Framber Valdez threw a spectacular game last night. For seven innings, he bewitched, hoodwinked, and otherwise bamboozled the Yankee offense. As Alex Eisert noted, he notched a career high in swinging strikes en route to a whopping nine strikeouts.

How did he manage it? As best as I can tell, he made one key adjustment: he used his wipeout curveball to start at-bats and ended up with 16 first-pitch strikes out of 27 batters faced, plus a weak grounder that turned into slapstick comedy:

It’s particularly impressive when you consider the beginning of his outing: he started six of his first eight batters faced with a ball and looked like he might struggle to find the zone. But he stuck to his plan, and the Yankees, who had taken the first eight pitches they saw, started swinging aggressively the rest of the night. Read the rest of this entry »

2:09	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks!

2:09	Jay Jaffe: Apologies for the delay, I had a typo in my chat code

2:10	Jay Jaffe: Welcome to the my first solo chat of the 2022 postseason

2:14	Jay Jaffe: Bear with me for a moment while I get back on track. Today I’ve got a piece about the rebound of starting pitcher usage in the regular season and postseason https://blogs.fangraphs.com/postseason-starting-pitching-is-back-baby/

2:14	Jay Jaffe: Earlier this week I previewed the ALCS https://blogs.fangraphs.com/al-championship-series-preview-houston-ast… which required a quicker turnaround from ALDS Game 5 than I would have liked.

2:15	Jay Jaffe: And wrote about the Dodgers’ early exit and the increasing disconnect between the regular season and the postseason https://blogs.fangraphs.com/ousted-dodgers-drive-home-disconnect-betwe…

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, when I wrote about some of the league’s strongest throwers, I ended up exclusively featuring outfielders. The nature of the position is more suited to making full capacity throws than in the infield, and as a result, only outfielders ended up on the list. Because of that, I feel obligated to acknowledge and highlight some of the strongest throwers in the infield. On average, these throws won’t be quite as fast. The footwork and time required to throw the ball is one reason for that, and that will be the focus of this piece.

Similar to last time, we’ll have to sort through some qualifications on how I came up with this short list of names. The first is at least 100 throws in the infield. One thing I ran into when sorting through the leaderboard was that several players near the top were utility players, rather than just strictly infielders. That led me to using the 2B/SS/3B filter and sorting the list by the overall throws at those positions only. See the full leaderboard here.

After working that out, I wanted to select plays where a player needed their plus arm strength to get an out. For example, a shortstop and/or third baseman needs to fire a rocket when moving multiple steps to use their backhand. A second baseman needs to have the correct footwork to fire a ball when ranging up the middle or quickly spinning a double play. Those are the types of plays I’m looking for, but they were harder to find than you would expect, given how so many plays in the infield are routine. I started with about 15 players from the top 20 on the list and worked my way down to a representative sample of five. Now, let’s get into it. Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros took a two-games-to-none lead over the Yankees in the American League Championship Series on Thursday night, as Alex Bregman’s three-run homer backed seven strong innings by Framber Valdez, whose two runs allowed counted as unearned due to his two-error play on a Giancarlo Stanton chopper. It was the second night in a row that an Astros starter stifled the Yankees, as Justin Verlander held them to one run over six innings while striking out 11.

The Yankees had Verlander on the ropes, forcing the 39-year-old righty to throw 66 pitches in the first three innings, during which he allowed six baserunners including a solo homer by Harrison Bader. Verlander got the strikeouts he needed to escape those big jams, however, and soon he went on a roll, striking out six straight hitters (tying a postseason record he already shared) and nine of his final 11 — reclaiming the all-time postseason strikeout lead along the way — before yielding to the bullpen, which continued to dominate Yankees hitters in a 4-2 victory in the ALCS opener.

Even given that he got knocked around for six runs and 10 hits in four innings by the Mariners in his Division Series start, Verlander probably had a longer leash than most due to his Hall of Fame resumé and manager Dusty Baker’s trust in him. He also had the wind at his back, so to speak. On the heels of a regular season in which per-game scoring fell 5.5% (from 4.53 runs per game to 4.28), in which the league-wide OPS decreased for the third straight season (from .758 in 2019 to .740 in ’20, .728 in ’21, and .706 this year), and in which starting pitcher usage increased for the second year in a row, starters are working deeper into games in the postseason than at any time since 2015. Read the rest of this entry »

After striking out 17 times Wednesday night, the Yankees ran that number up to 30 for the Championship Series, taking another tough loss in Game 2, this time 3-2. This time, Framber Valdez, the second half of Houston’s two-headed ace monster, was responsible; he struck out nine across seven strong innings. Typically known for his groundball prowess, Valdez racked up a career-high 25 whiffs Thursday night, with 16 of them coming via a nasty curveball. Those curveball whiffs, another career-best and a playoff record since the pitch-tracking era began in 2008, exceeded the next-highest mark from this season (including the playoffs) by three. (For context, three was also the gap between the outings with the second- and 12th-most curveball whiffs this year.)

