Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the end of the NLCS, discuss the discourse surrounding the improbability of and fallout from the Diamondbacks-Rangers World Series matchup, banter about the Brewers always losing in the playoffs to eventual pennant winners, preview the World Series, postulate a conspiracy surrounding this postseason’s lack of extra-inning games, and react to the Red Sox hiring ex-pitcher Craig Breslow as their new Chief Baseball Officer/POBO, then (54:14) Stat Blast about how the World Series and future postseasons might be swayed by a reliever familiarity effect that could counter the pitcher-usage changes caused by the times-through-the-order penalty and restore longer starts, including a chat (1:12:06) with reliever-familiarity-effect researcher Dr. David J. Gordon.

Audio intro: Tom Rhoads, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Guy Russo, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Baumann on NLCS G7
Link to Ben C.’s Series preview
Link to Ginny Searle’s Series preview
Link to Neil Paine’s Series preview
Link to MLB.com on Ginkel
Link to Jay Jaffe on Scherzer
Link to Leo Morgenstern on Semien
Link to tweet about Brewers losses
Link to MLBTR on Breslow
Link to 2017 Breslow article
Link to info on Eovaldi game
Link to Topps Now
Link to Cameron Grove EW episode
Link to Cameron Grove tweet
Link to Cameron Grove study
Link to David Gordon study
Link to Ben’s SP study
Link to Ben on reliever familiarity
Link to D-backs headlines wiki

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Cristian Javier had built an impressive postseason resume ahead of Game 7 of the ALCS. Across 12 relief appearances and four starts, he had compiled a 2.08 ERA and 7.5% championship win probability added. His first three starts in the playoffs were particularly impressive; he held the Yankees scoreless on a single hit in last year’s ALCS, was the starting pitcher of the Astros’ combined no-hitter in the World Series, and held the Twins to a single hit in the ALDS this year. His 18 total hits allowed and .123 opponent’s batting average were by far the lowest among any pitcher with more than 40 postseason innings pitched.

With such a strong track record, the Astros had to feel confident handing him the ball on Monday night. But things did not go according to plan, as Javier lasted six batters and recorded just a single out, allowing three runs on four hits and a walk, before getting pulled. It was his worst postseason outing of his career and a big reason why Houston isn’t back in the World Series to defend its championship. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the nice things about the playoffs is that there’s often just one game happening at a time. Don’t get me wrong. I love a summer day with a full slate of 15 games, but you are where your attention is, and there’s too much baseball happening in any one day for us to be present for all of it. When the whole of the baseball world gets compressed down to one high-stakes game, you catch little things that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.

During the NLCS, I noticed a little thing about Kevin Ginkel. It was about how he holds runners on second base, and man, does he hold runners on second base. Here’s the pitch that caught my attention:

Read the rest of this entry »

The World Series. It’s a playoff-capping battle that’s so iconic that other sports and activities borrow its name. The World Series of Poker, of Darts, of Snooker, the FINA Marathon Swim World Series, even briefly the World Series of Country Music Proudly Presents Stock Car Racing’s Entertainers of the Year – these events didn’t pick their name by accident, they’re basking in the glory of a long-running staple. Even as baseball matters less and less, the World Series is a big name on the marquee.

One of the best parts of playoff baseball, at least in my eyes, is that the brightest stage isn’t exclusively the domain of the top couple of teams in the game. Sure, the Dodgers and Astros have been there a lot in the last decade. Sure, the Cardinals and Yankees have a bunch of rings. But baseball is a variance-rich sport, and the playoffs are short. Make the dance and you might end up one of the last few teams standing, even if your squad doesn’t have its own wing in Cooperstown. One obvious example? This year’s clash between the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks.

The Rangers are the closest thing we’re going to get to a postseason standby here. Sure, their last playoff appearance before this run came in 2016, but their roster is packed with playoff heroes. Corey Seager carried the Dodgers to a 2020 title. Max Scherzer seems to always be pitching in win-or-die games. Nathan Eovaldi saved Boston’s bacon in 2018 and has made a career out of coming up big in important spots. Will Smith pitched for the last two World Series winners (seriously!). Aroldis Chapman isn’t what he once was, but at his peak, he was a key figure in breaking the century-long Cubs curse. Their manager is Bruce Freaking Bochy, an October legend who has never lost a Game 7. The Rangers as a franchise might not be a World Series name brand – their trips to the Fall Classic in 2010 and 2011 ended in losses — but the ingredients are no different than what you’d expect to get in the luxury aisle. Read the rest of this entry »

Writing about playoff trends is risky business. The entire postseason, to this point, comprises 36 individual games. In the regular season, the league hit the 36-game mark on April 2. If you looked at the stolen base success rate that early into the season — 88% through those first 36 games — you’d have thought we were in for an absolute free-for-all under the new rules. Writing about individual players is even more dangerous. The most that anyone has played in this postseason is 13 games; 13 games into his season, Matt Chapman led the majors in WAR. Jorge López hadn’t given up an earned run. No one on the Rays knew what it felt like to lose a game. Mookie Betts had a 13-game stretch in mid-April where he slashed .184/.298/.306. Shohei Ohtani had a .538 OPS over 13 games in mid-May.

