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One of the great intrigues of the postseason is that when the final page turns on the regular season, the book slams shut. Anything that happened in the previous 162 games is firmly in the past, and anyone lucky enough to play more than that is granted a second chance to change something about the way his season is ultimately remembered, whether for good or for bad.

Forget what happened in the regular season; right now, Jorge Soler looks like a star. Carlos Correa is the clear-cut Rookie of the Year, and why would anyone question that Dallas Keuchel deserves the Cy Young Award? Haven’t you been paying attention?

Never mind that just 72 hours ago, Soler was still coming off a disappointing rookie season, Correa still trailed Francisco Lindor by more than a win on our WAR leaderboard, and Keuchel’s season-end line was still about indecipherable from David Price’s. By being on a playoff roster, every player is afforded the opportunity to write a new chapter of their history; those three happen to be taking advantage.

Jorge Soler, specifically, is having himself quite a time. There’s a problem, though, with trying to analyze a three-game stretch that covers nine plate appearances. The problem is that sometimes you end up with slash lines like 1.000/1.000/2.750, and those are just three silly numbers with slashes between. With nine plate appearances worth analyzing, it feels far more instructive to isolate them. That’s the only way you’re going to get anything out of it, at least. Rather than try to make too much out of Soler’s last nine plate appearances, let’s just find the best part about each one.

Plate appearance #1: walk

Best thing: Jorge Soler drew a walk!

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After getting a pair of home runs and an RBI double from superstar rookie shortstop Carlos Correa, the Astros took a 6-2 lead into the top of the eighth inning. Protecting a four run lead just six outs to go, Houston had a 96.8% chance of winning, which would have put advanced them to the ALCS to await the winner of the Blue Jays/Rangers series.

Then Will Harris gave up consecutive singles to Alex Rios, Alcides Escobar, Ben Zobrist, and Lorenzo Cain, as the Royals singled their way back into the game. With the go-ahead run suddenly at the plate, the Astros turned to left-hander Tony Sipp to go after Eric Hosmer, but Hosmer continued the single streak, plating another run and keeping the bases loaded. The lead was down to 6-4 and the tying run was in scoring position, with Kendrys Morales, the team’s most productive hitter this year, stepping to the plate. The team’s chances of winning had fallen to 55.6%.

But even with the Royals roaring back and Morales a quality hitter, there was also some upside to the at-bat. Morales is a double play machine, frequently hitting ground balls with men on base, and lacking the speed to prevent the opponents from turning two on just about any ball hit on the infield. Morales hit in 24 double plays this year, fifth most in baseball, and if Sipp could just get him to keep the ball on the infield, the Astros could put the comeback to a halt in a hurry.

Sipp did his job, and Morales did exactly what the Royals did not what him to do; hit a one-hop bouncer back to the mound. But everything that happened after Morales hit the ball is a reminder of just how small the differences can be between winning and losing.

Sipp just missed fielding the ball himself, and if he had gloved it cleanly, that’s a 1-2-3 double play, cutting down both the run at the plate and Morales at first base. That would have been the most perfect outcome the Astros could have hoped for, but the ball ricocheted off Sipp’s glove and out to shortstop.

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Well, it happened again.

I don’t need to remind you what happened last September 30, because it was one of the more memorable playoff games of our era. And then Monday, the same thing and the same team repeated. Many of the specific details weren’t alike, but the feelings were all the same — a game that was effectively over, followed by a sense of witnessing the improbable. A year ago, the Royals rallied two times. Monday, they rallied just once. Yet the odds they faced at the lowest points were similar, and thus similar odds were overcome. It doesn’t take long to develop a reputation for this. Luke Gregerson must find the Royals unkillable.

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The sun was still out when the first pitch was thrown in today’s Cubs-Cardinals Game 3. That’s as it should be. Wrigley Field is all about day baseball, and with a five o’clock start, the skies didn’t begin to darken until the fourth inning.

Right from the get-go, the crowd was sonorous, and without need of “Get loud!” prompting from the video board. A fervent fan base with 100-plus years of woe in their collective conscience doesn’t require help. (Not that kind, anyway.) And kudos to Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts for recognizing it. As the Chicago Tribune’s Paul Sullivan pointed out, Ricketts has decreed that no such artificial nonsense will besmirch the NL’s oldest venue.

Wrigley roared as one when Kyle Schwarber homered in the second. Two innings later, Starlin Castro equaled the rookie’s feat and the fans roared again. When Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo went back-to-back in the fifth, it was downright deafening. Read the rest of this entry »

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 giant and large 2015-16 free-agent market.

Below are links to ballots for five of this year’s free agents, all of them catchers.

Alex Avila (Profile)
Some relevant information regarding Avila:

• Has averaged 352 PA and 1.0 WAR over last three seasons.
• Has averaged 1.3 WAR per 450 PA* over last three seasons.
• Recorded a 0.3 WAR in 219 PA in 2015.
• Is projected to record 2.3 WAR per 450 PA**.
• Is entering his age-29 season.
• Made $5.4M in 2015, as part of deal signed in January of 2014.

*That is, a roughly average number of plate appearances for a starting catcher.
**Prorated version of final updated 2015 Steamer projections available here.

Click here to estimate years and dollars for Avila.