But Valdez didn’t look all that sharp out of the gate. While his velocity was up 1.3 mph on the sinker, his primary offering, three of the first four and four of the first six hitters he faced went up in the count 2-0. In addition to possibly causing command issues, that extra zip may have led to higher exit velocities for the Yankees: their first three hitters each put 100-mph screamers in play. Luckily for Valdez, they were all hit pretty close to fielders, but with two down in the second, he wasn’t as fortunate; Josh Donaldson hit a perfectly placed 92.1-mph liner — the Yankees’ softest-hit ball to that point — into short right field for a double. But Valdez registered his first strikeout of the game when the next batter, Kyle Higashioka, went down after five straight curveballs, whiffing on the last:

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 997

With four teams remaining in the postseason, this week we put our fan hats on before meeting a talented new FanGraphs contributor.

• In the first segment, resident Phillies fan Michael Baumann is joined by site Padres fan Jason Martinez to discuss the NLCS. Jason was at the first two games in San Diego, while Michael will be at each of the next three in Philly; neither expected their team to get this far. We hear about Jason working as a field timing coordinator, Michael being more scared of Manny Machado than Juan Soto, the experience of facing (and watching) Blake Snell, their shared adoration for Jorge Alfaro and Jake Cronenworth, and Jason almost having to help Ralph Sampson to break up a stadium fight. [2:56]
• After that, Dan Szymborski welcomes Davy Andrews for his podcast debut. Davy recently joined the site as a contributor. We hear how he found himself at FanGraphs before learning more about his musical projects. The duo also discuss Jose Altuve’s recent struggles and future Hall of Fame chances, the playoffs being a bit of a crapshoot, what the Dodgers should do in the offseason, being fun uncles, and their strong opinions about baking and cookies. [45:07]

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 72 minute play time.)

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley review the results of the 2022 minor league free agent draft, discuss Gold Glove finalists and a study about the lack of special ways to win in the postseason, recap the first few Championship Series games (and banter about José Alvarado and same-named athletes in multiple sports), and answer listener emails about the name of the Division Series, on-screen strike zone graphics, and spotting higher-seeded teams a game before the start of a postseason series, plus a Past Blast from 1918, concluding banter about Shohei Ohtani’s comments about the Angels’ season and José Ramírez’s post-postseason surgery, and a postscript.

Audio intro: Nada Surf, “What is Your Secret”
Audio outro: Andrew Weiss and Friends, “Everybody Loves a Comeback”

Link to 2022 draft results
Link to Raymond’s EW wiki post
Link to Gold Glove finalists
Link to FiveThirtyEight on Gold Gloves
Link to 2021 story on Soto’s defense
Link to Dan S.’s playoffs study
Link to Russell’s playoffs study
Link to Russell on playoff homer-hitting
Link to Rosenthal on the playoff format
Link to ZiPS playoff odds
Link to study on playoff randomness
Link to FG post on NLCS G1
Link to FG post on NLCS G2
Link to MLB.com on Snell
Link to MLB.com on Padres’ rally
Link to MLB.com on Alvarado
Link to FG post on ALCS G1
Link to MLB.com on ALCS G1
Link to BP ALCS game preview
Link to Reddit on the best-of-9 WS
Link to ALCS G1 ump scorecard
Link to Division Series wiki
Link to BP K-Zone plea
Link to FG post on KBO playoffs
Link to EW emails database
Link to 1918 story source
Link to 1918 Ruth box score
Link to MLB.com on Ruth’s lost homer
Link to Reddit on Ruth’s homers
Link to Jacob Pomrenke’s website
Link to Jacob Pomrenke on Twitter
Link to Ruth homers book
Link to Ohtani Angels story
Link to Ohtani WBC story
Link to Ramírez surgery news
Link to Japan athletes poll
Link to U.S. athletes poll
Link to Patreon/Discord instructions

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With a massive first-pitch home run off Aaron Nola on Wednesday afternoon, Josh Bell broke an 0-for-14 slump. He went 3-for-4 in Game 2 of the NLCS, adding an RBI single in the fourth and another base hit in the seventh to go along with his second-inning home run. It was a major improvement over his performance in the first game of the series, when he went hitless in four at-bats and struck out swinging with two runners on to end the ballgame.

