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“Fortune favors the brave(s).”

Matt Damon uses something like this phrase to punctuate an ill-conceived cryptocurrency commercial that has been running during the World Series, the copy for which includes more polysyllabic words (that aren’t “Domino’s” or “America”) than most ads. To this point, the commercial had provided an eerie narration of the Series itself. Atlanta had been the team improvising (Dylan Lee opening Game 4) and experimenting (Ozzie Albies hitting right-on-right), sometimes out of necessity (Game 5 starter Tucker Davidson), and it was Atlanta that entered Sunday night with a commanding 3-1 series lead before leaping out to a 4-0 lead in Game 5. But with their backs against the wall, the iron-jawed Astros withstood a first-inning grand slam and battled back to win 9-5, sending the series back to Houston.

The game began with tremendous good fortune for Atlanta. In the first, Albies was treated to a shift-aided, room service double play ball off the bat of Carlos Correa that erased a Michael Brantley walk and ushered Davidson past what was likely a jittery inning of work. In the bottom half of the frame, the topspin of a chopper off the bat of Jorge Soler made the ball’s hop shallow, allowing it to slip underneath the glove of Alex Bregman, who expected the hop to be bigger. That gave the Braves a meaningful extra out to work with, and instead of an Albies groundout ending the would-be five-pitch inning for Houston starter Framber Valdez, Austin Riley and Eddie Rosario were able to prolong the first with a single and walk before Adam Duvall delivered a huge blow in the form of a wall-scraping, opposite-field grand slam. Read the rest of this entry »

Edouard Julien has a unique profile, and potentially a bright future. A native of Quebec City who attended Auburn University, the 22-year-old Minnesota Twins prospect is coming off a season where he drew 110 free passes, the most of any player in the minors. Moreover, he augmented his patient approach with power and speed. In 514 plate appearances split between Low-A Fort Myers and High-A Cedar Rapids, Julien went deep 18 times and swiped 34 bases in 39 tries. His slash line was an OBP-heavy .266/.434/.480.

His English-language skills were on the light side when he began taking classes at Auburn. An International Business major, Julien was regularly referring to a French-English dictionary throughout his first semester. By and large, he learned English as a college freshman.

“Where I’m from, we only speak French,” explained Julien, whose hometown is more than 150 miles (and 250 kilometers) northeast of Montreal. “I knew a little bit of English — we took classes — but it’s like people in the United States who take Spanish classes; they learn, but then they forget because they don’t practice it. I played for [travel ball] teams in Georgia, and for the Junior National team where it’s only English, so I knew some, but I wasn’t very good. I’ll say that.”

Julien now speaks three languages — French, English, and Spanish — and contrary to what was once said about the legendary Moe Berg, he can hit in all of them. That he did so less-impressively than usual in his sophomore season impacted his appeal to MLB scouts. Julien backslid statistically after a stellar freshman year, and as a result fell to the 18th round of the 2019 draft.

The fact that he was draft-eligible is another story. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes, you have to let Dylan Lee pitch. Lee wasn’t supposed to be part of Atlanta’s plans for the playoffs. He wasn’t supposed to be part of Atlanta’s plans for the year, period: the Marlins released him just before the start of this season, and the Braves picked him up and stashed him in Triple-A for depth. He was added to the NLCS roster to replace Huascar Ynoa (Lee was on the NLDS roster but didn’t pitch), then tabbed to start tonight’s game as an opener.

Sometimes, you have to give Kyle Wright bulk innings. After Lee let three of the first four Astros reach base, Wright came into the game, no doubt earlier than Brian Snitker had intended. He wriggled out of the jam with only a single run in, getting Carlos Correa on a grounder before striking Kyle Tucker out to end the threat.

Like Lee, Wright wasn’t part of Atlanta’s playoff plans. He wasn’t on the NLDS or NLCS roster, and he threw only six innings in the big leagues this year. With Ynoa out, the Braves wanted someone to get them bulk innings, and Wright made 24 starts in the minors this season; he figured to be a mop-up guy who could handle bulk innings in case of emergency.

Like Lee, Wright struggled to tame a deep Houston lineup. He’s a sinker-first, sinker-second pitcher, and the Astros eat minor league sinker-ballers for lunch. The Astros swung at 17 sinkers; they missed exactly once. Of the 22 Astros he faced, eight reached base. Jose Altuve socked a home run. Houston had at least two runners on base in four of the first five innings.
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Only two pitchers have ever thrown a postseason no-hitter: the Yankees’ Don Larsen with his perfect game in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series, and the Phillies’ Roy Halladay in the 2010 Division Series opener. On some level, the Braves’ Ian Anderson was vying to be the third; in Game 3 of the World Series on Friday night, he held the Astros hitless through five innings. But even from the start, anybody who has watched this postseason — where starters have averaged a hair over four innings per game — and understands the impact of the year-over-year workload increases that these pitchers are shouldering following the pandemic-shortened 2020 season could have told you that he wouldn’t get a chance to finish the job. That was doubly true on a raw and rainy night in Georgia and with a rested bullpen behind him. Backed by just two runs, Anderson and four relievers carried the no-hitter into the eighth and settled for a two-hit shutout, giving the Braves a 2–1 World Series lead.

