Did you know that the Dodgers are carrying nine relievers for their NLCS matchup against the Braves? It’s true — Phil Bickford, Justin Bruihl, Brusdar Graterol, Kenley Jansen, Joe Kelly, Corey Knebel, Evan Phillips, Blake Treinen, and Alex Vesia all made the roster. That’s enough relievers that it’s hard to imagine how to move them all — the team made a concerted effort to add pitching options after their draining series with the San Francisco Giants.

With Vesia, Kelly, and Treinen already used tonight, Dave Roberts looked at that roster and chose none of the above. He called in Julio Urías, who threw 59 pitches on Thursday night, to come in on two days rest for his throw day and take the eighth inning. In a 4-2 ballgame, the Dodgers needed six outs of status quo to go home with the series tied, and Roberts preferred Urías, throw day and all, with a cluster of lefties coming up for Atlanta.

From one point of view, Urías was just fine. He threw 14 pitches — 10 curves and four fastballs. He had his usual velocity — both pitches were within 0.2 mph of their season-long velocity averages. He coaxed four whiffs in only 14 pitches. Great move, Roberts.

In all the senses that mattered tonight, though, Urías was the exact wrong pitcher to bring in. He gave up a single to Eddie Rosario, a flared single to Ozzie Albies, and then an absolutely crushed double to Austin Riley in the first six pitches he threw. Atlanta came in swinging, Urías scuffled slightly with location, and thanks to some very aggressive baserunning, the game was tied. Urías recovered to strike out the next two batters on four pitches each, but the damage was done. Read the rest of this entry »

For eight innings, the Dodgers’ impromptu bullpen game was going nearly to plan, with their cavalcade of relievers holding the Braves to two runs on just four hits. With the game tied heading into the bottom of the ninth inning, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts brought in his eighth pitcher of the evening, Blake Treinen, hoping to force extra innings. It proved to be a bridge too far for his relief corps. A one-out bloop single by Ozzie Albies followed by a stolen base put him in position to score the winning run. Austin Riley delivered the big hit, his second of the night after a game-tying home run in the fourth inning:

It was a bit of déjà vu for both Riley and Treinen. These same two teams met in the NLCS last year and it was Riley who wound up hitting the game-winning home run off Treinen in the ninth inning of Game 1. In this case, it was a line drive single to left field that easily scored Albies from second base. It was the first walk-off hit of Riley’s career and just another high point in a breakout season for the 24-year-old.

After a promising debut in 2019, Riley made some adjustments to his approach in an attempt to address his 36.4% strikeout rate. Those changes worked — his strikeout rate dropped to 23.8% in 2020 — but he struggled to maintain contact quality as good as it had been during his debut. This year, he put everything together, sustaining his plate discipline gains while also producing fantastic contact quality. It led to a 135 wRC and 4.2 WAR, a season that should produce some down-ballot MVP votes.

For the Dodgers, starting off the series on the back foot was always a possibility after Max Scherzer was deemed unavailable to start following his ninth inning appearance in Game 5 of the Division Series. The ZiPS Game-by-Game odds shifted more than five points in the Braves favor after Corey Knebel was named the starter, though Los Angeles was still favored to win, 51.3% to 48.7%. The game didn’t start off exactly to plan either. Eddie Rosario led off with a hard-hit single down the right field line, stole second, advanced to third on a ground out and finally came around to score on a wild pitch. Read the rest of this entry »

Brent Strom may or may not be calling it a career. The 73-year-old Houston Astros pitching coach said earlier this week that he’s been considering retirement, adding that a decision will be made “when the season ends.” With his team battling Boston in the ALCS, that determination could come as soon as next week, or it could extend into November. Regardless of when he ultimately steps away, Strom will have made a meaningful mark on the game of baseball.

A southpaw whose playing career saw him take the mound for three big-league teams, Strom had his best seasons in 1975 and 1976 when he cumulatively logged a 3.02 ERA over 331 innings with his hometown San Diego Padres. In 1978, he became the second pitcher to undergo Tommy John surgery.