When Bell is hot, he can be a terrific offensive performer, and a lineup built around him, Juan Soto and Manny Machado has the potential to be one of the most powerful in baseball. That’s exactly what A.J. Preller was counting on when he pulled off the biggest summer blockbuster in recent memory. When Bell goes cold, however, he’s dead weight in the middle of the lineup.

Just take a look at his wRC+ by month:

More of his success came with the Nationals, but Bell did have a couple of strong stretches in San Diego. From August 20 to September 10, he hit for a 152 wRC+, and did so again from October 1 through the end of the season. The Padres went 14–9 during those two stretches, and Bell led the squad with 0.84 Win Probability Added. In the rest of their games post-deadline, the team went 17–18, and Bell’s -1.55 WPA ranked dead last. When their DH was hitting, the Friars had a more complete offense, and when he wasn’t, he dragged the team down with him. That trend has continued into the postseason; in Padres wins, he is batting .294/.294/.647 with three runs and four RBI (17 PA), and in losses, he’s hitting .100/.182/.100 with no runs or runs batted in (11 PA). Read the rest of this entry »

One of the storylines of this postseason has been the amount of rest — or lack thereof — each team is getting due to the new expanded playoff schedule. While the first round bye generated plenty of gripes from fans of the top teams in the National League, the Astros and Yankees had no such trouble advancing despite sitting out the Wild Card round. The American League teams even had an extra day off during the Division Series, but a couple of rain delays created scheduling chaos for the Yankees and Guardians. The Yankees entered the Championship Series having played three straight days over the weekend; they traveled from New York to Cleveland without the benefit of a travel day in the middle of that stretch. Then the second rainout of that series forced them to play on Tuesday, the day before the ALCS was scheduled to begin.

It’s understandable, then, that the Yankees began the third round of the playoffs looking a little weary. Their batters wound up striking out 17 times, while the contact-heavy approach of their pitchers led to their staff notching just two strikeouts. The Astros, on the other hand, hadn’t played since their 18-inning thriller in Seattle and had the benefit of kick off the series with their rotation stacked exactly the way they wanted. With New York’s fourth best starter lined up against Justin Verlander, the odds were never going to be in the Yankees’ favor, even if they had been well rested.

After allowing 10 hits and six runs in his Game 1 Division Series start, Verlander was looking to bounce back in just his second playoff start since 2019. Despite posting career-bests in ERA and FIP during the regular season — likely earning him his third Cy Young award — some of his peripherals weren’t as strong as you might expect. His strikeout rate was the lowest it’s been since 2017, the same year he was traded to Houston from Detroit. Instead of blowing batters away with his fantastic fastball and deadly breaking stuff, he used pinpoint command to curtail nearly all hard contact against him. Read the rest of this entry »

With the ALDS finally finished, I’m continuing my annual series grading each manager’s playoff decision-making. As always, I’m focusing on the lineup and pitching decisions that each manager made in the course of their series. I’m honing in on process rather than results, and taking into account the limitations of each roster.

That might mean not docking Dusty Baker, in a future edition of these report cards, for failing to bring in a lefty specialist; he doesn’t have any. It might mean taking it easy on teams with limited platoon or pinch hitting options. It doesn’t mean that you get a pass for not doing anything, though; just because a manager’s resources are limited doesn’t mean they should automatically sit on their hands. Of course, sometimes doing nothing is good, too. Leaving your excellent starter in or skipping pinch hitting when it only confers a marginal advantage can both be smart moves.

What qualifies me to issue these grades? Well, nothing really. They’re just the opinions of someone who spends a lot of time thinking about baseball. I’m sure teams are doing their own evaluations, and they probably have a better handle on the exact individual matchups, but the point is this: these decisions matter, and while the team- and consensus-building aspects of a manager’s job are far more important over a 162-game season, little edges can be decisive in a short series. A run could send you home or catapult you to glory, as these two managers will demonstrate. A note: both ALDS losers played in the three-game Wild Card round, and I’ll cover all of their decisions, starting with the most recent series. Read the rest of this entry »