Houston’s first hit finally came via a chip shot — 39 degrees, 70.7 mph — into left field by pinch-hitter Aledmys Díaz, the first batter faced by reliever Tyler Matzek. It fell in just in front of left fielder Eddie Rosario; according to Statcast, the catch probability for the play was 85%, but with shortstop Dansby Swanson running toward him and the cost of missing the ball being the tying run in scoring position, Rosario chose not to lay out.

It proved to be the right move. In fact, just about every major move the Braves made in Game 3 proved to be the right one, particularly manager Brian Snitker’s decision to trust his bullpen, no-hitter or not.

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Before Game 3 of the World Series, Meg Rowley and guest co-host Emma Baccellieri of Sports Illustrated discuss postseason travel for sportswriters, the forgotten virtues of suburban malls, Emma’s piece on how Atlanta shifted its stance on the shift midseason, and how the front office, Ron Washington, and the players came together to adopt the defensive strategy, as well as the length and pace of postseason games. Then at a listener’s suggestion, they draft replacement players for each World Series team from the clubs those teams have already vanquished before discussing what Bob Melvin’s hiring as the new manager of the San Diego Padres means for the Padres… and the Oakland A’s. Read the rest of this entry »

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José Urquidy delivered a relative gem in Game 2 of the World Series, punching out seven and giving up two runs with no walks in five innings. Included in that was a big bump in velocity across the board: Urquidy’s fastball gained 0.6 mph from its regular-season average (93.1 versus 92.5); his changeup spiked nearly two miles per hour (86.2 versus 84.4); and his slider saw the largest increase, from 79.3 mph to 81.7. Dialing up the velocity to this extent can effectively create new pitches, and with that an element of unpredictability, particularly when it comes to a pitch’s movement. That can be a plus in the postseason, but what about the flip side; could that extra velocity and movement make things worse?

On the surface, Urquidy throwing his hardest fastballs of the year in his most important start can’t be a bad thing, assuming it doesn’t compromise his command. Can he so precisely regulate the velocity of his offspeed offerings? Amazingly, we might be seeing the reverse from Urquidy, who seems to be throwing the offspeed stuff harder but holding back on the fastball.

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The Astros have powered their way into their third World Series in the last five years without the offensive contributions of one of their key players. In Houston’s 12 postseason games this October, Alex Bregman has hit a paltry .239/.308/.326 (.273 wOBA). He fared well against the White Sox in the ALDS, collecting six hits and two walks in those four games, but has just five hits in the eight games since and has been held hitless so far in the World Series. When your lineup is as deep as Houston’s is, you can survive a prolonged slump from one of your stars because there are so many other good hitters who can pick up the slack. Still, the Astros would rather Bregman hit than not.

These postseason struggles are just a continuation of a rough end to the regular season for the third baseman. He lost over two months of the season to a quad injury, keeping him sidelined from June 17 to August 25. After being activated from the injured list, he collected hits in 16 of his first 18 games back, but ended the season with just six hits in the team’s final 14 games. If you tack his postseason performance on to the end of his regular season, he’s hit just .200/.293/.313 (.269 wOBA) over his last 30 games. That late season swoon brought his wRC+ down from 130 on September 16 to 115 just 14 games later.

Bregman started his major league career with just two hits in his first 10 games, but pushed his wOBA up to .315 by his 30th game in the bigs. He’s had some slumps over the years — notoriously starting off each season slowly — but there’s never been a 30 game stretch where his wOBA has fallen as low as it is right now. Just looking at some of his peripheral stats during this stretch reveals where most of Bregman’s problems lie:

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Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent seasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract crowdsourcing project, with the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowd to better understand and project the 2021-22 free-agent market.

In recent years, we’ve added a few features to the ballots based on reader feedback. You now have the option to indicate that a player will only receive a minor-league contract, or won’t receive one at all. Numbers are prorated to full season where noted. The projected WAR figures are from the first cut of the 2022 Steamer600 projections.

Below are ballots for 10 of this year’s free agents — in this case, the market’s marquee starting pitchers. Read the rest of this entry »