The guidance that he’s subsequently provided is what’s garnered him the most respect. For the past three decades, Strom has tutored hurlers at the minor- and major-league levels, serving as both a coordinator and as a pitching coach. Prior to being hired by Houston in October 2013, he spent six years with St. Louis.

I asked Adam Ottavino about Strom prior to ALCS Game 1.

“We had ‘Strommy’ with the Cardinals toward the end of my time in the minors,” said the Red Sox right-hander, who spent five seasons in the St. Louis system after being drafted out of Northeastern University in 2006. “He worked with me when I was struggling in Double-A, and I really liked the way he talked about there being many different ways to go about pitching. You didn’t have to fit into some small little box. At the time, a lot of people were preaching one way of pitching — kind of pitching to contact and throwing fastballs low in the zone — and he wasn’t afraid to challenge that idea.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox evened the ALCS at 1-1 on Saturday evening with a convincing 9-5 road victory in a game that rarely felt even as close as the four-run deficit suggested.

Lance McCullers Jr.’s injury was one of Houston’s big storylines coming into this series, and the consequences could be seen Saturday as the Astros withered behind Luis Garcia, who likely would not have started this early in the series otherwise. Garcia is fortunate that the Rookie of the Year ballots were already tabulated before the postseason started, as his Game 2 loss was his second poor outing this October, and as in his first appearance, it was one bedeviled by poor location.

Trouble started quickly for Garcia as he fell behind 2-0 against totally stereotypical leadoff hitter Kyle Schwarber. The right-hander went right back to the fastball a third time, a pitch Schwarber crushed to deep right for a long double. Garcia received possibly his last bit of good fortune this game against Kiké Hernández, who hit a liner off a high fastball that was grabbed in an excellent dive-and-catch by Astros center fielder Chas McCormick. Rafael Devers worked his way back from an 0-2 count to a walk as Garcia fell into a pattern of nibbling. It worked against Xander Bogaerts, who went up there determined to hit a slider, but not so much with Alex Verdugo, who left his bat on his shoulder in a five-pitch walk. With the bases loaded, J.D. Martinez hit a liner to the opposite field for a grand slam, giving Boston a 4-0 lead. Read the rest of this entry »

With the postseason in full swing and the offseason looming, it’s time for a FanGraphs Membership update.

First, I’d like to thank all of our Members for their support this season. Your Membership dollars go directly to paying our staff and keeping the lights on at the site. When you subscribe, you are supporting our 10 full-time employees and 23 contributors, and I thought I’d take this chance to briefly highlight the work they do every day.

In addition to myself, we have nine full-time staff members. Ben Clemens brings you insightful daily baseball analysis, co-authors the Trade Value series, and is spearheading our upcoming Top 50 Free Agent rankings. Sean Dolinar is our lead web developer and is constantly making updates and additions to the site, creating new tools and improving the user experience. Kevin Goldstein, provides first-hand knowledge of how teams operate as well as insightful prospect analysis, and hosts Chin Music. Jay Jaffe brings you daily baseball analysis, deep dives into the game’s history, and is the foremost expert on all things Hall of Fame related. Eric Longenhagen is our lead prospect analyst and spearheads all of our prospect and draft coverage, as well as maintaining The Board. Jason Martinez is the man behind FanGraphs’ RosterResource and makes sure every roster move and player contract is meticulously tracked. Meg Rowley, our managing editor, makes FanGraphs “go” and co-hosts the Effectively Wild podcast. Paul Sporer is RotoGraphs’ managing editor and the co-host of The Sleeper and The Bust, and provides fantasy rankings and analysis year round. Dan Szymborski is the architect of the ZiPS projection system and provides daily analysis as well. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dutch historian and children’s author Hendrik Willem van Loon had an enjoyable definition of eternity. Every thousand years, he said, a bird comes to sharpen its beak on a hundred-mile-high, hundred-mile-wide rock. When the rock has been worn away by the bird’s beak, one day of eternity will have passed.

