The Phillies summarily dispatched the Marlins in two games this week in the wild card round, setting up a rematch with the Braves in the NLDS. On paper, Atlanta is the superior team, one that topped the majors with 104 wins this season and won the NL East by 14 games over Philadelphia. But playoff series aren’t won on paper, and baseball is the coin-tossiest of the major sports; its playoffs aren’t about crowning the best team, but the winning team — two correlated yet different things. The Braves had a 14-win advantage over the Phillies last year, too, and that didn’t keep Philadelphia from sending Atlanta back home on a midnight plane to Georgia in four games. The Phillies could easily do it again.

The Phillies didn’t come away with a championship in 2022, but anyone claiming that they had an unsuccessful season should have their pants checked for fire-related damage. Knocking out the Braves ought to have given them significant satifaction last year, given how Atlanta had come out on top in recent seasons. Both teams spent much of the mid-to-late 2010s in rebuilding processes, but the Braves had considerably more success; their 2022 playoff appearance was their fifth in as many seasons. Philadelphia, on the other hand, had trouble developing impact players at the rate Atlanta did; 2022’s postseason run was the franchise’s first in 11 years. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve done for the past few years, I’m going to be grading each eliminated postseason manager on their decision-making. We spend the year mostly ignoring managers’ on-field contributions, because to be honest, they’re pretty small. Using the wrong reliever in the eighth inning just doesn’t feel that bad on June 22; there are so many more games still coming, and the regular season is more about managing the grind than getting every possible edge every day. The playoffs aren’t like that; with so few games to separate wheat from chaff, every last ounce of win probability matters, and managers make personnel decisions accordingly. What better time to grade them?

My goal is to rank each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things – getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable – but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Coverage of the Twins’ sweep of the Blue Jays focused on Carlos Correa’s crafty veteran playoff leadership, but Royce Lewis, Pablo López, and Jhoan Duran were key parts of Minnesota’s victory too. Forget trusting your veterans – the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Correa is important because he’s a great player and great leader, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process. Yesterday, I covered the two American League teams that lost in the first round. Today, it’s the senior circuit’s turn. Read the rest of this entry »

You know how these articles go. There are two teams facing off in the playoffs. I name the players on each team, and maybe offer some lukewarm and heavily caveated opinions as to who is better. If I’m feeling punchy, I might slip in some jokes. Maybe there are some tables, perhaps named “Tale of the Tape” or something similar. It’s a tried and true formula.

For this series, I’m not going to do that, because you know who the Dodgers are and you probably just spent two days seeing the Diamondbacks announce themselves. We get it: the Dodgers have Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, and the Diamondbacks have a bunch of fast guys headlined by Corbin Carroll. No one needs to see 2,000 words worth of that. Instead, let’s try to predict the matchups that will determine this series. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about their takeaways from sweeps week in the wild card round (how sweep it is!) and pick the division series they’re most excited about, then examine Mariners POBO Jerry Dipoto’s comments about aspiring to win 54 percent of games over a decade (46:04) and provide updates on the results of two Effectively Wild drafts (1:23:37).

Audio intro: Ian Phillips, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Alex Ferrin, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Kram on Atlanta’s offense
Link to Clemens on clean innings
Link to Tango on lineups vs. Montgomery
Link to Canha HR quote
Link to ESPN comments about Rays
Link to Clemens on Schneider
Link to Dipoto clip
Link to Dipoto follow-up
Link to .540 spreadsheet
Link to Drellich on Dipoto
Link to Drellich on candid quotes
Link to Logan Davis on Twitter
Link to EW competitions/drafts
Link to MLBTR on Eppler

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As I’ve done for the past few years, I’m going to be grading each eliminated postseason manager on their decision-making. We spend the year mostly ignoring managers’ on-field contributions, because to be honest, they’re pretty small. Using the wrong reliever in the eighth inning just doesn’t feel that bad on June 22; there are so many more games still coming, and the regular season is more about managing the grind than getting every possible edge every day. The playoffs aren’t like that; with so few games to separate wheat from chaff, every last ounce of win probability matters, and managers make personnel decisions accordingly. What better time to grade them?

My goal is to rank each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things – getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is a skill I find particularly valuable – but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for it.

I’m also purposefully avoiding vague qualitative concerns like “trusting your veterans because they’ve been there before.” Coverage of the Twins’ sweep of the Blue Jays focused on Carlos Correa’s crafty veteran playoff leadership, but Royce Lewis, Pablo López, and Jhoan Duran were key parts of Minnesota’s victory too. Forget trusting your veterans – the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Correa is important because he’s a great player and great leader, not because of the number of playoff series he’s appeared in. There’s nothing inherently good about having been around a long time; when I’m evaluating decisions, “but he’s a veteran” just doesn’t enter my thought process. Let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Sunday in Arizona, Kyle Tucker came to the plate in Game 162 with 29 home runs, one shy of his career high of 30 recorded in both 2021 and ’22. He also had a career-high 30 stolen bases to his name, giving him a chance to become just the second player in Astros history to record a 30–30 season, after Jeff Bagwell, who did so in 1997 and ’99. (To be precise, he’d be the third Astro with a 30–30 season — Carlos Beltrán was dealt to Houston partway through his lone 30–30 campaign in 2004 — but just the second to reach those marks in a full season in an Astros uniform.) Tucker would join four others — Ronald Acuña Jr., Francisco Lindor, Julio Rodriguez, and Bobby Witt Jr. — in the 30-30 club this season, which would have been the biggest cohort of 30–30ers in a single year in big league history. In a game where there was a division title at stake, he had a shot to add some metaphorical hardware to his personal trophy case as well.