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The primary downside of the Chase Utley play over the weekend was that it happened, and that Ruben Tejada paid an unnecessary price for fielding his position. The secondary downside is that, because the play happened, it’s all anyone really wants to talk about, at least as far as that series is concerned. Which is too bad, because there’s a lot else going on, and as an example, I’d like to take a moment to discuss Noah Syndergaard. Syndergaard didn’t get the Game 2 win, but for a while he did impress, and he’s just generally fun to talk about.

One thing to talk about: Syndergaard made an immediate impression. There’s evidence that pitchers throw harder in the playoffs, and Syndergaard didn’t do much to hide his own adrenaline. According to Brooks Baseball, during the year, Syndergaard’s fastball averaged 98.1 miles per hour in the first inning, and 97.7 in the second. Against the Dodgers, it averaged 100.2 in the first inning, and 99.5 in the second before settling down. Of Syndergaard’s 20 fastest pitches of the year, he threw 13 on Saturday, all in the first three frames. Syndergaard was very conspicuously feeling it, and it took the Dodgers a while to catch up.

But if it’s the velocity that brings you in, it’s the rest of Syndergaard’s repertoire that keeps you engrossed. Already, Syndergaard throws one breaking ball with a nickname. Against the Dodgers, Syndergaard featured a second breaking ball, one he hadn’t played with much before.

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Today, the Braves made an announcement, and I happen to be part of it.

Wednesday will be my last day as Lead Prospect Analyst here at FanGraphs, as I’ve accepted the position of Assistant Director of Baseball Operations with the Atlanta Braves. The staff has been great to work for, particularly the guys who decided to take a chance on me: David Appelman and Dave Cameron. They gave me all the resources I asked for and all the support I could imagine for my sometimes odd-sounding ideas.

I think we accomplished something special in setting at least a new template for covering scouting and player development, if not a new standard. My 2016, 2017 and 2018 draft rankings will come out tomorrow, and I have one more project that will be rolling out soon. I was only able to finish about half of what I had set out to accomplish here, so I’m disappointed that I left some of my ambition on the table, but the opportunity I was given for a new challenge was too great to pass up.

In my new job, I’ll be working with arguably the best group of scouts in baseball and coming aboard under new GM John Coppolella. I’ve known Coppy for a while, dating back to when he was my boss with the Yankees for my first baseball operations job, in 2005, while I was still in college. I’m all in on his vision for running a front office and also building an organization, with his fingerprints already all over the organization. John Schuerholz and John Hart are legends and they have arguably the most impressive resumes in the game; I’m thrilled to work for them. It also seemed like the office could use a guy not named John.

I’ll be brief explaining my role, as I’ll be there to learn and contribute behind men with more experience than me. In short, I’ll be doing many of the same things I did for FanGraphs: contributing to the draft and international signings, scouting the minor leagues and doing what I can to improve the big league product, all of these from both a scouting and analytics perspective. I am grateful for everything the FanGraphs family has done for me and to you guys for reading and participating in the process. I look forward to this new challenge and will do everything I can to ensure that it includes multiple World Series titles.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and for all the feedback — positive and negative — that you’ve offered me over my time here. Keep reading FanGraphs, and start watching the Braves; I’m looking forward to what both organizations do going forward.

Early in Monday’s game between the Royals and Astros, Yordano Ventura tried to come inside against Carlos Correa, and he hit him. A little less early in the same game, Ventura again tried to come inside against Correa, and this time Correa did the hitting:

This calls for the usual screenshots to highlight the event’s subtle absurdity. The moment of contact, paused:

Clearly, an inside pitch, off the plate, although the stupid camera angle messes with our perception. Thankfully, the Gameday window doesn’t operate with a senselessly off-center angle:

Now you get it. First-pitch fastball, inside, not particularly close to being a strike. And yet, a dinger! And not one of the cheap dingers. This one was clobbered, even though the pitch was more than eight inches inside from the inner edge of home plate.

It’s not the first time Correa has done this. A 2015 leaderboard of right-handed hitters who’ve homered on pitches at least a half-foot inside from the edge of the strike zone:

• Carlos Correa, 3 such home runs
• Matt Duffy, 2
• several players, 1

Correa leads baseball in this admittedly arbitrary category, and only he and Duffy have done this multiple times. Correa’s Monday home run was one of the most inside pitches hit out of the yard on the year, and while one could argue Correa would be better off taking these pitches instead of swinging, since he won’t always go deep, Correa has proven his ability to turn inside pitches around. He can, at least, do more damage on these pitches than most. It’s not an accident — he works hard on keeping his hands in, which is what lets him get out in front of these.

Correa just batted a third time while I was writing this. The first two times, Ventura tried to work him in. The third time, Ventura tried to work him away. Correa slashed a tie-breaking double down the line in right field. He’s good at that too.

And I thought I was done writing about prospect debuts for the year. With Ruben Tejada out of commission following his controversial rendezvous with Chase Utley, the Mets added 24-year-old Matt Reynolds to their NLDS roster for tonight’s game. Tonight marks Reynolds’ first time on a big league roster, so assuming he gets into a game this October, he’ll accomplish the rare feat of making his big league debut in the playoffs.

As you can probably imagine, this doesn’t happen all that often. Reynolds would be only the second player in modern history to break into the big leagues during the postseason. The most recent case was Mark Kiger, who debuted as a defensive replacement for Oakland in the 2006 ALCS. The only other case that I’m aware of happened in 1885, when some guy named Bug Holliday did it. There was also Chet Trail, who was on the Yankees 1964 World Series roster as a “bonus baby” due to a technicality, but never got into a game. So, yeah, this is an oddity.

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