Personally, I think he could have just used the pitches in tonight’s Astros-Red Sox game to count eternity. Two of the best, grindiest offenses in baseball faced off against two starters who scuffled with control, and the result was a ponderous affair that lasted more than four hours and tested the nerves and patience of fans on both sides.

The Red Sox set the tone with a disciplined, persistent attack. After a leadoff single was erased by a double play, they wore Framber Valdez down, beak-sharpening peck by peck. A walk put a runner back on first. A flare over the shift added another runner before a walk loaded the bases. Hunter Renfroe flew out to end the threat, but the Red Sox had Valdez’s number. They hardly swung at bad pitches and rarely missed when they did swing. Read the rest of this entry »

When the postseason began, a rematch of the 2020 National League Championship Series only had about a 21% chance of happening, according to our Playoff Odds. But after some particularly unlikely occurrences — not just the lower seeds advancing in the Division Series — here we are. Freddie Freeman became the first lefty to hit a homer off Josh Hader in nearly 13 months, and the first to do so on a slider in more than two years, while lifting the Braves past the Brewers in Game 4. The Dodgers won the Wild Card game via a walkoff home run by a slumping Chris Taylor and then eked out a narrow victory over the 107-win Giants in similarly heart-stopping fashion, with the winning hit in Thursday night’s Game 5 delivered by Cody Bellinger on the heels of a nightmare season. That’s baseball, Suzyn.

Unlike last year, this time around the Braves will have home-field advantage despite winning 18 fewer regular season games than the Dodgers, because the current playoff format deals a stiff penalty to teams sneaking into the postseason via the Wild Card door. Atlanta’s advantage could be significant at some point in the series, particularly if it goes past five games, but it’s worth noting the Braves went just 42-38 at home, tying the Marlins for the NL’s 10th-highest win total in that split; meanwhile, their 46-35 road record ranked fourth in the NL. The Dodgers had the best home record (58-23) and third-best road record (48-33), and just won an elimination game (and two of their three Division Series games) in enemy territory. The talent gap between the two teams probably matters more than the venue in which they meet, though in a short series… you know the rest. Read the rest of this entry »

Every now and then, something happens in a major league game that arouses my interest as a baseball physicist. In the sixth inning of the recent American League Wild Card game, the Red Sox were up 3-1. With Aaron Judge on first and one out, Giancarlo Stanton hit a laser of a shot that bounced high off the left-center field wall at Fenway, barely missing a home run. As it happened, Judge was thrown out at home plate, while Stanton took second on the throw. It was truly a game-changing play. But what I really want to talk about is Stanton’s shot, particularly the distance the ball would have gone had it reached field level unobstructed. That is the usual meaning attached to “home run distance.” Although not normally done, I want to apply it to a single.

As it turns out, there is a wealth of data available that allows us to figure this out. First, we know the Statcast measurement of the launch conditions:

The most important of these parameters, exit velocity and launch angle, are publicly available. Of lesser importance to the calculation are the spray angle, spin rate, and spin axis. Note that the ball is hit very hard and, typical of Stanton, at a somewhat low launch angle. For both those reasons, the spin rate is not particularly large and the spin axis indicates nearly perfect backspin (i.e., very little sidespin). Note also that the small negative spray angle means the ball was hit slightly to the left-field side of center. Read the rest of this entry »

The postseason continues, as does Chin Music, and even though we had a last-second (and perfectly understandable) guest cancellation, I am joined by Steven Goldman of The Infinite Inning podcast and Baseball Prospectus for more than two hours of baseball talk and other stuff. We begin by reviewing the three Division Series that have ended, as well as the one that hadn’t at the time of recording, followed by a philosophical discussion on what defines a successful season. Then it’s your emails on why catchers don’t hit, what base coaches actually do, as well as a long discussion about my personal feelings (both good and bad) when watching the Houston Astros, and how I wish people understood that they don’t need to avoid the subject with me. We finish by catching up with Steven before discussing the darkest of dark comedies, 1971’s Little Murders.

As always, we hope you enjoy, and thank you for listening.

Music by Kowloon Walled City.

Have a question you’d like answered on the show? Ask us anything at chinmusic@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

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