It won’t be remembered this way, but last night’s Braves/Phillies Game 2 clash provides an interesting bookend to the interminable Blake Snell discussion we’ve been having every October since the moment it happened in 2020. Let’s set the scene: Zack Wheeler looked absolutely dominant to start the night, bowling the Braves over to the tune of five no-hit innings, with an error the only blemish on his pitching line. He started to wobble in the sixth, with a walk and a single leading to an unearned run. The Phillies led 4-1, and Rob Thomson had the bullpen working overtime, but Wheeler struck out Austin Riley to end the threat and keep the bullpen at bay.

Clearly, the Phillies were considering going to a reliever, and you can understand why. They showed a ton of trust in their bullpen in the first game against Atlanta, and the ‘pen delivered: 5.1 scoreless innings fueled a 3-0 victory. After an off day, the gang was rested, and today is another off day, which meant there would be more time to recover, particularly considering there were only three innings to cover. Read the rest of this entry »

2:02

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to my first solo October chat of this postseason. I hope you’re enjoying the playoffs so far or at the very least are faring better than the Dodgers. I did a quick piece on last night’s Phillies-Braves game and its wild finish (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/late-homers-wild-final-play-help-braves-kn…), and before that a piece on Sandy Alcantara’s Tommy John surgery (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/sandy-alcantaras-volume-and-velocity-lead-…). Anyway, on with the show…

2:07

Jay Jaffe: I’m on record as disliking this current format, both because of how diluted the field becomes when you start including the league’s sixth-best team, because the advantages of winning the division aren’t great enough (the third seed has to play), and because best-of-three is so random that it tells us almost nothing about who’s the better team. I much preferred the 5-teams-per-league format because i thought the one-and-done Wild Card game was the appropriate penalty for qualifying without  winning the division, but it’s worth noting that for all of the handwringing that goes on every year, the off-time between the end of the regular season and the start of the Division Series there was the same as it is for the recipients of the bye under the current format.

2:10

Jay Jaffe: I do believe framing should be part of WAR and wish we had it going much further back. I don’t think its value will go away entirely because it seems quite clear we’re not getting a full ABS (automatic ball and strike) system but more likely a challenge system, and even that has a ways to go before it’s ready for the majors. But even if that weren’t the case, we should be using the data we have for the period where it was relevant.

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Postseason stats are now available in our leaderboards!

The leaderboards can be accessed in the Leaders navigation bar, or by using the “Season Type” filter in the leaderboards themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

Through the course of a season, it can be difficult to appreciate catcher defense. The expectation is that catchers will put their body on the line for their team day in and day out. But while they have their opportunities to save runs and steal strikes, no single block, frame, or throw has a significant effect on the season; at best, you’re saving a single run. If you miss a block or don’t get your hand under a low fastball in the shadow zone, you just move on and get the next one. But in a close playoff game, each of those pitches suddenly becomes more important, and along with that, the role of the catcher. These are the times when you get to see a catcher who really controls the game, just like Jonah Heim has.

Heim was one of the best catchers in baseball this year, delivering 4.1 WAR over 131 games. From a defensive perspective, he was the best in baseball regardless of position according to Defensive Runs Above Average, third-best according to Deserved Runs Prevented, and eighth-best according to Statcast’s Fielding Run Value. Visually, the argument is just as compelling. He is smooth in every aspect of the game and easily deserving of the statistical reputation he’s established for himself. He’s showing extreme poise in guiding a staff that’s missing some of its best pitchers, allowing them to take the risks they need to combat a talented Orioles’ lineup. Read the rest of this entry »

In Game 1 of the NLDS, the 84-win Arizona Diamondbacks raced to a commanding 11-2 victory over the 100-win Los Angeles Dodgers, their longtime tormenters in the NL West. While Game 2’s 4-2 win wasn’t quite as dominant, it nevertheless lifted the D-backs to a 2-0 series lead and the brink of a sweep. With a combination of patience (forcing Bobby Miller to throw 52 pitches in under two innings) and guile (becoming the second team to notch four stolen bases in a game this postseason), the upstart Arizonans firmly established themselves as legitimate title contenders.

Though the Los Angeles crowd roared at Miller’s first 100-mph heater, déjà vu set in within a few hitters. With the bases loaded and no one out in the top of the first, Christian Walker rocketed a four-seam fastball 105.6 mph off the bat to deep center. But while James Outman missed his first chance on Saturday, he didn’t blink this time, leaping and snagging the slicing drive and limiting the damage to a sac fly:

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The Braves can thank Austin Riley for pulling Monday night’s win out of a hat in the late innings. His two-run homer off Jeff Hoffman in the bottom of the eighth inning of NLDS Game 2 gave the Braves their fifth unanswered run and a 5–4 lead. His heads-up throw to first base to double up Bryce Harper at the tail end of a wild, spectacular play secured the game’s final out, helping the Braves escape Truist Field with a split after spending most of the night looking like they would be heading to Philadelphia on the brink of elimination.

