The final day of the regular season saw the fulfillment of what was, for Ichiro, a career-long dream — he got to pitch in a game in the major leagues. Which is something that made Ichiro happy, and it made all the other players happy, and it made all the fans happy, and here we all are, delighted to no end that Ichiro got to stand on the rubber. Think about it hard enough and maybe you end up wondering why you feel so good that Ichiro finally got what he wanted, given that he’s made more than $150 million in the country on the other side of the ocean from the country in which he’s most popular, but then they’re all living gifted lives. And this is only in part about Ichiro anyway — it’s at least as much about us and our own curiosity. Ichiro always wanted to pitch, and we always wanted to see it.

It’s pretty easy to pinpoint the moment when people here wondered what Ichiro might look like on the mound. It goes back to that throw that’s part of the origin story of the Ichiro legend:

That was the first glimpse we had of his arm. That’s when we knew, but Ichiro had already known for years.

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Talking about matchups in a one-game playoff is an almost futile enterprise. Batter versus pitcher numbers have proven to be mostly useless, and other than a perusal of the platoon situations, a discussion of roster decisions around the edges, and some tinkering with the order in which you throw your pitchers, previewing Tuesday’s American League Wild Card game seems like heavy-breathing about the pre-game coin toss in football.

There is one way you can classify pitchers and hitters that may be meaningful to this game in particular, however. Because of the way swings work, there are matchup problems for certain hitters against certain pitchers. Most of the research says that extreme ground ball pitchers have problems with fly ball hitters — one study found fly ball hitters had better outcomes against ground-ball pitchers than any other matchup of batted ball mixes, and another found that this type of matchup produces the most line drives in baseball. And it makes sense, because fly ball hitters usually have ‘uppercut’ type swings that can reach down and produce power on the low pitch.

Dallas Keuchel has the second-best ground-ball rate in baseball. The Yankees should have Chris Young bat leadoff.

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Ben and Sam banter about an eventful weekend in baseball, then discuss some of the developments that surprised them most during the 2015 regular season.

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An offseason ago, the Nationals made a commitment to Max Scherzer worth $210 million. Scherzer subsequently reduced his OPS allowed by an incredible 63 points. Now, in fairness, these are the five best OPS-allowed figures by qualified pitchers in the last 15 years:

• 2015 Jake Arrieta, .507
• 2015 Zack Greinke, .507
• 2015 Clayton Kershaw, .521
• 2014 Clayton Kershaw, .521
• 2013 Clayton Kershaw, .521

The feeling is that Kershaw is about to finish a distant third for the Cy Young. That despite having one of the all-time best seasons, his third such season in a row. As so often happens, a post about a different pitcher being amazing has to carve out space to acknowledge that Clayton Kershaw is more amazing. It’s incredible that Kershaw presumably won’t win the Cy Young, but it’s only a little less incredible that Scherzer won’t get a single first-place vote. Or, I imagine, a single second-place vote. Scherzer just finished a year in which he was worth every penny, and it was a year that saw him throw a couple of no-hitters. That’s twice as many no-hitters as one no-hitter, and one no-hitter qualifies as a historic career achievement.

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If you’ve been reading FanGraphs for a few years, you probably know what’s coming. Since MLB instituted the one-game Wild Card play-in contests, I’ve been a loud advocate for the idea of abandoning the traditional starter/reliever pitching format for these winner-take-all games. After all, relievers are more effective on a per-batter basis than starting pitchers, and most teams don’t have the kinds of starting pitchers who can justify being left in the game a third time through the batting order, especially when their team’s season hangs in the balance.

The National League this year is an exception, though. The Cubs and Pirates both feature legitimate aces, and if you have Jake Arrieta or Gerrit Cole, it is perfectly reasonable to go with a more traditional approach and let them attempt to dominate their opponents. After all, hitters posted a .540 OPS against Jake Arrieta the third time through the order this year; Cole was at .630. Those are the kinds of pitchers that you can comfortably ask to go six or seven innings even in an elimination game without putting your season at risk while a clearly better alternative sits in the bullpen.

But in the AL Wild Card game on Tuesday, the conditions are perfect for both teams to manage their pitching staff in unconventional manners.

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Episode 600
Dayn Perry is a contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and the author of three books — one of them not very miserable. He’s also the guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

This edition of the program is sponsored by Draft, the first truly mobile fantasy sports app. Compete directly against idiot host Carson Cistulli by clicking here.

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 57 min play time.)

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When the city of San Jose, California sued Major League Baseball back in the summer of 2013, the city’s attorneys likely anticipated that they would eventually have to litigate the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in order to prevail in the suit. Indeed, because San Jose alleged that MLB’s refusal to allow the Oakland Athletics to move to the city – territory assigned to the San Francisco Giants under the league constitution – violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, the city was directly challenging MLB’s infamous antitrust exemption. And because it was the Supreme Court that originally created the exemption nearly 100 years ago, that court is the only judicial body that has the power to modify baseball’s antitrust immunity today.

Given all that, it was not particularly surprising that San Jose quickly lost at both the trial and appellate court levels, with both courts basing their dismissals of the city’s lawsuit on the sport’s antitrust exemption. Nor was it surprising to learn in April that San Jose was officially appealing the suit to the Supreme Court.

As I noted at the time San Jose filed its appeal, the city faced long odds of successfully persuading the Supreme Court to take its case. Not only does the Court grant less than 3% of the appeals it receives in any given year, but it has also subsequently reaffirmed baseball’s antitrust exemption on two separate occasions since first creating the doctrine in 1922, both times insisting that any change in the law must come from Congress, and not the courts.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the U.S. Supreme Court officially rejected San Jose’s appeal on Monday, marking the end of the city’s antitrust lawsuit against the league.

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Brandon Guyer homered in his first big league bat. That was in 2011, a year in which he went deep 16 times, in 429 at bats, between Triple-A and Tampa Bay. The following spring, Baseball America wrote that, “Guyer offers and impressive combination of speed and power,” and is “ready to become a big league regular.”

Then he got hurt. In late May, Guyer underwent shoulder surgery and was lost for the balance of the 2012 season. He returned to Durham in 2013, where he batted over .300, but with just seven home runs. A year ago, he left the yard a mere three times, in 259 at bats, in part-time duty with the Rays.

The 29-year-old University of Virginia product appears to be getting his stroke back. The resurgence isn’t dramatic – he finished this year with eight home runs in 332 at bats – but Guyer is looking more and more like his old self. Half of his homers traveled over 400 feet, and all went at least 360 feet. Seven came off lefties, against whom he had an .847 OPS.

Guyer’s glimpses of power came primarily as an often-platooned outfielder and as a lead-off hitter. He slashed .266/.361/.416 overall, and whether he projects as a regular going forward is hard to say. Some of that may depend on his ability to clear fences, which presents a bit of a quandary. Guyer likes to hit home runs – everyone does – but he’s determined that it’s not in his best interest to adopt that mindset. Read the rest of this entry »

Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Los Angeles AL (Richards) at Texas (Hamels) | 15:05 ET
Houston (McCullers) at Arizona (Ray) | 15:10 ET
Three clubs enter the season’s final day with uncertain prospects regarding their postseason lot. A Rangers victory would both (a) secure their place atop the American League’s westernmost division and also (b) eliminate the Angels at the same time, automatically granting the second wild-card spot to the Astros. A Rangers loss, meanwhile, would engender disorder not unlike the sort found during France’s Reign of Terror. How many noblemen and -women will be executed? Only time will tell. And furthermore, as Ben Lerner has observed, only time will tell if time will tell.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Texas Radio and Houston Television.

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