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 six of this year’s free agents — in this case, another group of starting pitchers. Read the rest of this entry »

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 seven of this year’s free agents — in this case, a group of starting pitchers. Read the rest of this entry »

Though they lost on Sunday night, the Braves still own a three-games-to-two lead over the Astros in the World Series thanks in large part to the work done by their bullpen. Due to the season-ending injuries to starters Huascar Ynoa and Charlie Morton, the unit has had to do a whole lot of heavy lifting, throwing two-thirds of the team’s innings (29.1 out of 44). What’s more, in Games 4 and 5, not only did manager Brian Snitker have to patch together bullpen games, he began them by giving the ball to a pair of pitchers, lefty Dylan Lee and righty Tucker Davidson, who barely had any big league experience at all. Lee, in fact, had never started a big league game before, making that move without precedent in any of the previous 115 World Series. The gambit met with only limited success, as both pitchers were shaky, but the Braves nonetheless managed a split, taking Game 4 before losing Game 5.

Lee and Davidson are hardly the first such pitchers to be thrown into the World Series fire despite a dearth of experience. In fact, such October surprises are part of a rich tradition. What follows here is a non-comprehensive look back at the Braves’ pair plus eight other pitchers with minimal major league experience before the Fall Classic (which isn’t to say that they’re the youngest), and how they fared.

Ken Brett, 1967 Red Sox (1 regular season appearance)

The older brother of Hall of Famer George Brett as well as two other brothers (Bobby and John) who briefly played professionally, Ken Brett stands as both the youngest and least experienced pitcher in World Series history. The fourth pick of the 1966 draft out of El Segundo High School in California, Brett rose quickly through the minors, and was just nine days past his 19th birthday when he debuted with two innings of relief work in a loss to Cleveland on September 27, 1967. At the time, the “Impossible Dream” Red Sox were 80-70, tied for second in a four-way race. When they pulled out the pennant, manager Dick Williams included the precocious lefty on the roster without hesitation because, as he later said, “He had the guts of a burglar.” Read the rest of this entry »

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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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