Nevertheless, we can’t not write about the postseason. It’s the postseason! The sample size will always be small, but we must try to make sense of it anyway, to find meaning in the small sample weirdness. And on that note, it’s time to talk about Marcus Semien. 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 evaluate 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.” Playoff coverage lovingly focuses on clutch plays by proven performers, but Adolis García and Alek Thomas have been great, too. Forget trusting your veterans; the playoffs are about trusting your best players. Corey Seager is important because he’s great, 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.

One note: In the pitching section, I’m taking a more specific look at reliever matchups. This 2022 Cameron Grove study, which I’ve mentioned in a few prior report cards, measures a repeat-matchup reliever penalty. A forthcoming article, which I’ve reviewed, examines the issue without focusing on specific matchups, but rather looking at relievers pitching on back-to-back days or on short rest after heavy workloads. Both of these things are, unsurprisingly, bad for reliever performance. Managing the balance between starter and reliever over-work is really hard. I probably haven’t given enough credit to the necessity of balancing bullpen workloads against particular opposing batters in the past, but I’ll make a note of it going forward.

I’ve already covered the losing managers of the Wild Card round and the various division series eliminations. Today, it’s Dusty Baker’s turn. Read the rest of this entry »

When they acquired him from the Mets on July 30, the Rangers may have envisioned Max Scherzer starting Game 7 of a postseason series, but probably not under the circumstances that led to the decisive game of the ALCS against the Astros, or the early exit that followed. While Texas won in decisive fashion, the 39-year-old righty was quite shaky for the second outing in a row, and far from peak form. In context, that’s hardly a surprise given that his two ALCS starts were his first ones since being sidelined by an arm injury five weeks earlier. As the Rangers await their World Series matchup with the Diamondbacks, his performances are worth a closer look.

Scherzer left his September 12 start against the Blue Jays after 5.1 shutout innings but just 72 pitches due to what was initially termed a triceps spasm but soon revealed to be a low-grade strain of the teres major, a muscle that sits above the latissimus dorsi and attaches the scapula (shoulder blade) to the humerus (upper arm bone). At the time, Rangers general manager Chris Young was publicly pessimistic about the possibility of Scherzer pitching in the postseason if the Rangers made it, given an expected four-to-six week recovery period. “I don’t want to rule it out at this point,” he told reporters. “We’ll see where the next two weeks go and how he’s feeling. That said, it’s probably unlikely.”

Schezer didn’t pitch again in September, but he was able to play catch within a week of his injury, opening up the possibility of a return on the near side of that timeframe. While he progressed far enough to throw nearly 40 pitches in a simulated game on October 6, the Rangers left him off the Division Series roster they submitted the next day; they hardly missed him while upending the 101-win Orioles. By advancing to the ALCS, they bought Scherzer time for another simulated game before he took the ball in Game 3 on October 18 at Globe Life Field, with the team having already jumped out to a 2–0 series lead.

Understandably, Scherzer was raring to go, and he came out firing, throwing a 95-mph fastball on his first pitch to Jose Altuve, albeit slightly off the plate and outside for ball one. Working mostly around the edges of the strike zone, he sped through the inning on just eight pitches but needed nearly all of the warning track for center fielder Leody Taveras to haul in Altuve’s 100.7-mph fly ball 393 feet away from home. He struck out Michael Brantley on three pitches, the last a low-and-away curve that Brantley chased, then got Alex Bregman to fly to Taveras on a 95.7-mph fly to deep right center.

The second inning didn’t go nearly as well, and whatever Willis Reed effect Scherzer’s return might have produced quickly wore off. Over the course of 22 pitches, he hit Yordan Alvarez in the leg; struck out José Abreu looking at a 95.2-mph fastball; walked Kyle Tucker; gave up a 104.8 mph single to Mauricio Dubón on a slider at the bottom of the zone; induced Jeremy Peña to pop up; threw a wild pitch that scored Alvarez; and finally yielded a two-run single to Martín Maldonado, 101.1 mph off the bat. Fortunately for Scherzer, the slow-footed catcher was thrown out trying to advance to second base following a throw home, but for the first time in the series, the Rangers trailed.

The Astros continued to add to their lead, with Altuve leading off the third with a solo homer off a high fastball and Abreu leading off the fourth with a 112.5-mph double off a hanging slider, then coming around to score on a single by Dubón. Even while closing out his evening by striking out Peña (chasing a low curve) and Maldonado (looking at a slider on the inside corner), Scherzer had allowed five runs in four frames. He struck out four and walked only one, and while he did generate a 35% called strike and walk rate (CSW%) via eight whiffs and 14 called strikes, nine of the 12 batted balls he surrendered were hard-hit balls of 95 mph or higher, and all five hits were 101 mph or higher. Houston rockets, indeed.