That game-ending double play occurred with Nick Castellanos at the plate and Harper, representing the tying run after drawing a leadoff walk against A.J. Minter (who was then replaced by closer Raisel Iglesias), on first. Castellanos swatted a towering 101-mph drive an estimated 392 feet to deep center field. Center fielder Michael Harris II got on his horse to run down the ball, making a leaping catch at the wall to take away a sure extra-base hit that could have tied the game. Harper, who had been running on contact, had to turn back after passing second base, and though Harris’ relay throw bounced past cutoff man Ozzie Albies, Riley alertly backed up the play, backhanding the ball and side-arming a peg to first baseman Matt Olson in time to nab Harper for one of the craziest endings to a postseason game in recent memory. Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday, three of the four home playoff teams lost the opener of their respective Division Series. The losses ranged from 3-2 dramas to 11-2 laughers. Sunday, the American League teams played their second games, and the home teams went 0-2. Now that we’ve seen six games and the home teams are 1-5, it’s time to ask the obvious question: Is this format irrevocably broken?

Okay, fine, that’s not really a fair question. But there’s been a lot of hue and cry about the playoff system recently, headlined by an article by the estimable Ken Rosenthal that came out this morning in The Athletic, and as the resident “I don’t see what all the fuss is about” guy at FanGraphs, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. What better time to dive into the numbers and see if we can find some interesting facts on either side of this debate.

The biggest gripe, as far as I can tell, is that the layoff between the end of the regular season and the start of the Division Series unfairly disadvantages teams that secured a bye. Their opponents get to play baseball, while they’re forced to sit on their butts. It’s a daily sport, goes the argument; disrupting that rhythm leads to a disadvantage even if extra rest sounds like a carrot rather than a stick.
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Alas, even throwbacks get injured. For all of the excitement about the extent to which Sandy Alcantara bucked recent trends by piling up innings and pitching complete games en route to the 2022 NL Cy Young award, his combination of volume and velocity — both at the outer edge of what pitchers of recent vintage have shown they could sustain — placed him at risk for an arm injury. His season ended about a month before those of his Marlins teammates, who made it as far as the NL Wild Card Series, and on Friday the 28-year-old righty announced that he had undergone Tommy John surgery, which will sideline him for the 2024 season.

Alcantara missed just one start over the first five months of the season due to a bout of “very mild” biceps tendinitis in late April, but after throwing eight innings in his September 3 start against the Nationals, he landed on the injured list with what was initially diagnosed as a flexor strain. On September 13, Marlins manager Skip Schumaker told reporters that an MRI revealed that Alcantara had actually sprained his ulnar collateral ligament. Even so, he soon resumed a throwing program. After multiple pain-free bullpen sessions, he was allowed to make a rehab start for Triple-A Jacksonville on September 21. He threw four scoreless innings, but afterwards told the team that he felt renewed tightness in his forearm. The Marlins announced that he was being shut down for the remainder of the season.

While the Marlins hadn’t offered any indication that Alcantara’s sprain was significant enough to merit surgery, it’s not terribly surprising; after all, a sprain is a tear, and with a UCL sprain, it needn’t be a full thickness tear to require surgery. It’s unclear whether the injury worsened with that rehab outing, but the more likely explanation is that as with the Orioles and Félix Bautista, the Marlins qualifying for the postseason made it worth seeing whether Alcantara could pitch through a partial tear. The answer, sadly, was no. Read the rest of this entry »

If the Twins were supposed to be a speed bump on the Astros’ familiar path to the World Series, nobody sent them the message, as they got revenge for Game 1’s 6-4 loss with a convincing 6-2 victory that wasn’t even as close as the score. By winning Sunday, the Twins ensure that we’ll finally have at least one series this postseason that isn’t a sweep as the teams head to Target Field for Game 3.

While nearly everyone on the Twins contributed in Game 2, I don’t think many people will disagree with me when I say that this was Pablo López’s game. While he held the Blue Jays to one run in his Wild Card start, I wouldn’t call that outing a dominating performance. This one was. Against the Astros, a better offense than the Jays, López went seven strong innings, striking out seven and allowing six hits. Bill James’ Game Scores might not be a whiz-bang Statcast measure, but I think they do a great job of giving a general feel of starts from a historical, fan perspective, and López’s Game Score ranks very high among Twins’ postseason outings since the Senators moved to Minnesota:

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BALTIMORE — “We need to start taking a little bit of pressure off our pitchers and start scoring earlier in the game,” Orioles manager Brandon Hyde said before Game 2 of the ALDS against Texas. The previous afternoon, Baltimore had lost a cagey affair, playing from behind most of the way. And despite numerous opportunities, the Orioles never could tie the game back up.

In the bottom of the first inning on Sunday, Hyde’s offense obliged him, stringing together three singles (including an honest-to-God Baltimore chop from Ryan Mountcastle) and a walk to pull in front, 2–0, against the previously unhittable Jordan Montgomery. The Orioles had the lead and the initiative, and the Camden Yards crowd was out for blood.

Fifty-five minutes, three pitching changes, and just seven outs later, the Rangers led 9–2 in the top of the third. Though the Orioles cut the lead to 11–8 by the end of the night, the game was basically over then, leaving the Rangers in the driver’s seat and Baltimore in need of a mighty comeback in order to extend a Cinderella season. Read the rest of this entry »