In the fifth inning, Tucker, well, touched ‘em all:

He struck a line drive into right field, where Arizona’s Jake McCarthy misjudged it with a few steps inward, allowing it to sail over his head. Tucker got on his horse, coasted into third, and appeared to pick up on some lackadaisical defensive effort on Arizona’s part, at which point he took off for home. He was there before the back end of the Diamondbacks’ relay could realize it was happening and do anything about it. Read the rest of this entry »

I guess we statistically inclined writers aren’t technically supposed to believe in momentum. At least, we’re not supposed to believe it’s measurable or predictive. In baseball as in physics, the trajectory of events can be altered in the blink of an eye. Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint the moment momentum changes. Not so here.

On Wednesday night, Aaron Nola followed up Zack Wheeler’s Game 1 masterpiece with seven scoreless innings of his own. The Phillies got to Braxton Garrett early and broke the game open with a late Bryson Stott grand slam. Final score: 7-1. Time to crank the Tiësto remix of Calum Scott’s cover of “Dancing On My Own,” play the video of Harry Kalas singing “High Hopes,” and hop on a plane to Atlanta for the NLDS.

It looked very, very easy, even by the standards of a two-game sweep, but it was not preordained. Needing one win to clinch the series, the Phillies were presented with two obvious chances to seize control of the game. They grabbed both without hesitation. Read the rest of this entry »

By overcoming Brandon Pfaadt’s rough start and connecting for three homers and four runs in four innings against Corbin Burnes, the Diamondbacks put themselves in a position to close out their best-of-three series against the Brewers on Wednesday night. In the early going, it looked like Milwaukee would flip the script by knocking around Arizona ace Zac Gallen and forcing a third game. The 28-year-old righty pulled himself together after allowing a pair of first-inning runs, however, and his teammates finally solved Freddy Peralta after he dominated them for five innings, breaking the game open in the sixth and hanging on for a 5-2 win at American Family Field. The Diamondbacks will advance to face the Dodgers in the Division Series.

For much of the night, it appeared these two teams were headed for a rubber match. Gallen was one of the majors’ top pitchers this year, and spent much of the season as the frontrunner for the NL Cy Young Award, but a flurry of home runs from June to August, and a whole lot of hard contact in general, probably took him out of serious consideration. Still, he finished second in the league in innings (210), third in WAR (5.2), fifth in FIP (3.27) and seventh in ERA (3.47).

The Diamondbacks looked to be in good hands, but from the outset on Wednesday, Gallen hardly pitched like an an ace. While he ranked sixth among qualified starters in first-pitch strike percentage during the regular season (66.4%), he fell behind each of the first three Brewers, preventing him from going to his secondary stuff more quickly, and the hitters made him pay. Christian Yelich laced a 2-0 fastball to right field for a leadoff single. William Contreras got ahead 2-0 as well, but ultimately whiffed on a curveball on the seventh pitch of the plate appearance while Yelich — who had already drawn two pickoff throws from Gallen — stole second. Carlos Santana got ahead 3-0, and twisted the knife by working a nine-pitch walk. Read the rest of this entry »

Whatever happens to the Twins for the rest of the playoffs, at least there won’t be any more talk about laundry-based curses. After five shutout innings from starter Sonny Gray, the Twins continued to keep the Jays’ bats silent en route to a 2–0 win in Game 2 to clinch the wild card series.

If nothing else, Wednesday’s game was a showcase of station-to-station baseball that’s generally unheard of these days. While a certain former All-Star shortstop broadcaster spent much of the game bemoaning Toronto trying to hit for power rather than stringing base hits together, the latter is the one thing the Jays were actually able to do, collecting nine singles on the day. But with the exception of Santiago Espinal, out at second on Matt Chapman’s double-play grounder in the sixth, all Toronto runners finished their innings stranded. The Twins didn’t do any better at hitting for extra bases, but aided by a walk allowed by José Berríos and then another by his controversial replacement, Yusei Kikuchi, their singles came at an opportune moment.

This was only the 21st game in playoff history to feature no extra-base hits, but only three games had more combined hits than the 16 for the Jays and Twins. Those were all higher-scoring affairs — two had 11 runs, and the third had a combined nine — so you can argue that there has never been a playoff game in which the absence of doubles, triples and homers was felt more. Read the rest of this entry »

The Texas Rangers locked up their first postseason series since 2016 with an exclamation point, once again dominating the Tampa Bay Rays, this time by a score of 7-1. Nathan Eovaldi shook off his late-season struggles to deliver a masterclass, while Corey Seager and Josh Jung chipped in a pair of doubles each (with the latter also adding a triple), and Adolis García and Evan Carter went deep. For the Rays, this marked their third season in a row of playoff disappointment, and while they won’t sit atop the list of postseason scoreless streaks after Curtis Mead’s RBI single in the seventh, they’ll head into the offseason with more question marks than they’ve had in recent memory.

After the lefty Jordan Montgomery shut them down in Game One, the Rays made a couple of notable changes in advance of facing the right-handed Eovaldi. First, they shed the Devil Rays uniforms that may have doomed them to the fate of their World Series-less ancestors. Second, and more directly in response to yesterday’s events, they swapped the recently returned Jose Siri — who made critical errors on both sides of the ball yesterday — for the left-handed hitting Josh Lowe, shifting Manuel Margot from right field to center in order to accommodate him. Read the rest of this entry »