosh on that idea. But with Schwarber torching Cleveland pitching the first two games of the series, the team now has a pinch-hitter they can’t wait to use in the three games in Wrigley this weekend. And having Schwarber ready to come off the bench should make for some fun cat-and-mouse strategy between Joe Maddon and Terry Francona.

The Tribe have two left-handed pitchers on their World Series roster, and one of them is Ryan Merritt, the soft-tossing rookie that they’re likely hoping they don’t have to use. For all intents and purposes, Andrew Miller is the only lefty in Cleveland’s bullpen, so the right-handedness of the Tribe’s relievers should make it fairly easy for Maddon to find a spot for Schwarber to hit. Because, despite his impressive walk against Miller in Game 1, you really don’t want to waste Schwarber’s one at-bat by having him face a left-handed pitcher.

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