Down 5–0 when Scherzer departed, the Rangers made a game of it, but lost 8–5. The Astros clawed their way back into the series, and Scherzer got the call again on Monday night. The potent Rangers offense staked him to a 3–0 lead before he even took the mound, but things didn’t go much better than in his first start; in fact, Altuve blasted his first pitch, a 93.7-mph high fastball, off the out-of-town scoreboard in left field for a ringing double. Bregman grounded out, and after Alvarez was intentionally walked, Abreu scorched a low slider down the left field line for an RBI single; all three balls were 99.9 mph off the bat or higher, if not necessarily elevated. Scherzer escaped by getting Brantley to hit into a routine 4-6-3 double play, a grounder that came off the bat at a comparatively pokey 88.3 mph. Though he was obviously on thin ice, by his own admission he kept his composure better than in Game 3, and that DP produced the game’s highest WPA (.116).

After a comparatively smooth second inning capped by another pair of back-to-back strikeouts of Peña (high 95.3-mph fastball) and Maldonado (chasing a slider in the dirt), then an Altuve groundout to start the third, Scherzer served up a middle-middle fastball to Bregman, who mashed it for a homer to left center, cutting the score to 4–2. Seven pitches later, including five straight foul balls, Alvarez reached out and drove a curveball that was well off the plate off the scoreboard for a triple. While third baseman Josh Jung’s play on an Abreu chopper prevented Alvarez from coming home, manager Bruce Bochy tabbed Jordan Montgomery — working on two days of rest — to finish the inning, which he did by getting Brantley to line out. The Rangers then broke things open with a four-run fourth inning; Montgomery added an additional two innings before Bochy turned things over to his late-inning guys, who shut the door for an 11–4 win.

For the outing, Scherzer walked two and struck out two, getting just six whiffs and four called strikes for a 23% CSW%. Six of the 10 batted balls he allowed were hit 95 mph or harder, including all four hits. All told, in his two outings he allowed seven runs via nine hits and two homers in 6.2 innings, that on the heels of an inconsistent season in which he posted his highest ERA since 2011 and the highest FIP of his 16-year career:

Batters have hit Scherzer exceptionally hard, with his xERA (which I estimated by interpolating his .395 xwOBA via the Statcast leaderboard) more than double his regular-season mark:

Via Baseball Savant, Scherzer’s .333 batting average allowed is 60 points ahead of his xBA, and his .704 slugging percentage allowed is 120 points ahead of his xSLG, but even those expected numbers yield an xERA that could be mistaken for a Boeing model.

Pitchwise, Scherzer is mustering slightly greater velocity than during the regular season, knowing he won’t have to pace himself for 90 or 100 pitches. But for the most part, his offerings are getting less spin — and here it’s worth noting that he drew a sticky stuff suspension in April — and less movement:

Those spec changes are a mixed bag. By Stuff+, for which we actually have postseason numbers to compare to his regular-season ones (which isn’t the case for PitchingBot), Scherzer’s fastball grades out out as slightly improved thanks to the velo uptick. Likewise for his cutter and change, though both have been used much less often:

The problem is that Scherzer’s breaking pitches and overall location have been worse, and while Stuff+ doesn’t account for contact, you’ve seen the damage. Broken out by pitch type, batters are connecting at averages of 94.6 mph or higher on all of them. Against the fastball, they’ve averaged 94.9 mph on the 14 they’ve connected with, for a .385 AVG and .923 SLG, and against the 12 breaking pitches they’ve made contact with, it’s .333 AVG/.583 SLG. Those two classifications account for 86% of his pitches and 87% of his contact, compared to 76% of the former and 70% of the latter. Basically, I think, he’s shortened his arsenal, becoming more predictable and less precise, and while he’s fooled some hitters some of the time, he’s paid a steep price when he hasn’t.

All of this is reading into a limited sample of data, and it’s worth noting that he faced the Astros four times between the regular season and the postseason, which may have helped them crack his codes. As a Met, he threw eight innings of one-run ball in an 11–1 rout on June 19, but he was thumped for seven runs — three via homers by Alvarez, Brantley, and Abreu, the last a grand slam — in three innings in a 12–3 loss on September 6 with the Rangers. Scherzer did face the Diamondbacks once, on July 4, surrendering four runs in six innings, three by solo homers to Corbin Carroll, Christian Walker, and Lourdes Gurriel Jr., the last two of which were back-to-back. Those two outings accounted for two of the four times he served up three or more homers in a start this year.

With Montgomery and Nathan Eovaldi likely to start the first two games of the World Series, Scherzer should have six or seven days between starts, giving him more time to rebuild strength and make adjustments. “You’re always tinkering with stuff. You’re always making little adjustments and trying to find different stuff,” he said before his first start of the ALCS. Perhaps he can summon better results and give his season a storybook ending after all.